What should we expect from climate summit?

The Durban Climate summit which kick-ed off last week should wrap up its proceedings by Friday. The two pivotal questions many are asking are the following: Will it lead to any new internationally legally binding commitments? And will it herald the death of the Kyoto Process?

A Eurobarometer poll that suggested that Europeans actually fear climate change more than financial turmoil- Leo Brincat

While many are inclined to argue that the EU should seize the opportunity to lead the world in such negotiations by strengthening its climate and energy policies, on the other hand one cannot ignore the fact that the US, China, India and a number of emerging global powers that are nowadays also referred to as new growth countries still tend to regard such negotiations with deep suspicion. For a number of reasons. Meanwhile, one cannot afford to ignore the fact that the global economic and financial crisis is expected to weaken the momentum of such an important summit.

Even though others are of a divergent opinion that climate policies should in actual fact strengthen rather than weaken or hinder such recovery.

The summit comes at a time when the European Union has just proposed legislation to significantly combat the monitoring and reporting of GHG emissions, with its own 2013-2020 EU climate and energy laws and targets firmly in mind.

EU Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard hopes that these new rules will set an example in the context of the international climate negotiations and serve as a benchmark for transparency of climate action by developed countries.

One cannot, however, dismiss lightly another recent finding that resulted from a Eurobarometer poll which suggested that Europeans actually fear climate change more than financial turmoil. One fifth of those polls actually considered global warming to be the single most serious problem.

Overall, respondents said climate change was the second most serious issue facing the world, after poverty. Although the disappointing Copenhagen Summit of 2009 had raised expectations far too high, it was indeed striking that the public were this time round even more concerned about climate change than in the run up to that particular summit.

A number of those interviewed were of the opinion that addressing such a problem would provide an economic boost and in effective terms end up creating jobs rather than shrinking the economy further.

Even if the Durban summit proves to be inconclusive it will still be partially successful if it manages to drum home the highly valid point that green jobs, investment, trade and economic growth opportuni-ties stand to rise as a result of the shift towards a low carbon economy.

There was a time when science and public opinion seemed to push in different directions on climate related issues. This time round, they are evidently pointing in the same direction.

As for Durban itself it still needs to be seen whether coming as it does in the wake of the failure of the Copenhagen Summit and the slow progress registered at Cancun, it might be high time to shift attention from ‘top down’ measures based on internationally negotiated targets to a ‘bottom up’ set of measures.

I think that the top down approach cannot be discarded completely as otherwise the much needed sense of leadership will be inclined to drift away and vanish into thin air.

This will be the only benchmark that will ensure that those governments who have committed themselves to supporting climate issues will in actual fact make the quantum leap of progressing on delivery.

As for Kyoto the current CO2 reduction agreements expire at the end of next year and there is enormous resistance to new targets.

To stop global warming, a much faster and greater (rather than slower) reduction in CO2 levels would be needed than the Kyoto Protocol has produced to date. It does not take a climate expert to realise that this is nowhere in sight.

When I was recently in Germany I came to learn that the reductions in emissions in certain countries were so far primarily the result of economic crises as well as due to the collapse of industry in a number of former Soviet bloc countries.

I have always been sceptical of summitry particularly in the wake of recent disappointments.

Rather than meetings of world leaders and decision-makers alone we must first make sure that we have a meeting of minds on such delicate but urgent matters.

brincat.leo@gmail.com

Mr Brincat is Labour spokesman for Environment, Sustainable Development and Climate Change).