What the just-ended U.N. climate conference in Doha produced can be summed up by what U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in his statement at the end of the two-week meeting: ``More needs to be done.’’
Fortunately, the Doha talks ― officially called the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP 18) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ― concluded Saturday with an agreement on extending the Kyoto Protocol, the only binding pact on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, to 2020.
However, the agreement degraded into a symbolic and empty slogan as even industrialized countries such as Japan and Canada announced that they won’t be tied by binding emission cuts from now on.
In contrast, the 27-member European Union, Australia, Switzerland and eight other developed countries signed up to keep their obligatory emission cuts by 2020 but disappointingly, they represent only 15 percent of global emissions. This is because the protocol excludes major developing polluters such as China and India as well as the United States that refuses to ratify it.
The latest round of U.N. climate talks was deadlocked on financing costs needed to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases. Developed countries pledged in 2010 to secure $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries cope with climate change but debates on financing schemes have been delayed. In this year’s session, the developing world asked developed nations to make written pledges to provide $60 billion by 2015 but industrialized countries, beset with looming economic woes, only promised to present plans during next year’s U.N. climate change conference to be held in Warsaw, Poland.
For now, the prospect for a new protocol ― which is to be concluded by 2015 and enter into force in 2020 under an agreement in Durban, South Africa, last year ― is murky indeed. But the situation facing our planet doesn’t warrant complacency.
The World Bank recently warned that global temperatures will rise more than 4 degrees Celsius by 2060 from pre-industrial times if the world fails to keep its earlier promise of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite its developing country status in the climate change talks, Korea had voluntarily pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020 but emissions actually have been on a steady rise. Korea, the world’s seventh-largest greenhouse gas emitting nation last year, is expected to be obliged to reduce emissions in the new protocol that could go into effect in 2020. Given the time lag until then, Korea could meet its voluntary emission cut promise if it acts decisively. Needless to say, actions speak louder than words.
It’s encouraging that the Doha conference approved Korea’s hosting of the secretariat of the Global Climate Fund (GCF) in Songdo. Considering the urgency of global warming, nations, developed and developing alike, must join forces to pool wisdom to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Developed countries should bear more burdens, given that they have contributed more to global warming through industrialization.