Djemouai Kamel of Algeria, which chairs the African group, said the Danish conference presidency was picking elements from the Kyoto Protocol and linking them with sections of the draft text under the other negotiating track in an effort to empty the Kyoto Protocol track – which is meant to be agreeing new targets for industrialised nations to reduce their emissions.

“We are not going to accept the [death] of the only legally binding instrument that is functioning, and a risk of having a new treaty that will need a ratification process,” Kamel said.

The position of the African negotiating group was soon supported by parliamentarians and civil society groups from the continent, who showed their solidarity by staging demonstrations inside the conference centre.

In a statement issued here, the Pan African Parliament Network for Climate Change (PAPCC) demanded that industrialized nations must first deliver new Kyoto Protocol targets.

“We are outraged with the lack of transparency and democracy in the process. The [conference] president is not taking African position into account,” said Awudu Mbaya Cyprian, Executive President of the PAPCC.

“It is better not to sign anything at Copenhagen rather than signing the death warrant for African people,” he added. “The death of the Kyoto Protocol is a crude death to Africa.”

Representatives of civil society groups from Ethiopia also expressed their solidarity with the African common position group.

The African group gained support from the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the wider G77/China group of 130 developing nations.

Meanwhile over 100 world leaders are expected to arrive in Copenhagen by the end of the week to strike the final deal.

According to organizers of the demonstration, 70-80,000 participants marched from the city center to the Bella Centre, the venue hosting the UN climate conference.

“Climate justice now! Action now! Nature is not compromising! Save the planet now!” read some of the placards carried by the demonstrators.

Danish police had been preparing for days and were massively present both on the streets and above them in helicopters, ready to suppress any potential violence.

Rita Jere, an environment activist from Kenya said the demonstration was meant to convey a strong message to the developed nations.

Jere say these nations should accept their historic responsibility for climate change and save the world by signing the climate deal under negotiation.

She said that in Kenya drought linked to climate change has destabilized the whole economy and reduced people’s wellbeing, adding that it has now become an issue of national security.

“I am here to add my voice to the global movement that says that we need to reclaim our world from the greed and recklessness of the [profit-driven] powers of the world”

Demonstrators from Ethiopian civil society group joined the large crowd calling for an urgent climate deal.

“We Africans are already suffering from climate change impacts,” said Negash Teklu, from the Consortium of Population Health and Environment. “People are dying. So we are urging industrialized nations to come forward for a successful climate deal.”

Di-Aping said this is “necessary to stop the world from immeasurable suffering”.

He also reiterated the position of G77/China that the US needs to join the Kyoto Protocol, the only legal instrument in place that binds countries to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions.

“The world cannot achieve an equitable and just deal that would save the planet without the US,” he said. “Global peace and security would be threatened without American participation.”

Scientists predict that Africa will face a temperature increase of 3.5 degrees Celsius if stringent action is not taken to limit emissions of greenhouse gases.

The G77/China is the largest UN negotiating block. It has been sticking to its position of maintaining the Kyoto Protocol rather than replacing or merging it with a new protocol in Copenhagen.

As the ongoing negotiations intensify, government ministers are expected to arrive this weekend and will be followed by the heads of states and governments next week.

Meanwhile the world’s most vulnerable nations are piling pressure on other countries to strike an effective deal.

Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change said negotiators had advanced talks on how to transfer technologies from industrialised to developing nations once the necessary finance is in place.

In a press conference yesterday, de Boer said the proposed technology mechanism would establish an executive body responsible for accelerating action on technology development and transfer.

It would also create a new consultative network for climate technologies.

He announced that negotiators have two days left before government ministers begin to arrive on Saturday, when the president of the conference will take stock of progress so far.

He also addressed the question of the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, which has been the subject of heated debate here.

Industrialised countries would like to see the Kyoto Protocol merged into a new agreement while developing countries want it to endure with a new set of commitments for industrialised countries.

