China is ready to offer legally binding commitments to limit its emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). If the offer, to come into effect after 2020, is made and accepted, it may rescue stalled global climate negotiations but will also put immense pressure on India to make a similar offer. Indian delegates at the climate summit that started here Monday are mulling whether to support the Chinese move.
There is no agreement among them yet. Senior members of the Chinese government delegation, gathered in this South African port city for the Nov 28-Dec 9 summit of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), confirmed that China was ready to offer that the voluntary pledge it made in 2009 be made legally binding under the UN auspices. The pledge was to reduce the emission intensity of its economy by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared to 2005.
The same year, India pledged a voluntary 20-25 percent reduction in its emission intensity – which is the amount of GHG emissions produced per unit of GDP. Now India may come under global pressure to make that voluntary pledge legally binding from 2020. Some Indian delegates think they should agree, or at least publicly support the Chinese offer, and thus revive the climate change talks. Others feel there is no point in making more concessions, because rich nations will refuse to do anything, whatever the emerging economies do. One delegate said, environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan may take the matter to the PMO. GHG emissions, mainly carbon dioxide produced by burning coal and oil, are raising global temperatures, and this is already affecting farm output, making droughts, floods and storms more severe and more frequent. India is among the countries worst affected.
These emissions rose by a record six percent in 2010 from 2009 as the world pumped an extra 564 million tonnes of carbon into the air, according to a calculation by the US department of energy. Most of the extra carbon in the atmosphere has been put there by rich countries since the start of the Industrial Age. Under the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding compact on the subject, rich nations are supposed to reduce their GHG emissions by a little over five percent between 2008 and 2012, compared to 1990 levels. Now many rich nations – including the US, which never signed the Protocol – are insisting that emerging economies like China and India take on legally binding commitments to limit their emissions.
13 of Last 15 Years Warmest on Record: UN
Thirteen of the warmest years recorded have occurred within the last decade and a half, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization said on Tuesday. The year 2011 caps a decade that ties the record as the hottest ever measured, the WMO said in its annual report on climate trends and extreme weather events, unveiled at UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa.
“Our science is solid and it proves unequivocally that the world is warming and that this warming is due to human activities,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement, adding that policy makers should take note of the findings. “Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached new highs and are very rapidly approaching levels consistent with a 2 to 2.4 Celsius rise in average global temperatures.”
Scientists believe that any rise above the 2.0 threshold could trigger far-reaching and irreversible changes on Earth over land and in the seas. The 2002-2011 period equals 2001-2010 as the warmest decade since 1850, the report said.
