‘New climate change treaty may not be hammered out’

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines raised the alarm yesterday over the slow pace of negotiations for the reduction of greenhouse gases that could lead to the failure of nations to forge a new climate change treaty replacing the Kyoto Protocol before the December deadline.

Presidential adviser for global warming and climate change Heherson Alvarez said President Arroyo would meet with United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretary-General Yvo de Boer in Manila on Sept. 9 to push for a global treaty by yearend.

The Philippines submitted interventions in the UNFCCC talks that call for “deep and early cuts” of emissions by industrialized countries of more than 30 percent from 2013 to 2017, more than 50 percent from 2018 to 2022, and at least 95 percent by 2050, all from 1990 levels.

“At the rate negotiations are going, there is a danger that a new climate change treaty may not be hammered out in time for the December deadline for a new successor to the Kyoto Protocol,” Alvarez said, referring to the international agreement that sets global standards for greenhouse gas emissions that expires in 2012.

The Philippine chief climate change negotiator issued the warning upon arrival from a four-day negotiating session of the UNFCCC in Bonn, Germany that was undertaken last Aug. 10-14 and attended by over 2,000 representatives of nations.

The Bonn session was the latest in a series of meetings leading to the UN Conference of Parties in Copenhagen in December, Alvarez said.

Further meetings will take place in Bangkok, Thailand in late September and in Barcelona, Spain in November.

Little time left to respond

In Bangkok, Alvarez said the parties should be able to respond to the targets of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which pointed out that a 25 percent to 40 percent cut in emissions from 1990 levels is necessary to avoid the tipping point of irreversible climate change by 2050.

“At the rate we are moving, we will have a hard time addressing this tipping point. But there will still be a chance if the protocol text is crafted in Bangkok. Otherwise, there is little time left for the community of nations to respond to climate change with a common but historic new protocol,” he said.

He said Mrs. Arroyo pushed for the deep cuts based on “our historic experience as an archipelagic low-lying country visited by 20 escalating typhoons each year, an experience shared by other countries, especially in the ASEAN.” – Paolo Romero, Katherine Adraneda, Philippine Star