“The Kyoto Protocol will and must survive,” said de Boer. “It is the only legally binding instrument we have to act on climate change.”

Meanwhile negotiators more than half the world’s countries – the ones most at risk from climate change – are hardening their demands for an ambitious deal.

They say they are determined not to sign any deal that allows temperatures to rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as opposed to 2 degrees Celsius, which the major economies would prefer.

Any agreement to reach the more ambitious target would require massive and rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions combined with removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

As the talks head towards their second week, protesters are continuing to put pressure on developed countries such as the United States and the European Union members to take serious actions in making the climate deal successful.

The diverse array of protestors includes environmentalists, vulnerable indigenous communities and activists from small island states that are in serious danger due to rising seas.

Some countries are alleged to be trying to come up with an alternative set of negotiation documents which some analysts say are meant to derail the whole process and lead to a non-binding decision.

In an exclusive interview the UNEP’s Executive Director, Achim Steiner said fears of possible failure to reach agreement in the climate change negotiations are unfounded.

“This is just speculation,” said Steiner. “What the United Nations Environmental Programme and Lord Nicholas Stern said in their report is just the opposite – that a deal is within reach and perfectly feasible.”

He said the voluntary actions that developing countries have announced in recent days mean that global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are close to what is needed.

Steiner said that anyone who wants to talk down the prospects of success at the summit may be doing so for their own reasons rather than in view of what is on the table.

Steiner did not rule out the possibility that the meeting could go wrong however.

“There are high risks that this summit can go wrong,” he said. “There are many reasons why countries disagree and obviously there is still a need for some of these negotiations to be underpinned with actual commitment.”

“For example, the financial and technology partnership package which is on the table right now is inadequate but we have 10 days to correct that,” he said.

The fact that over a hundred heads of state and government are coming to the summit is a signal that a political deal in the making.

“Why else could we bring 15,000 people to Copenhagen and over 100 heads of states?” he said. “I mean we cannot waste the world’s time by just sitting and disagreeing.”

“The fact that Copenhagen has become a leaders’ summit is also a reflection of the mounting pressure and expectation of people across the world.”

Steiner said Africa desperately needs a deal because of the enormous threat climate change poses, the urgent support that Africa needs and the opportunities to invest in the green economy on the continent.

“As we focus on the emissions and big players, we must not forget that there are 120 developing economies that are largely going to be victims and have to deal with the outcomes of Copenhagen,” said Steiner.

“It is also important to have African voices say loud and clear that adaptation [to climate impacts] is in itself a major challenge from the economic and policy point of view.”

Meanwhile developing countries are extremely uneasy about the leaked proposal which the Danish government prepared outside of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (see Secret text at Copenhagen climate-change talks enrages developing nations).

Asked to comment on the alleged document, Steiner said that anyone who wants simply to ignore the Kyoto Protocol will run into political difficulties because the protocol reflects fundamental political agreements that have kept the climate change negotiation process going to date.

They expect the developed nations that are party to the Kyoto Protocol to adopt new commitments to reduce their carbon emissions, and want all industrialised nations to support the developing countries in their mitigation and adaptation efforts.

A few hours after the ‘Danish text’ had been leaked to the Guardian newspaper, the G77/China group of 130 developing nations reacted strongly.

Speaking on their behalf, Ambassador Lumumba Di-Aping of Sudan, which chairs the group, spelt out exactly why the poor countries were so incensed.

“The text robs developing countries of their just and equitable and fair share of the atmospheric space,” he said. “It tries to treat rich and poor countries as equal.”

According to The Guardian, the text is a draft proposal for the final political agreement that should be signed by national leaders including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown at the end of the Copenhagen summit on 18 December.

It was said to have been prepared in secret by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” but understood to include the US and Denmark.

The text was considered by negotiators from the developing countries block as betrayal, sources said.

