Gary Braasch reports from the latest U.N. climate-change convention in Nairobi, Kenya. Braasch has been photographing and reporting on climate change since 1999. His forthcoming book, Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming Is Changing the World, will be published by the University of California Press next year.
The seasonal rains have returned to southern Kenya, greening the countryside once again. But in the north and east, near the Somalian border, refugee camps set up for those who lost everything in a deep drought earlier this year are suddenly being flooded out by this season's unusually severe rains. Many see this rapid switch from drought to deluge as global warming in action -- more searing droughts and stronger rainstorms in an intensifying cycle that affects the world's very poorest.
Not far away, in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, officials and observers from around the world gathered for this year's United Nations summit on climate change. Here, the severity and urgency of global warming should have seemed clearer to delegates than it did at last year's frigid Montreal summit.
No continent is as vulnerable to climate disruption as Africa, and none harbors more poverty. That's why it's been a big deal to African nations that the 12th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change was held for the first time in sub-Saharan Africa. Many African nations sent large delegations. African luminaries like Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan shed light on the plight of Africans in the face of global climate change. Environmental groups presented papers on threats to the continent.
In the end, though, the conference generated the usual flood of words and paper, and a near-drought of immediate action on dealing with climate change.
Denmark and France, along with many international observers, led the way in outlining what this meeting needed to accomplish: the establishment of firm plans to continue past 2012 (when the Kyoto Protocol expires), to reduce emissions in much more significant amounts in years after that, and to ensure that the ongoing process is seamless with current procedures. Financial underwriting and investments which will reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars may be undercut if there is a gap after 2012, not to mention the loss of what little momentum there is on actually solving the huge climate issue. Considering how slowly the negotiation process moves, observers urged strong commitment at this meeting so that a plan could be officially agreed to over the next two conferences.
Late on Friday, the final day, the conference agreed to a 2008 review of the Kyoto Protocol, to allow for its strengthening and continuation. But the 39 nations that are the heaviest polluters within Kyoto could not agree how to set deeper cuts; they will continue talking about it next year, and they promised there would be no gap in commitments after 2012. (Notably missing from this are the U.S. and Australia, which did not ratify the Protocol, and China, which was considered a developing country at the time the Protocol was set up and has no set reduction targets.)
Several environmental groups here, displeased at this lack of action, did note that for the first time the conference acknowledged in writing reports by the U.N.'s scientific body that emissions must be reduced by half to start bringing global warming under control. The Kyoto rules now require only average reductions of 5 percent below 1990 levels from the developed countries.
Developing nations in Africa and elsewhere scored a win when it was agreed that the Adaptation Fund set up by Kyoto -- to help people prepare for and live with the effects of climate change -- would be governed democratically among the nations, insuring the majority would be less advanced countries. This move reflects the growing understanding that rapid changes in climate are already affecting millions and that they need money to deal with it now.
The biggest excitement at these exceedingly dry meetings was provided by outside events, such as the princely arrival of Kofi Annan. It was classic pomp and circumstance: delegates lined up behind white cords to watch him stride down a red carpet. Moving within a cloud of aides and security men (one of whom looked like he was the model for Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire), Annan was escorted into a rapid sequence of meetings, speeches, and press conferences.
The world's top diplomat, Annan avoided making any direct comments about specific nations, but he told reporters, "There are many leaders who are not taking climate change seriously," and he urged those unnamed leaders to "show courage, knowing that people of the world will be with them." It was obvious who he was referring to when he said that non-Kyoto nations "have a responsibility to their citizens and to the world."
Politically, however, the greatest buzz came as word spread of the Democratic Party's gains in the American midterm elections. Speculation was high that there would be an immediate shift in U.S. policy on climate. Misunderstanding of the American system got to the point that Steve Sawyer, Greenpeace's chief observer, had to explain at a press conference that the U.S. was not a parliamentary democracy, and, no, President Bush was not immediately decamping to Crawford, Texas -- he had more than two full years left in his term. Even with Democrats in control of Congress, progress may still be slow, Sawyer and other NGO leaders said, urging the convention to keep working and let the U.S. catch up as the political leadership continues to shift through the next presidential election.
Hopes were further dashed when the chief American negotiator, Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, said the mandate had not changed and continued to list voluntary programs as evidence of U.S. action. The U.S., while not as negative a force at these talks as it was in Montreal, nevertheless reportedly continued to throw up roadblocks within the negotiating rooms to agreement on future mandatory requirements and technology transfer.
More visible in challenging progress were Canada and Australia, both of which touted their own advances despite their large emissions. They are trying to get unproven carbon-capture-and-storage technology accepted as a mitigation project under Kyoto, even though it is still in the expensive R&D stage. Greenpeace's Sawyer said the rich countries should go develop it themselves and present it later if it works. There was also pressure to include various types of reforestation in the clean-development program, but again NGOs warned that it could be a perverse incentive to log forests only to get credit for replanting later.
