Climate tango
December 1, 2011
As climate talks in Durban settle into their first week, a familiar pattern is emerging.
Developing countries are waiting for rich nations to move, while industrialized countries demand more willingness to compromise.
Brazil, South Africa, India and China – the so-called BASIC grouping - are categorical: The main burden for tackling climate change falls on rich nations' shoulders.
"There's been a clear signal that there are too many issues to overcome right now," said Narnia Bohler-Muller, a researcher at the Africa Institute of South Africa.
In a statement going into talks currently underway in Durban, BASIC countries said it was rich nations' responsibility to "take the lead."
Kyoto tug-of-war
In the middle stands the Kyoto Protocol, whose first commitment period expires at the end of next year with no agreement in sight on what should follow.
"We could be expecting to extend or renew the Kyoto Protocol, but not…anything legally binding," Bohler-Muller predicted.
Developing countries favor an extension of the Kyoto agreement, which binds rich nations to emissions reductions. All nations have "common but differentiated responsibilities," they argue.
Though rich nations share more historical responsibility for the problem, based on the cumulative build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the developing world is fast becoming the world's dominant source of emissions.
Current data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) show that Brazil, Russia, India and China today account for around 37 percent of emissions among them. They also generate around 30 percent of GDP, compared to 18 percent in 1990.
Dirty growth
In a report ahead of the Durban talks, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said global energy demand looked set to grow by 80 percent by 2050, raising current emissions by 70 percent.
Most of the increase would come from developing countries, the report said. It warned that "without new government policies, the mix of energy technologies will not change significantly by 2050." Fossil fuels would continue to provide around 85 percent of the world's energy.
Coal remains the energy that fires the engines of growth in China, India and South Africa. According to the IEA, these countries derive 68-94 percent of their energy from the dirtiest of the fossil fuels.
Waiting for the US
Brazil, which gets around three quarters of its energy from dams, says it is working intensively to extend Kyoto, but insists a legally binding agreement is not worth securing "at all costs."
"We feel that we are really doing our part," Brazil's lead negotiator, Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, told Deutsche Welle, emphasizing his country's voluntary commitment to cut emissions by 36 percent of its business as usual trajectory by 2020.
"We are doing much more than other parties are doing," he said. "So the pressure is not exactly on us."
Developing countries' demands are chiefly addressed to the United States.
"India is showing the most resistance from that group," researcher Bohler-Muller said.
"They definitely don't want to be in a situation where they are placed in a commercially vulnerable position and others benefit from the scenario – in terms of America not bound by legal targets."
Russian resistance
Japan, Russia and Canada have all made clear their intentions not to renew Kyoto due to the absence of similar rules for developing countries.
Russia's Yuri Izrael, a vocal critic of the Kyoto Protocol and a former vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, would prefer to see the world focus more on technological solutions to global warming, such as geo-engineering projects to alter climate trends.
Izrael, who stood out from his colleagues for playing down humans' contribution to climate change and its likely impact this century, told Deutsche Welle that Kyoto's goals were "not enough" for stopping [global warming] and stabilizing climate," and would in addition be "too expensive" compared to adaptive measures.
As things stand, it would be a surprise if the anti-Kyoto faction of developed nations were to change their positions in Durban.
Autorin: Nádia Pontes/Julia Maas (nw)
Editor: Mirjam Gehrke