“This text destroys both the UN Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol,” Di-Aping was quoted as saying. “This is aimed at producing a new treaty, a new legal initiative that throws away the basis of [differing] obligations between the poorest and most wealthy nations in the world.”

In a press conference later in the day the head of the UN Convention on Climate Change Yvo de Boer denied that this draft document could disrupt the negotiation process.

“This was an informal paper ahead of the conference given to a number of people for the purposes of consultations,” he said. “The only formal texts in the UN process are the ones tabled by the Chairs of this Copenhagen conference at the behest of the Parties.”

The participants -  from Peru and Ethiopia – asserted that agricultural conservation areas managed by the expertise of indigenous people are vital for offering native crops and their wild relatives a chance to adapt to new climatic conditions.

They agreed a declaration which highlighted the contributions of indigenous people to the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.

It stressed that the resilience which is intrinsic to indigenous people’s farming systems was important to climate-change adaptation and mitigation strategies.

The participants urged that conservation areas should be promoted to protect the diversity of crops and livestock, because they can help people reduce poverty and maintain community sovereignty of food systems.

In the declaration, the participants said the most effective approach to the sustainable use of such biological diversity is to adopt models based on the local context and culture, and to make use of traditional knowledge, practices and innovations.

“The declaration encourages action research and South-South learning,” says Dr. Michel Pimbert, head of the sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and livelihoods programme at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

IIED’s Peruvian partner Asociación Andes organised the workshop with the Association of the Communities of the Potato Park.

A crucial UN climate change summit is due to take place in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December.

There are hopes it will come up with a deal in which people in developing countries will be helped to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through engaging in forestry  and farming that reduces land degradation.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – As the Copenhagen climate change summit draws closer, African voices are being heard loud and clear on the continent’s position.

The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, used his keynote address at the recent special session of the African Partnership Forum (APF) on climate change in Addis Ababa to insist that this time Africa will have one voice that will count. He will chair the African negotiating team in Copenhagen in December.

“ Unlike the G-8 outreach programmes and the G-20 summits,  programes that I have had the honour and, to some extent, the misfortune of representing Africa in, we will participate in the upcoming climate change negotiations not as invitees but as  full-blooded negotiators”, he said.

Meles, who has recently become vocal about the issue of climate change, said the fact that Africa will be represented by one negotiating team reinforces its role as stakeholder and negotiator.

“We will participate in the negotiations not as supplicants pleading our case but as negotiators defending our views and interests and reaching out to achieve our common positions.”

He said: “ I do not want to be misunderstood. Africa will not be there to express its participation by merely warming the chairs, or  making perfunctory speeches and statements. We want to be and deserve to be in the thick of it all.”

According to the Prime Minister, Africa’s primary interest is not to claim  compensation for climate change and its damage, but to prevent it from happening in the first instance. This is because Africa’s ecology is amongst the Earth’s most fragile and so is highly vulnerable to catastrophic damage caused by small changes in temperature.

“ It makes no sense to us for someone to make a large part of our continent unlivable and then pay some compensation for doing so”, Meles said.

He said Africa wants to keep its forests intact and re-forest areas that have over the years been degraded, at the same time quickly adopting green technologies.

Meles insisted that Africa demands to be part of the solution to climate change, even to mitigating it, although it has contributed virtually nothing to the problem. But he hinted that it will never accept any global deal that does not limit warming to the minimum unavoidable level, no matter how much compensation and assistance is promised to it.

Lord Nicholas Stern is Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment , and Professor of Economics and Political Science at the London School of Economics. He stresses that in order to have a reasonable chance of avoiding an increase in global average temperature that exceeds 2˚C, a global deal should ensure worldwide emissions reductions from the present level of about 50 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to no more than 20 gigatonnes by 2050, by focusing on greener and innovative technologies.

The annual cost of action on climate change in Africa alone is estimated to amount to around US$30 billion, with US$20 billion of this total required for adaptation and the balance for mitigation. Yet this figure is projected to rise to US$ 100 billion in 2020.

