Climate Change Talks Drawing Larger Audiences

Climate Change Talks Drawing Larger Audiences



Aug. 2007  - Climate change talks that opened 
Monday have drawn 1,000 people from over 150 governments, business and 
industry, environmental organizations and research institutions to Vienna. 
The delegates are seeking to build the political will to limit global 
warming ahead of an international climate summit set for December in 
Indonesia that will determine what happens after the Kyoto Protocol 
expires at the end of 2012. 
"The Vienna Climate Change Talks present an opportunity to measure the 
temperature of the climate change process - whether or not the political 
community is willing to advance a comprehensive agenda on a future climate 
change regime post-2012 in Bali," said the top UN climate official, Yvo de 
Boer.

 
De Boer is executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention 
on Climate Change, UNFCCC, the international treaty within which the Kyoto 
Protocol operates. 
Meeting with journalists on Sunday, de Boer said the scientific community 
has already indicated the catastrophic consequences if the world does not 
act quickly. 
The Kyoto Protocol, the current global framework for reducing the emission 
of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, is seen as merely a 
first step because does not include many major emitters such as the United 
States, China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. 
Today, the Vienna meeting is discussing a new UN report that examines the 
financial aspects of climate change over the next 25 years. The report 
takes into account the need to limit global temperature rise to 2°C, the 
level at which scientists say the worst effects of global warming may be 
averted. 
The financial report says that by 2030 additional investments of up to 
US$210 billion a year will be needed to return greenhouse gas emissions to 
the current level. 
The study analyzed both existing and potential investment and financial 
flows needed to develop an international response to climate change. It 
found that the additional amount of investment and financial flows in 2030 
will amount to between 1.1 and 1.7 percent of global investment. 
Josef Pröll, Austria’s federal minister for agriculture, forestry, 
environment and water management, host of the five-day meeting, told 
delegates that climate change is a "huge challenge" that must be addressed 
at the global level and through an integrated approach. 
"Each year without mitigation measures is a year which drives the human 
and financial cost of adaptation steeply upwards," Pröll said.


Climate change is already a "harsh reality," he said, urging that 
negotiations on a post-2012 climate agreement should be launched this 
year. 
He reiterated the European Union's willingness to cut emissions by 30 
percent by 2020 provided that other industrialized countries also make 
commitments and economically advanced developing countries contribute 
adequately. 
Meanwhile, developing countries are worried because the major economies 
are so slow to act. 
Maria Madalena Brito Neves, agriculture and environment minister of Cape 
Verde, a small island nation off Africa's west coast, warned that climate 
change could undo economic progress for her country and other small island 
states. 
"Climate change can potentially offset all the gains made in achieving the 
Millennium Development Goals," she said, referring to a series of targets 
to slash a host of social ills by 2015. "Small island developing states 
are particularly affected." 
From the United States, Harlan Watson outlined President George W. Bush's 
plan to hold a series of conferences with major economies leading to an 
agreement on a new post-Kyoto framework by 2008 and contribute to global 
agreement under the UNFCCC in 2009. 
"Let the cash flow," said the nongovernmental groups of the Climate Action 
Network attending the Vienna conference in the daily newsletter "ECO" they 
are publishing here. 
The groups say they are looking forward to today’s dialogue on the 
investments needed for climate change mitigation and adaptation, noting 
that it is "the first discussion on this urgent topic in the UNFCCC." 
They say that the appearance of financial numbers on the negotiating 
tables is a sign that "the climate debate is now mature."


After studying the report, they groups say they are "happy" to see that 
the key findings are very close to their own conclusions - "that the 
investments needed for mitigation and adaptation are large compared to the 
funding currently available under the Convention and the Protocol, but 
tiny in relation to estimated global GDP and global investment in 2030." 
The groups note that total investments in new physical assets are 
projected to "triple between 2000 and 2030," providing a "window of 
opportunity for redirecting major financial flows into climate-friendly 
technologies." 
Their criticism of the UNFCCC Secretariat's report is that "it fails to 
emphasize that the shift away from the business-as-usual path to a clean, 
efficient and safe energy future is not about additional costs, but about 
saving money, species and human lives." 
Last month, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed that countries must 
agree to a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol to be ready for 
ratification in 2009 - three years before the protocol expires to allow 
them to make it law in time for a seamless transition. 

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