The Durban climate summit held in South Africa did not stimulate the international media hype that the Copenhagen meeting had generated back in December 2009. Here, the Durban event went almost totally unnoticed.
.The worst off in the convolution of climate talks... will always be the vulnerable small island stateslike ours- Alan Pulis
Durban COP17 was the next follow-up to Cancun in 2010 as the global community seeks to develop a new climate legal regime once the remit of the 1998 Kyoto Protocol technically expires. Time and again, and with a clearly unfavourable global economic climate as backdrop, Durban has shown that climate politics is no piece of cake.
Climate lobbyists or the media had initially portrayed the 2009 Copenhagen summit as signalling the birth of a post-Kyoto treaty, or almost. The end results, however, proved so dismal compared to the original expectations that climate campaigners were faced with what they perceived as doom and gloom.
The lesson that international climate conventions very rarely yield too much must have long been learnt and, even now in the Durban aftermath, there is no sight as yet of the post-Kyoto holy grail. So much for all the greenhouse gas emissions to bring together thousands of delegates from all over the world to agree on what is considered by many as flimsy legalese!
Kyoto’s timeline is, to put it mildly, intriguing. Originally developed and eventually adopted in just five years after the 1992 UNFCCC – a remarkably short time period given the protocol’s global scale and economic implications – it was not before February 16, 2005, eight years later, that this unique international legal instrument could actually enter into force after it had gained enough signatories.
The quantum leap with Kyoto was the onerous commitment entered into by the industrialised nations to achieve greenhouse gas emissions cuts of the order of circa five per cent compared to baseline year 1990 over the period extending from January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2012.
What matters most with the Kyoto protocol in terms of its success is not really the cutting down of emissions per se but, rather, the treaty’s adoption of the diverse mechanisms through which it operates: the clean development mechanism, joint implementation and emissions trading, the latter having been implemented with considerable success in the EU since 2007.
As things stand now, carbon emissions from the developing world have escalated to such an extent that there can be no proper post-Kyoto legal framework unless China, India, Brazil and South Africa (the BASIC countries) and others commit to drastic emissions cuts almost in the same way or if not more than the industrialised world did in 1998.
How far can the climate politicking go when the science unequivocally shows that the risks from global temperature rise over the next 100 years – estimated so far to be in the range of at least 2-6° – are expected to become dramatically costlier to manage? In Durban, the alarm bells rang that the global average temperature rise deadline to within 2° compared to pre-industrial, as formally agreed in Copenhagen, may not be achievable after all, with a 3° or 3.5° rise suddenly becoming a more realistic scenario.
The worst off in the convolution of climate talks between the developed world and the various segments of the developing will always be the vulnerable small island states like ours. These have to counter, and with extremely limited resources, both the adverse impacts of rapidly changing climates and also severe consequences from rising sea levels. The last thing small islands can afford, for example, is greater dependency on expensive desalination processes to make up for a foreseeable increased scarcity of potable water.
The Durban conference outcome proposes a “platform” mandating an ad hoc working group to draft a new climate protocol by 2015 that should enter into force by 2020. The working group shall be supplemented by the crucial findings of the International Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report scheduled for completion in 2013/2014.
As Kyoto moves into a second commitment period, COP17 also marks the activation of a crucial $100 billion green climate fund that had been agreed upon in Cancun.
A key element in the Durban talks has been the inclusion of carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) in Kyoto’s clean development mechanism. The prospects of the CCS industry now look better given the possibilities that should arise, on paper at least, for CCS investments in the greenhouse gas emissions-rich developing countries. The International Energy Agency estimates that no fewer than 3,400 CCS plants will be required worldwide by 2050 to ensure that global temperature rise does not go beyond the 2° mark.
Malta has transposed the EU directive on geological carbon capture and storage only last year through Legal Notice 346 of August 29. The implications could be more than meets the eye.
sapulis@gmail.com
The author specialises in environmental management.