Durban Climate Summit sets out pathway to future climate deal but critics say action not fast enough
Tue 13 December 2011
View all news
Governments meeting at the COP17 Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa, have agreed to adopt some form of a universal legal agreement on climate change as soon as possible, but not later than 2015. For the first time, the world’s three major emitters of greenhouse gases - China, the United States and India - responsible for around a half of total emissions have agreed to begin negotiations for an international “protocol.
The Durban Summit - which was attended by representatives of most governments in the World, including the leading 35 industrialized countries - also agreed to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol—due to expire next year— from 1 January 2013. Parties to this second period will turn their economy-wide targets into quantified emission limitation or reduction objectives and submit them for review by 1 May 2012.
The second commitment is significant because the Kyoto Protocol’s accounting rules, mechanisms and markets all remain in action as effective tools to leverage global climate action and as models to inform future agreements. Shortly after the Durban meeting, however, Canada announced its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol (see below).
Parties to the talks also agreed upon an advanced framework for the reporting of emission reductions for both developed and developing countries, taking into consideration the common but differentiated responsibilities of different countries. There was also a significant agreement on full implementation of a package of support measures for developing nations which was agreed in principle at the last summit in Cancun.
Other key decisions which emerged from COP17 in Durban were:
• Green Climate Fund: Countries pledged contributions to start-up costs of the fund, meaning it can be made ready in 2012, and at the same time can help developing countries get ready to access the fund, boosting their efforts to establish their own clean energy futures and adapt to existing climate change.
• A Standing Committee is to keep an overview of climate finance in the context of the UNFCCC and to assist the Conference of the Parties. It will comprise 20 members, represented equally between the developed and developing world.
• A focused work program on long-term finance was agreed will contribute to the scaling up of climate change finance going forward and will analyse options for the mobilisation of resources from a variety of sources.
There were also agreements on climate change adaptation, technology development and transfer, and support for developing country actions. (See associated links for more information.)
Critics of the agreement reached in Durban said that the plan is too limited to slow climate change.
Quoted by Planet Ark, Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said: "The people of the world are the biggest losers because the governments are kowtowing more to the corporate interests than the interests of the people for more aggressive action."
Meyer called for greater ambition on emissions cuts and financial support for industrial change and for "a more collaborative spirit than we saw in the Durban conference centre these past two weeks."
He added: "We are on a path to 3-3.5 degree Celsius increase if we don't make aggressive cuts by 2020...And there is nothing to suggest this deal will alter that."
The United Nations Environment Programme also said in a recent report that emissions are growing at a rate well in excess of what is needed to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius.
As temperatures rise, so does the damage, which includes crop failures, increasing ocean acidity that would wipe out species and rising sea levels that will erase island states the U.N. report said.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said global average temperatures could rise by 3-6 degrees by the end of the century if governments failed to contain emissions, bringing permanent destruction to ecosystems.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the world's largest disaster relief network, saw the Durban deal as a collective failure to stem the destruction caused by climate change on the world's most vulnerable people.
Shortly after the Durban summit, Canada became the first country to announce it would withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, Canada complains that Kyoto is unworkable because it excludes so many significant emitters. A Canadian Government spokesman said that Canada is "invoking our legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto."
The right-of-centre Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada would be subject to penalties equivalent to 14 billion Canadian dollars (€10.3 billion) under the terms of the treaty for not cutting emissions by the required amount by 2012.
Canada was heavily criticised by environmental groups and others following the announcement.
The next major UNFCCC Climate Change Conference, COP 18/CMP 8, will take place 26 November to 7 December 2012 in Qatar, in close cooperation with the Republic of Korea.
Related Links
< Back to news list