Browse
Engage
Research
As ministers begin to arrive during the second week of negotiations here at COP 17 in Durban, we see a growing gap between lofty statements of political aspiration and the development of actual policies and programs that will aid in the fight against climate change.
The negotiating texts are heavily bracketed in critical areas, and it will be up to high-level government representatives to break, or steer around, looming deadlocks. While real progress has been made toward putting the technology and finance institutions into operation that were agreed upon last year, there remain many significant unresolved political issues in these complicated negotiations.
These include:
1. What is the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, which will see its emissions reduction targets expire at the end of 2012 as Japan, Russia and Canada leave the agreement?
2. How do we square the ambitious national emissions reduction goals put forward by various governments with their inability to meet earlier reduction pledges, in order to meet the goal of holding overall temperature rise to 2° Celsius?
3. How will governments mobilize the $100 billion needed annually from private and public sector sources by 2020?
4. Will the Clean Development Mechanism continue and what are the implications for the viability of global carbon markets?
5. What about the nettlesome intellectual property and trade issues, which are back on the agenda and proliferating?
6. What will be the ultimate legal form and timing of a long-term global climate agreement?
My organization, the United States Council for International Business (USCIB), has sought to promote the priorities of our member companies, including the development of enabling frameworks for technology innovation, ensuring open trade and enhancing the business community’s substantive engagement in framing policies and their implementation.
The business community has conveyed a number of key messages to the negotiators:
• We remain committed to an ambitious, global agreement on climate change, which we believe can contribute to renewed economic growth and job-creation.
• Support for innovation, and the intellectual property rights that underpin it, is critical to meeting the climate challenge.
• No technologies or energy sources should be excluded or ruled out, so long as they contribute to combating climate change.
• New international institutions developed to fight climate change must be practically oriented and non-bureaucratic.
• Business must be a partner in identifying solutions, bringing needed expertise to bear and disseminating new technologies.
• Open markets for trade and investment are critical to ensure rapid dissemination of new technologies and solutions.
Next page: How the business community is interacting at COP17
The past 5 years, We're
The past 5 years, We're hearing a lot about climate change and all efforts that nations are trying to put to decrease the real causes behind which is us, human in a term what is called the anthropogenic pollution.
Really we appreciate this. However we are jumping and moving from world summit to another with hopes in the next summit that more action will be achieved. We put some limits but we don't abide or should I say we run forward.
I don't want to be too much pessimistic but it's time to take concrete actions not keep it theoritical agreement.
That business is taking a
That business is taking a lead in addressing climate change is admirable, but presents some strange anomalies.
Having thought that politicians elected by the majority of citizens would be making decisions, we find that many decades (even centuries?) of corporations gradually appropriating power and income have left elected representatives floundering and the real power controlled from closed boardrooms, allegedly acting in the interests of their shareholders, who themselves are certainly a minority.
How the worm turns...