Annan announced a collaboration between the U.N. Environment Program and U.N. Development Program to begin helping countries integrate climate response into all national planning -- what he called "climate proofing." UNEP also provided a counterpoint to the convention's slow technical discussions by presenting a series of simple solutions that are already being enacted. These included Wangari Maathai's campaign to plant a billion trees, use of simple water-harvesting equipment, and drought insurance that can bring relief money to refugees much faster than traditional charity and national response. These types of immediate actions provide some hope that there are many ways to deal with climate change. Still, nations must agree to serious reductions in greenhouse gases and much more direct mitigation aid to the places like Africa that need it now.
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caniscandida Posted 6:13 pm
18 Nov 2006
If it had a more robust status as fundamental international law, then it would be easier for those member states that are ready and willing to intervene to bring an end to the genocide in Darfur and Chad, for example.
The Declaration was drafted soon after the end of World War II, in a world different from ours, socially and politically and technologically, in many important ways. The problem has not yet been adequately recognized and addressed, that the economic activities of one state can adversely affect the health and well-being of citizens of other states, for environmental reasons.
In 1986, the Chernobyl disaster damaged the health of people and animals in many states to the west of the Soviet Union, all too often mortally. Were damages assessed? Was the Soviet Union forced to recompense anyone?
Chernobyl was an accident, a crime of negligence, a kind of multiple manslaughter. But now, by contrast, it needs to be recognized that when states carry on business as usual, refusing to control emissions of GHGs, thus contributing to global warming and making the dangers of its effects all the more likely and all the more severe, they are contributing to the poverty, poor health and premature death of people and animals and plants outside their borders. Inasmuch as it is no accident, the guilt is worse.
The following excerpts from the Declaration could be foundational for a new interpretation of international law, demanding:
1., that the grave dangers of global warming be recognized;
2., that the current economic activities of a number of states which contribute greatly and uncontrolledly to the emission of GHGs -- those states being named -- be acknowledged and published; and
3., that those states, whose activities will certainly endanger the peoples, animals and plants of many, if not all, states, well outside their borders, and who refuse to control those activities, be condemned and held liable.
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Article 25
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
. . .
Article 28
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
. . .
Article 30
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
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Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:02 am
19 Nov 2006
Without enforcement, laws are worthless and I am having a hard time visualizing countries running about penalizing each other for emitting CO2 (the pot calling the kettle black). The following paragraph describes the burning of jungles in Indonesia to the letter:
3. that those states, whose activities will certainly endanger the peoples, animals and plants of many, if not all, states, well outside their borders, and who refuse to control those activities, be condemned and held liable.
Indonesia might be bullied into compliance, but how would you bully the bullies? I know, you're just a little dog...
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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sunflower Posted 12:55 am
19 Nov 2006
For every time, it is never too late.There was a time when murder was not illegal. Then, in Babylon, the impossible happened and murder was cause for severe punishment so civilization could thrive.
There was a time when slavery was not illegal. Then, in the United States, the impossible happened and slavery was cause for emancipation so democracy could thrive.
There was a time when pollution was not illegal. Now, in the United Nations, the impossible happens and pollution is cause for embargo so humanity can survive.
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swozniak Posted 7:15 am
19 Nov 2006
Shawn
http://www.thegoodthebadandthegreen.com
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caniscandida Posted 8:04 am
19 Nov 2006
The out-going Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has received a good bit of criticism for his administration's record. Deservedly or not, I could not say, though I think on balance he has done well. The Bushies and their allies seem to have been aiming at him for a long time, especially Senator Norm Coleman; their disdain for the U.N. in general is notorious; Cheney's contempt for Hans Blix and the weapons inspectors in Iraq in 2002 and 2003 was disgraceful. But Annan would really like to see the U.N. be reformed, and become a truly assertive and effective organization in all manner of crises. In that regard, he is not far from the way of thinking of many Americans, including many supporters of Bush.
But Bush's foreign policy has been such a catastrophe, and so bitterly offensive to so many, that Annan knows no reform will work right now, if it looks at all American, or "Americanist," in inspiration. So, sadly, Bush and the neo-conservatives may very likely have doomed all the world to the effects of global warming, inasmuch as they provoked everyone's resentful anti-American inaction.
Thanks, Sunflower, for reminding us of those precious historical precedents that you list.
Biodiv, Little Dog writes much better than I. She has already published a few well-received volumes of sonnets and ballads, and is now working on her first play, which she tells me is a bedroom farce in the style of Euripides.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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bookerly Posted 6:15 pm
20 Nov 2006
is still the US. The hope is that BushandCo Inc will decide they can make money over doing something, and that in the long run, the do somethings will gain a competitive economic advantage (you may say I'm a dreamer....).
Nice to see a report about this, but ummm, Gary, China is still a developing country (based on a per capita income about 1/33 of the US).
The recent ASEAN meeting included some discussions of sustainable growth, a term that at least is becoming de-rigor for discussion in the region.
The other elephants are getting ready to move out....
patrick
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