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	Copenhagen Accord: half-baked text and unclear substance by Kim Carstensen Leader of WWF’s Global Climate Initiative   Dec. 2009   The UN climate talks in Copenhagen were inches away from total failure and ended with an outcome far too weak to tackle dangerous climate change, WWF said today.   “Copenhagen was at the brink of failure due to poor leadership combined with an unconvincing level of ambition”, said Kim Carstensen, Leader of WWF’s Global Climate Initiative.   “Well meant but half-hearted pledges to protect our planet from dangerous climate change are simply not sufficient to address a crisis that calls for completely new ways of collaboration across rich and poor countries.”   Politicians around the world seem to be in agreement that we must stay below the 2 degree C threshold of unacceptable risks of climate change – in theory. However, practically what leaders have put on the table adds up to 3 degrees C of warming or more, according to WWF estimates.   “Millions of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars and a wealth of lost opportunities lie in the difference between rhetoric and reality on climate change action.”   Attention will now shift to follow up negotiations which need to fill out many details in the often vague accord – and, on a more positive note, to a host of initiatives by countries, cities, companies and communities that are starting to build low carbon economies from the base up.   WWF analysed the conference outcome against a 10 element scorecard, finding that none of the objectives needed to fulfil the political aim of keeping average global warming below the widely agreed 2 degree C high risk level had been met, although some had been partly fulfilled.   The draft Copenhagen Accord is a long way from developing into a legally binding framework for decisive action on climate change.   “We needed a treaty now and at best, we will be working on one in half a year’s time,” said Carstensen.   “What we have after two years of negotiation is a half-baked text of unclear substance. With the possible exceptions of US legislation and the beginnings of financial flows, none of the political obstacles to effective climate action have been solved.”   The lack of clarity is illustrated by a call for a global peak in emissions “as soon as possible”, in contrast to the 2007 call of the IPCC for emissions to peak in 2017.   Emissions reductions pledges remain far lower than what is required, with a leaked analysis by the UNFCCC secretariat showing a shortfall that would lead to 3 degrees C of warming even without considering extensive loopholes.   “We are disappointed but the story continues,” said Carstensen. “Civil society was excluded from these final negotiations to an extraordinary degree, and that was felt during the concluding days in Copenhagen.”   “We can assure the world, however, that WWF and other elements of civil society will continue engaging in every step of further negotiations.” Visit the related web page
	Climate change is a huge threat to development in Africa by AFP / AllAfrica / Pambazuka News   Nov. 2009   Climate change is a huge threat to development in Africa. Despite contributing less than 3% of global emissions the continent will be hit hard. Scientists predict serious impacts on the production of many staple foods – with the average yields of maize in southern Africa projected to decline by 30%. The number of people without adequate access to water on the continent is predicted to triple to 600 million by 2050.   Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu recently attended the Pan- African Climate Hearing event in Cape Town and called for the world to help these people, and his words are still echoing in my head: “World leaders must not turn their backs on the people from across Africa and around the world who are struggling to cope with a changing climate. They must deliver the emissions reductions and the financial support that is needed now to prevent a human catastrophe.”   Nov 2009   For Ethiopia"s farmers, climate change compounds food crisis. (AFP)   Standing amidst a group of scrawny fellow Ethiopian farmers, Tuke Shika points to the scorching sun when asked why his food reserves have dwindled this year.   "The weather has changed, it"s not as it used to be before," he laments. "The rains are increasingly erratic, and we are getting less and less yields."   In Loke, 350 kilometres (215 miles) south of Addis Ababa, massive expanses of land that were once lush with healthy maize stalks are now replaced with burnt out twigs.   With his food silos diminishing by half from the maize he reaped last year, Tuke is one of the more than 2,000 people in the area facing food shortages.   "People here are suffering with their livestock dying, and more and more children succumbing to malnutrition," he adds.   Experts say east Africa is facing one of its worst droughts in decades with over over 23 million people facing starvation, with climate change further compounding the dire picture.   "We had poor February to May rains," said Ted Chaiban, UNICEF"s country representative in Ethiopia. "We are facing a challenging situation when it comes to food security for the start of 2010," he added.   Twenty-five years after famine killed a million people in the Horn of Africa nation, Ethiopia announced last month that more than six million people required food relief out of a population of about 80 million.   Official figures indicate that at least 80,000 children under five are suffering from acute malnutrition. Aid groups say the grim prospects of food shortages will linger for years to come due to climate change.   