Monday, November 25, 2013

UN Climate Talks at Warsaw: a compromise formula reached, not a success!

Dear Friends/Co-sailors,

The UN climate talks in Poland have come to an end with delegates reaching a compromise on how to fight global warming; which leaves many unhappy.

In fact, I can call it a failure with UN officials admitting that the current efforts were not adequate to halt the pace of global warming. The rich and polluting countries did not show any legal and moral commitment.  Even financial commitment was too less. 

I am pasting below links to some of the news reports for your information. 

Thanks and regards,

Ranjan

Last-minute deal saves fractious UN climate talks with delegates reaching a compromise on how to fight global warming.

After 30 hours of deadlock, they approved a pathway to a new global climate treaty in Paris in 2015.

The agreement was achieved after a series of last minute compromises often involving single words in draft texts.

Negotiators also made progress on the contentious issue of loss and damage that developing countries are expected to suffer in a warming world.

South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage

The U.N. climate talks in Warsaw ended in dramatic fashion Saturday evening in what looked like a schoolyard fight with a mob of dark-suited supporters packed around the weary combatants, Todd Stern of the United States and Sai Navoti of Fiji representing G77 nations.

It took two weeks and 36 straight hours of negotiations to get to this point.
"We need those promises to add up to enough real action to keep us below the internationally agreed two-degree temperature rise.” -- U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

At issue in this classic North versus South battle was the creation of a third pillar of a new climate treaty to be finalised in 2015. Countries of the South, with 80 percent of the world’s people, finally won, creating a loss and damage pillar to go with the mitigation (emissions reduction) and adaptation pillars.

US and China must act on climate change rhetoric, says German minister

The US and China need to put their rhetoric on climate change into practice, the German environment minister, Peter Altmaier, said on Monday after United Nations climate change negotiations in Warsaw failed to reach agreement in key areas.

Disappointed by the lack of significant breakthroughs, Altmaier demanded concrete action on climate change from bigger industrialised nations ahead of a crunch meeting in Paris in 2015.

"China and the US will have to take a position at some point. Both President Obama and the new Chinese leadership have said they will prioritise climate protection, but that has to become visible in practice," he said, and demanded both nations set binding national climate targets as soon as possible.

"It's there [in the US and China] where the largest C02 emissions are produced, it's there where we have to achieve something in the coming months," added Altmaier, who briefly attended the talks last week.

"If we look at the hopes of millions of young people who ask when are you going to finally take climate protection seriously, when is something going to change, then it has to be said we've probably fallen short of the expectations," the minister told German radio station Bayerischer Rundfunk.


During the conference, regional German environment ministers wrote a letter appealing to chancellor, Angela Merkel, to push for an EU-wide C02 reduction target of 55% by 2030 as an impulse for key nations such as China to make their "own essential contributions" to global climate negotiations.

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