Developed nations have so far ignored the guidelines and warning issued by the UNFCCC regarding the amounts of carbon emissions that they need to reduce by the year 2020 in order to prevent a climatic catastrophe.
According to the scientific panel of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the world must cumulatively reduce its carbon emissions by at least 25 to 40 percent in order to mitigate the adverse effects of global warming. However, during the ongoing round of Climate Change Talks at Bonn, Germany, the developed nations have failed to come up with convincing targets for reducing their greenhouse gas outputs.
While the European Union has made it clear to notch up its 20 percent reduction target by 2020 to 30 percent if rest of the developed nations agree to a 20 percent reduction target, there has been poor response from countries like Australia, United States and Japan.
The United States Congress has passed a bill calling for 14 percent reduction by 2020 from 1990 levels but the Obama administration is yet to promise anything substantial at the international forum. The United States is in discussions with China and has been trying to get the Chinese government to agree to some kind of emission reduction goals. And although China seems ready for voluntary sectoral emission cuts, an official deal has not been reached yet which could be the possible reason for US government’s reluctance in announcing a definite target.
Australian government has been flirting with the idea of introducing the emissions trading systems for a long time now. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Keven Rudd, Australia ratified the Kyoto Protocol but since then Mr. Rudd has face almost continuous criticism from the greens for failing to keep his promises. The emissions trading scheme in its current form is unacceptable to the environmentalists, including Greenpeace.
GREEN groups want emissions trading ditched in favor of direct and immediate action to tackle climate change.
They say the country has become obsessed with emissions trading, describing the Federal Government’s planned scheme as a dud.
Greenpeace spokesman Jeremy Tager said voters thought Prime Minister Kevin Rudd understood climate change, but had not delivered on emissions trading.
The Australian government clearly lacks the will to implement bold measures and the efforts to tackle the rising carbon emissions have been unnecessarily politicized.
Japan, although has been calling for bolder emission reduction targets, has also failed in credible exhibition of a clear intent. During the Bonn negotiations Japan proposed that it will cut its greenhouse gas emission by 15 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. By changing the base year for calculating emission reductions the actual reduction will be reduced. It is safe to assume that the emissions in 2005 were lower than those in 1990 given the advancement in technology and the impact of Kyoto provisions, to which Japan is obligated. Thus the actual reductions will be only slightly greater than those agreed up on in the Kyoto Protocol.
Japans new target is equivalent to a cut of eight percent from 1990 levels, which is only a little more than the six percent commitment agreed on under the Kyoto Protocol for the period ending in 2012.
The unwillingness of the developed nations to put forward ambitious emission targets which are actually inline with the UNFCCC guidelines means that the developing countries like India and China have virtually ruled out agreement on reducing their own carbon emissions. The Indian climate negotiator said that the world was disappointed by the targets proposed by the developed countries.
(S)ome parts of (the negotiating text) “do not correspond to the parameters laid down by the Bali Action Plan and several elements go beyond the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It should not include such formulations…The current exercise is not to renegotiate the UNFCCC but to see how we can enhance it to tackle climate change more effectively”.
The developed countries must try to propose much bolder, ambitious emission reduction goals as it is necessary to tackle the problem of rising carbon emissions. The unwillingness demonstrated by them will only weaken their case to demand reduction targets from the developing nations.
Image: nixter (Creative Commons)
About Mridul Chadha
[...] weeks the developed countries have been in the line of fire of the green groups as they proposed disappointing emission reduction goals. Completely ignoring the IPCC recommendations of 25-40 percent reductions by 2020, Japan and Russia [...]