Trapped by global warming
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MWAIE
Dec 5, 2007, 1:35:37 PM12/5/07
to Kiribati
When your country is just 100 meters (yards) wide at points, where do
you run when the water rises?
<<There's nowhere to move back to,>> Kiribati's president Anote Tong
told Bali's climate conference attendees. <<Because if you move back,
you're either in the lagoon or in the ocean.>>
The leader of the central Pacific island nation spoke via videotape
Tuesday in a stepped-up campaign by victims of climate change, real
and potential, to win vastly greater international aid to deal with
rising seas, crop-killing drought and other likely impacts of global
warming.
The two-week Bali conference, considered pivotal to efforts to reduce
industrial and other emissions warming the planet, will also likely
decide on the future of the <<Adaptation Fund,>> being developed under
U.N. agreements to enable poorer countries to adjust to climate
change.
The fund is expected to finance projects ranging from sea walls to
guard against expanding oceans, to improved water supplies for drought
areas, to training in new agricultural techniques. Thus far, however,
it has drawn a mere US$67 million (¤45 million) for a task the World
Bank estimates will cost tens of billions of dollars (euros) a year.
The almost 190 nations assembled here for the annual climate meeting
are focused chiefly on launching a two-year negotiating process to
seal a deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
That 175-nation accord requires 36 industrial nations to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, a key source of global warming, by an
average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States is the
only industrial nation to reject Kyoto.
The European Union and others are seeking a post-Kyoto agreement that
would mandate much deeper reductions by industrial nations _
including, they hope, the U.S. _ in carbon dioxide and other such
emissions by power plants, factories, vehicles and other sources.
Many here also want to see China and other major emerging economies
take steps to curtail the growth of their emissions. The two weeks of
talks promise to be difficult, with success far from guaranteed.
Operation, control and funding of the Adaptation Fund has been debated
for years at these meetings of U.N. climate treaty parties.
The U.N. climate chief, Yvo de Boer, told reporters Tuesday he hoped
this meeting would finally make the fund operational, <<so that perhaps
in as little as a year real resources for adaptation can begin to flow
to developing countries.
All acknowledge, however, that the available money is relatively
paltry.
The fund is financed by a 2-percent levy on revenues generated by the
Clean Development Mechanism, the program whereby industrial nations
pay for <<carbon credits>> produced by emissions-reduction projects in
the developing world _ credits then counted against reduction targets
at home.
Those levies thus far are <<tiny compared to the need,>> said Kate
Raworth, a senior researcher with the Oxfam International aid group.
As seas expand from warming and from the runoff of melting land ice,
higher and higher tides are eating away at fragile islands like those
of Kiribati, a nation of 92,000 people in 33 atolls, or island groups,
scattered over 6 million square kilometers (2 million square miles) of
the Pacific.
A small group from Kiribati played a troubling video for conference
attendees, showing the latest depredations of the encroaching sea: an
inter-island causeway undermined, hospital grounds threatened, the
airport runway in peril, among other problems.
Saltwater incursions have ruined pits growing giant taro (islanders'
staple food) and contaminated freshwater wells.
<<We can move inland, but where can we move to?>> asked schoolteacher
Tangaroa Arobati, explaining that the islands are only 100 to 300
meters (yards) wide.
<<We can build solid sea walls,>> he said. <<But where do we get the
money from?>>
Developing countries and their advocates, such as Oxfam, favor a
broadening of Adaptation Fund revenue sources, perhaps to include
aviation taxes or direct taxes on all fossil-fuel use.
<<The money should come from the countries most responsible and most
capable,>> Raworth said, listing such major carbon emitters as the
United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia and Canada.
Noted Kiribati President Tong, <<There are countries that have
benefited from pollution, and we are paying the price. How should they
respond
U.N. Climate Change Conference:
http://unfccc.int/2860.php
you run when the water rises?
<<There's nowhere to move back to,>> Kiribati's president Anote Tong
told Bali's climate conference attendees. <<Because if you move back,
you're either in the lagoon or in the ocean.>>
The leader of the central Pacific island nation spoke via videotape
Tuesday in a stepped-up campaign by victims of climate change, real
and potential, to win vastly greater international aid to deal with
rising seas, crop-killing drought and other likely impacts of global
warming.
The two-week Bali conference, considered pivotal to efforts to reduce
industrial and other emissions warming the planet, will also likely
decide on the future of the <<Adaptation Fund,>> being developed under
U.N. agreements to enable poorer countries to adjust to climate
change.
The fund is expected to finance projects ranging from sea walls to
guard against expanding oceans, to improved water supplies for drought
areas, to training in new agricultural techniques. Thus far, however,
it has drawn a mere US$67 million (¤45 million) for a task the World
Bank estimates will cost tens of billions of dollars (euros) a year.
The almost 190 nations assembled here for the annual climate meeting
are focused chiefly on launching a two-year negotiating process to
seal a deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
That 175-nation accord requires 36 industrial nations to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, a key source of global warming, by an
average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States is the
only industrial nation to reject Kyoto.
The European Union and others are seeking a post-Kyoto agreement that
would mandate much deeper reductions by industrial nations _
including, they hope, the U.S. _ in carbon dioxide and other such
emissions by power plants, factories, vehicles and other sources.
Many here also want to see China and other major emerging economies
take steps to curtail the growth of their emissions. The two weeks of
talks promise to be difficult, with success far from guaranteed.
Operation, control and funding of the Adaptation Fund has been debated
for years at these meetings of U.N. climate treaty parties.
The U.N. climate chief, Yvo de Boer, told reporters Tuesday he hoped
this meeting would finally make the fund operational, <<so that perhaps
in as little as a year real resources for adaptation can begin to flow
to developing countries.
All acknowledge, however, that the available money is relatively
paltry.
The fund is financed by a 2-percent levy on revenues generated by the
Clean Development Mechanism, the program whereby industrial nations
pay for <<carbon credits>> produced by emissions-reduction projects in
the developing world _ credits then counted against reduction targets
at home.
Those levies thus far are <<tiny compared to the need,>> said Kate
Raworth, a senior researcher with the Oxfam International aid group.
As seas expand from warming and from the runoff of melting land ice,
higher and higher tides are eating away at fragile islands like those
of Kiribati, a nation of 92,000 people in 33 atolls, or island groups,
scattered over 6 million square kilometers (2 million square miles) of
the Pacific.
A small group from Kiribati played a troubling video for conference
attendees, showing the latest depredations of the encroaching sea: an
inter-island causeway undermined, hospital grounds threatened, the
airport runway in peril, among other problems.
Saltwater incursions have ruined pits growing giant taro (islanders'
staple food) and contaminated freshwater wells.
<<We can move inland, but where can we move to?>> asked schoolteacher
Tangaroa Arobati, explaining that the islands are only 100 to 300
meters (yards) wide.
<<We can build solid sea walls,>> he said. <<But where do we get the
money from?>>
Developing countries and their advocates, such as Oxfam, favor a
broadening of Adaptation Fund revenue sources, perhaps to include
aviation taxes or direct taxes on all fossil-fuel use.
<<The money should come from the countries most responsible and most
capable,>> Raworth said, listing such major carbon emitters as the
United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia and Canada.
Noted Kiribati President Tong, <<There are countries that have
benefited from pollution, and we are paying the price. How should they
respond
U.N. Climate Change Conference:
http://unfccc.int/2860.php
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