Bangkok Climate Talks End in Deadlock

By: Patricia Faustino on October 12th, 2009

Over the past two weeks, government officials from every corner of the world met in Bangkok, Thailand to iron out a new international agreement that will detail how each country will address global warming.

Yet the meeting ended in deadlock last Friday, with rich and poor countries bitterly divided over major issues, namely — by how much rich nations should cut their greenhouse gas emissions, and how poor countries can be given access to financial and technological resources to help them to grow their economies sustainably and to cope with the effects of climate change.

The agreement is scheduled to be sealed this December at another meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.

But with fewer than 60 days to go before then, wealthy countries including the United States, European Union, Australia, and Canada have yet to promise greenhouse gas cuts at a par with what scientists say is necessary to avoid dire consequences.

To date, industrialized nations including the United States, Canada, European Union, Australia and Japan have pledged to cut their emissions by a collective 11 to 18 percent below 1990 levels by the years 2020.  This is significantly lower than the 25 to 40 percent cuts that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say are needed to keep the rise in global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius.

Developing countries are also asking that rich countries provide them with financial and clean technologies to help to develop on a green path and to cope with the effects of climate change. Industrialized nations have yet to agree to this.

Representatives from developing countries are outraged over what they perceive as rich nations’ failure to take leadership on solving a problem that they are largely responsible for creating.

“They have done more to create the problem so they have a greater obligation to help solve it.  If your neighbour burns down your house, then who should help you to rebuild your house?  Of course, the one who is at fault,” said Filipino diplomat Bernaditas Muller, a spokesperson and coordinator of the largest coalition of developing countries in the climate talks.

The majority of the additional carbon in the atmosphere today was generated by developed countries, which began to burn massive quantities of fossil fuels like coal and oil at the onset of the industrial revolution around two centuries ago.  Even today, the richest 20 percent of the world’s population generates more than 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet poor people in developing nations stand to be the hardest hit by climate change, the IPCC also reported in 2007.

In the Philippines alone, more than 500 people have died in the past three weeks because of flooding and landslides caused by Typhoons Ketsana and Parma. India, Vietnam, and Cambodia have also experienced extreme flooding.

While the exact causes of any one weather event cannot be scientifically proven, scientists have predicted that extreme weather events like these will become more frequent because of global warming.

In the meantime, the onset of a climate change may be moving faster than our world leaders’ actions to stop it.