Unprecedented flooding in the Philippines highlights urgent need for climate change agreement

By: Patricia Faustino on October 6th, 2009

As the Philippines struggles to recover from the aftermath of Typhoons Ketsana and Parma, government representatives from 177 countries are meeting in Thailand this week to iron out a comprehensive climate change agreement set to be finalized this December at a global summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The new agreement will outline the world’s response to climate change in the coming decades.

Scientists and environmentalists have emphasized the urgent need for world leaders to halt the worsening of climate change and address its disastrous impacts, which may include more frequent extreme weather events like the recent typhoons that battered the Philippines.

“[Developed] countries must act now with urgency to moderate these storms and spare the whole world from the impoverishing and devastating impacts of climate change, especially to low-lying archipelagic island nations like the Philippines,” said Presidential Adviser on Climate Change Heherson Alvarez at a press conference in Bangkok.

Alvarez heads the Philippines’ 27-member delegation to the Bangkok Climate Change Talks.  The delegation also includes undersecretaries from the Departments of Environment and Natural Resources, Science and Technology, Energy, and Agriculture, as well as representatives from civil society.

Detailed in the proposed climate deal under negotiation in Bangkok are new emissions reduction targets for wealthy countries, sustainable development actions for poorer countries, and financial and technology transfer options for those countries hardest hit by the effects of climate change.

Yet until now, developed and developing countries continue to disagree on a number of crucial issues, casting doubts on whether a meaningful climate deal will be reached in Copenhagen.

“Time is not just pressing, it has almost run out.  There is no Plan B, and if we do not realize Plan A, the future will hold us to account for it,” said UN Climate chief Yvo de Boer in an opening speech to more than 2,000 delegates to the Bangkok Climate Talks.

Developing nations are pushing for wealthy nations such as the United States to reduce greenhouse emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2020.  However, reduction targets put forth so far by wealthy nations have not matched these demands.

The European Union has announced a target of 30 percent — given sufficient action by other countries — with Japan offering a 25 percent emissions reduction from 1990 levels by the year 2020.  Meanwhile, the United States, until recently the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, has put forth targets of 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and 80 percen by 2050.

The US has also insisted during negotiations that emerging economies like China and India also set targets for reducing the growth in their emissions.

Developing countries are meanwhile demanding that developed countries provide funding and access to new technologies to enable the world’s most vulnerable countries to cope with climate change impacts.

The Bangkok Climate Change Talks are one of only two remaining meetings left before the landmark summit in Copenhagen.  Another five days of negotiations are scheduled for Barcelona, Spain in early November.

A report released last year by the United Kingdom’s Hadley Center said that the world must reduce its global emissions by 3 percent every year beginning in 2010 in order to limit the increase in average global temperature to 2 degrees by the year 2100.    The report also stated that if greenhouse emissions continue at their current rates, then average global temperatures may rise by as high as 7.7 percent by 2100.

The 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in 2007  listed a number of dire consequences for Asia if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise unabated.  These include less access to freshwater by the year 2050, increased flooding along coastlines and riverbanks in densely populated mega-delta regions, and increased sickness and death due to diarrhea , malaria and other diseases caused by droughts and floods.