Hot air at Doha

Last December, at the conclusion of the 17th conference of parties in Durban held under the auspices of the UN Framework Conference on Climate Change, this correspondent had written in this column that the principle of equity had lost out and that “impending negotiations promise to be long and tortuous”. More importantly, mankind once again appeared to be in danger of “losing sight of the wood of life’s very existence for the trees of temporal negotiating gains”.

On paper but…

The 18th conference at Doha, which concluded recently, shows that, a year later, attitudes have not changed, and that the charade of scoring debating points continues while the planet gets (no longer surreptitiously) warmer and warmer, creeping towards the point of no return once the line of “irreversible change” is crossed. However, some observers will beg to differ and will cite aspects of the final document to argue that the Doha meeting was, after all, a success of sorts because of a couple of specific reasons such as the extension of the Kyoto Protocol till 2020 and the incorporation in the final agreement, for the first time, of the term “loss and damage” resulting from climate change.

On paper, both these points are very much there but the critical issue is, will they make any meaningful contribution to the effort urgently required to cut down on emissions and help the poor economies cope with the effects of climate change?

Briefly, nothing has happened at Doha which can be seen as solid progress on the part of mankind to stem climate change. As far as the extension of the Kyoto Protocol is concerned, the impact on emission cuts — which is really all that matters — till 2020 will affect less than a fifth of all emission-generation because countries such as Canada, Russia, Japan and New Zealand dropped out.

Big question mark

In terms of actual funding of technology transfer to needy economies, what transpired at Doha was simply the release of hot air without any emphasis on operationalising the mechanism at the ground-level. Indeed, a big question mark hangs over the issue of whether the rich are prepared to expand the volume of international funding assistance on this score or merely shift existing aid commitments from one track to another.

According to the present schedule, a new global climate agreement is to be hammered out by 2015, which is expected to take effect from 2020. This will probably be achieved on paper, but to what purpose? A negotiator from the Seychelles is reported to have declared: “If we had had more ambition (on emission cuts from rich countries), we would not have had to ask for so much (money) for adaptation. If there had been more money for adaptation (to climate change), we would not be looking for money for loss and damage. What’s next? Loss of our islands?” He might as well have said “planet”, for that is the direction mankind is heading, and everyone knows about it.

When Man made the atom bomb, he was aware that widespread use of it would lead to the end of Life as we know it, which led to the historic effort for nuclear disarmament, et al . The final impact of gradual climate change will not be any less severe than a global nuclear holocaust. Tragically, we are still trying to figure out who is responsible for it and how much should each nation’s “contribution” be to control it, not realising, or attaching enough importance to the scientific fact, that after a point, humans will not be able to control the process of change.