Average temperatures in Ethiopia are predicted to rise by 3.9 degrees celsius by 2080, Oxfam said, making drought "the norm, hitting the region in up to three in every four years in the next 25 years."   African countries are demanding that industrialised nations take action to limit global warming to two degrees celsius and cut emissions by up to 40 percent by 2020.   Tuke Shika says the world no longer has the luxury of not acting. "The situation is getting worse with people around the world suffering," he says. "They have to find some results. They have to act by giving money to affected people and find ways to stop doing whatever they are doing that has worsened the problem."   October 2009   African Pastoralists face Climate Change Threat, by Aaron Tesfaye. (Pambazuka News)   As the world"s leaders meet in Copenhagen, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, things are already starting to look bleak for the poorest of the poor on the planet. They are the pastoralists of Africa. Many eke out a living in the Sahel, a semi-desert belt that stretches from Senegal to Sudan, and other pastoralists struggle similarly in the horn of Africa and in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and parts of southern Africa.   Today these pastoralists face drought, desertification, and disruptions in water supplies because worldwide precipitation is shifting away from the equator towards the poles, warming the polar regions while parching countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus it is widely believed that the first victims of the change in global precipitation patterns, the canary birds of climate change, will not be people from rich, polluting nations who engage in ruinous consumption, but African pastoralists who exist precariously at the periphery.   As the world gets ready for the Copenhagen summit, it is important to note that the agenda, which will impact poor nations most severely, has produced serious divisions between developed and developing nations.   As far as the global south is concerned, basic development and the alleviation of poverty remain at the top of the agenda. The global South seeks solutions to climate change in substantial transfers of capital and technology from north to south that would facilitate development without increasing emissions.   The issues between North and South are complicated by great inequalities in per capita emissions and populations. Although the potential for increased emissions is present, on average emissions of fossil fuel from developing nations are barely one tenth of the OECD average, and per capita emissions from regions such as India and Africa are around one twentieth of those of the US. In other words, the contribution of Sub-Saharan Africa to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel is miniscule, and yet scientists predict the African continent will bear the brunt of climate change.   However, even before the alarm sounded on climate change, desertification and environmental degradation had hit the Sahelian countries of Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Sudan. The situation has made these nations prone to either floods or extreme scarcity of resources for livestock. In the Nile Basin, environmental degradation, coupled with the beginning impact of climate change, is producing famine-like situations. Nations such as Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania are beginning to be impacted and at times have been threatened with famine because seasonal rains are in short supply.   The reasons for the massive food deficit and poverty on the continent are partly environmental, bad economic policies, foreign exchange problems, and debt overhang. However, the 1968-73 African droughts that claimed the lives of millions of human beings and animals, especially in the Sahel, were a result of desertification exacerbated by colonial intrusion, which introduced changes into local economies. The basic subsistence strategies of pastoralists - marketing excess male animals or changing the species of herds and flock to spread risk - were altered forever by commercialisation that favoured cattle for export to the metropolises of Europe, distorting traditional ways of survival.   Today, while rich and emerging nations are basically concerned with their respective ways of life and attendant competition for global economic and political power, some poor nations in Africa with burgeoning populations and scarce resources are struggling to provide citizens with the means to meet basic human needs, such as water, food, and shelter.   As in past conferences, the Copenhagen summit will carry its own divisions among nations. These will be between those that are major energy producers and those that are non-producers, between those that are relatively resilient to the projected impact of climate change and those that are vulnerable to those impacts, and between those with differing attitudes on environmental impacts and the inherent scientific uncertainties.   But Copenhagen will also produce new visions and solidarities among the powerless. Sub-Saharan Africa and small island nations in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, some of which are only two meters above sea level at their highest point and thus most vulnerable, will be vocal in asking for early action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as well as halt deforestation and the destruction of the Earth. Theirs will be small but righteous voices speaking on behalf of the planet that is home to us all. Visit the related web page
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