Sustainability and policy - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 459

to establish a Green Climate Fund (see COP 14 discussion, above) of US$100 billion
by 2020 - initially using the World Bank as a trustee - to help protect developing
nations from the worst effects of climate change and transfer their economy to one
of low-fossil carbon reliance. There was also a framework to pay some nations
not to engage in deforestation (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation, or REDD) and a formal recognition that deeper emission cuts were
necessary. However, there was no actual ruling to enforce deeper emission cuts and
no mechanism was developed to negotiate for these nor anything on the status of
Kyoto II (the anticipated successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which only covered
the period up to the end of 2012).
The 2011 COP 17 meeting was held in Durban, South Africa. The USA kept a low
profile during the meeting (President Obama was facing a presidential election in
2012 for his second term and a politically significant proportion of the US electorate
do not accept that anthropogenic climate change is taking place). China and India
were two countries determined to be allowed to develop their economies without
undue fossil carbon constraints: they wanted the developed OECD nations to make
the most contributions to global emission cuts. A roadmap was proposed largely by the
EU, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Least Developed Countries
(LDC) bloc: together the EU, AOSIS and LDC bloc represented a formidable number
of nations to sway decisions. However, by the conference's supposed end no overall
agreement as to how to work towards Kyoto II had been decided. Some delegations
from small, less-developed countries then left, but the COP continued for nearly a
day and a half beyond its official end date. In the end an agreement was passed: the
Durban Platform.
There was also some progress on REDD and a management framework was adopted
for the Green Climate Fund. At the Durban COP meeting it was also agreed to
establish a technical working party to examine the question of whether agriculture's
greenhouse impact should be considered as a separate section within the UN FCCC.
However, the Durban Platform did not have embedded in it the actions purportedly
necessary to keep warming below 2 ◦ C (although it should be said, as will be noted
later, that some scientists are of the view that by Durban the world was already on
track to exceed 2 ◦ C warming and some opined that the Durban track would lead to
3.5 ◦ C warming by 2100). The agreement called for talks on 'Kyoto II' (or whatever
it will be called) to be completed by the 2015 COP 21 summit and to come into force
by 2020. As the Kyoto Protocol was due to expire at the end of 2012, the Durban
Platform included a provision to extend the Protocol by between 5 and 8 years, and
the exact date was scheduled to be determined at the next COP meeting in 2012,
which will be COP 18, held in Qatar. Just after the 2011 COP meeting an editorial in
the journal Nature summarised the position: ' . . . for climate change itself it [Durban]
is an unqualified disaster' (Anon, 2011). Meanwhile, since 1990 (the oft-used policy
benchmark year) the clear trend has been one of increasing greenhouse emissions,
hence rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, with no sign of stabilisation
let alone decline. Also, since 1990 the climate science has continued to provide
more detail as to the impact of greenhouse gases on the global climate. It seems as
though the action required, as underpinned by the science, and the action delivered
by international policy-makers are on diverging tracks.