EU ‘winner’ on climate change

Malta has welcomed the outcome of the UN climate change conference in South Africa where all countries yesterday agreed to come up with binding actions by 2015, to start being implemented in 2020.

Many of the EU’s requests had been accepted

Resources Minister George Pullicino, who took part in the 194-country conference in Durban, said many of the EU’s requests had been accepted.

The two-week conference, which followed up from Copenhagen and, more recently, Cancun, was close to descending into chaos and was extended by two days.

Dr Pullicino said the EU insisted throughout the meeting that a long-term agreement should be reached, binding each country to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions so that global temperatures do not increase by more than 2˚C since pre-industrial times. The EU made it clear from the outset that it would continue shouldering its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol even between 2013 and 2020.

However, to do this, the other countries, particularly the heaviest polluters, would need to define the concrete action they would take to reach the general aims agreed in Copenhagen and Cancun.

Known as the Durban Platform, what was agreed yesterday was that by 2015 there must be an agreement about how all major carbon polluters will reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement will then start being implemented in 2020.

“Therefore, the EU won its principle argument on which it had insisted,” Dr Pullicino said. The EU pointed out it did not make sense for only those that contribute 15 per cent of carbon emissions to be bound to reduce them.

Even big economies like the US, China and India, have agreed to be bound by climate change targets.

The EU managed to receive the support of the Least Developing Countries and the Alliance of Small Island States as well as other countries, to come up with a roadmap of implementation.

The Durban Platform also establishes structures by which billions of euro can be distributed to poor countries to help in mitigation and adaptation measures to fight climate change.

Malta’s climate change ambassador Simone Borg and the head of the climate change unit within the Malta Resources Authority, Godwin Sant, were key members of Malta’s six-person delegation.