Talking Point

In December this year, the Danish capital city Copenhagen will be at the centre stage of world attention. The city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference during 07-18 of the month. Called the COP15, the fifteenth annual Conference of the Parties, the meet will have delegates from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) parties, to deliberate and collectively respond to the challenges facing the humanity today, due to climate change.

The conference, assumes crucial significance this time as climate realities are at a perilous stage with the mankind standing at the crossroad. This is an opportunity to take a new pledge after the commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol on emissions targets expires in 2012.

In a multi part series, we attempt to capture the key essentials of this global effort.

The road to COP15: From setting up of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to Rio to Kyoto to now Copenhagen, the lead up to COP 15 stretches over two decades of UN efforts to control the adverse anthropogenic interference with the environment.

Chronologically put, the milestones are:

In June 1992, heads of state and representatives from 172 governments across the world met in Rio in Brazil in the first international agreement to limit emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) called the Earth Summit. More than 150 countries signed the climate convention at the Rio and in March 1994 the framework came into force.

In March 1995, the first annual Conference of the Parties or COP1 was held in Berlin.

During the decade of 90’s, it became increasingly apparent that given the exigencies, the UNFCCC convention by itself would not be enough towards the control of growing emissions. In 1997, in Kyoto Japan, at the COP3 for the first time, binding targets were set under the Kyoto Protocol for how much the industrialized countries should reduce their emissions by 2012. Not all signatory countries of UNFCCC ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the most notable non member being the US.

In 2005 Kyoto Protocol went into effect without the US. Under the protocol, 37 industrialized countries commit themselves to binding targets for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and all member countries give general commitments.

The Kyoto Protocol sets targets for emissions from 2008 to 2012. In 2007, at the COP13 in Bali, the member countries decided to work towards a new agreement for the post Kyoto years. The plan adopted, called the Bali Action Plan paves the way for COP15 in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Climate facts: The climate change is the outcome, caused by increasing concentration of GHGs resulting from indiscriminate human acts like unlimited burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil, natural gas and deforestation.

Fossil fuels are in essence biodegraded plant matter from many millions of years and contain a high percentage of carbon and hydrocarbons. By human activity, the abundance of CO2 in the fuels has been getting released at an ever increasing rate. As a consequence, the layer of GHG in the earth’s atmosphere is getting thicker making the earth warmer and leading the humanity towards climate change implications.

The rate of global warming over the last 50 years has been nearly twice that of the last 100 years. According to IPCC the global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) between the start and the end of the 20th century. The IPCC fourth assessment report AR4 2007 indicates that the temperature could further rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 °C (2.0 and 11.5 °F) during the 21st century.

According to assessment reports, to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change, the average global temperature rise should stay below 2°C (3.4°F) than it was at pre-industrial times (circa 1800). Considering that the earth has already warmed since pre-industrial times, there is that less of critical margin left for maneuvering and this urgently calls for a rapid reduction of GHG emissions. Otherwise, by inaction we face the climate change impacts – which can potentially be devastating and pervasive.

For example, authoritative sources indicate that:

• Impacts due to global warming such as unpredictable rainfall, rise in sea levels, higher sea temperatures are not favorable to human race; leading to more frequent storms, floods and droughts. Such changes could transform the physical geography of the world with people migrating to newer places on a large scale.
• With the change in monsoon system, spread of deserts and erratic supply of fresh water from the melting of mountain glaciers, hundreds of millions of people will be food and livelihood insecure. The decline in crop yield could deny them the means to produce / purchase sufficient food and be the victim of malnutrition.
• Climatic disorder will bring in the risk of increases in serious diseases such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever and polio. Diseases like malaria and dengue fever could become more widespread due to longer rainy seasons.
• The climate effects would be damaging to the biodiversity and ecosystems around us. Species and marine lives will be facing the threats of extinction due to warming, deforestation, ocean acidification.
• Economy and environment are closely interlinked. Rise in climatic disaster rate, lower harvest yield, migration of people and livestock, disease management, livelihood security, protection of ecosystems would put the global economy under significant stress in an interdependent world.

The COP15 is therefore going to take place under alarming climate facts which implicate our ecosystems, biodiversity, climate imbalance to world economy, human health etc. – in effect in an overall lurking sense of insecurity for the future human race. 

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