Lord Stern said rich countries should give their strong backing to climate change policies, including those designed to halt deforestation, and to low-carbon growth plans in developing countries. Methods should include additional financial support, beyond official development assistance.

Meanwhile African negotiators are expected to come up with a consolidated negotiating document setting out their position for the Copenhagen summit.

Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathaai has urged Africans to stand in unison in their effort to fight the impacts of climate change.

In an exclusive interview she gave to this reporter at the 2nd World Agroforestry Congress  held here last month, she said the first thing Africans should do to resolve the threat posed by climate change was to realize that the continent is extremely vulnerable to the problem.

“Climate change has been going on for over 200 years, since the industrial revolution, and we cannot reverse it overnight”, she said.

“In Africa we need to recognize that we are extremely vulnerable because we are too poor to buy the technology available to adapt to climate change,” Professor Maathai said.

She said the forthcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen in December is  crucial for Africans, and for the rest of the globe.

“Africans need to go to the Copenhagen summit with one voice as a region, insisting that they need to be compensated financially to be able to mitigate climate change,” the Nobel Peace prize winner said.

She also urged African leaders and other stakeholders to prepare citizens so that they could devise ways to adapt to climate change through promoting widespread tree planting.

Professor Maathai commended Ethiopia for intensifying tree planting campaigns over the past few years.

“The government in Ethiopia has been in the forefront in promoting tree planting, and I am proud that it has committed millions of trees towards the Billion Tree Campaign supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)”, she said.

Professor Maathai urged African citizens at large to intensify tree planting practices as a means both of improving their livelihoods directly and also of mitigating climate change through the trees’ ability to absorb carbon.

Professor Wangari Maathaai

Nairobi – While Africans are bracing for the impacts of climate change which they have done little to cause, researchers are turning to a way of both combating the problem and also improving agricultural productivity.

They are relying on something called integrated agroforestry  – the idea that trees are a central part of modern farming.

Research revealed at the second World Agroforestry Congress held here recently also showed  that, contrary to the common perception that agriculture and forestry are mutually exclusive, nearly half of the farmlands cultivated across the world already have tree cover.

“The study has given us more evidence of the importance of trees on farms – that farms and farmers can play a significant role in addressing climate change challenges , and how agriculture, currently considered part of the problem, needs to be considered part of the solution”, said Dr Dennis Garrity, Exeutive Director of Nairobi’s World Agroforestry Centre.

Trees growing in farming systems are providing farmers with everything from nuts and fruits to windbreaks and erosion control, to fuel for heating and timber for housing, the study showed. The trees also help to combat climate change by absorbing carbon emitted into the atmosphere.

The study also reveals that agroforestry can play a critical role in efforts to promote sustainable agriculture, lessening soil degradation and increasing soil fertility.

“Agriculture is not about maximizing production; it is about optimizing the way agriculture sustains us at local and global level,” said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. “For so long trees have been the most ingenious solution to the problems the world has found itself in”.

Kenyan Nobel Laureate Professor Wangari Mathaai was quick to mention her country as an example of those that are paying the price for destroying their forests. Kenya has been hit by yet another serious drought, which many people believe has been caused by deforestation. The drought has affected hydroelectricity generation, she said, causing the rationing of electricity and water.

Dr. Abayneh Derero, a researcher from the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Organization, said that for a country like Ethiopia , where 80 percent of the population is heavily dependent on agriculture, integrating tree growing with farming systems eallows farmers to use their small pieces of land productively.

He said farmers in southern and south-western Ethiopia have traditionally grown trees, and have benefited from doing so. His institution is now involved in a research programme that focuses on ways of replicating the practice to the rest of the country.

Climate change talks due to take place later this year in Copenhagen are expected to consider a new strategy called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD )which could include payments for carbon captured by trees and soils. Experts are discussing ways to ensure that agroforestry is part of the REDD investment mechanism.