THE Tuesday UN Climate Summit was hyped as one of the major political-environmental events as the meeting was the first of its kind since the Copenhagen Summit on climate change ended in disarray in 2009 and was seen as crucial to build momentum ahead of the Paris Conference in 2015. Earlier the summit marches drew thousands of demonstrators on the streets worldwide in a show of the “people power” to tackle global warming, but the expectation from this ‘talk-fest’ seems as usual misplaced, without no announcement of significant and substantial initiatives, including funding commitments though diplomats and climate activists hoped, the summit attended by 120 leaders would pave the way for a deal in the Paris Meet on reducing greenhouse gas emissions after 2020.
Bangladesh is the most affected country due to climate change effects and the condition will continue for the next 20 years, as per the global risk index 2013. Around 40 million people of the country may be homeless and lose their livelihoods due to climatic consequences. Combined risks of rising sea levels, droughts, and chaotic storms place Bangladesh at number one in the global Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI). It is advised that the large carbon emitting countries would make robust voluntary carbon reduction commitments to save the earth from the onslaught of climate change. We also demand that the rich countries must admit their historical responsibility of GHG emissions and must give practical promise to reduce it, specially they should cut 40 percent of the current emissions by 2030; they must undergo legally binding agreements to reduce GHG; and the climate induced migrants must be treated under a special UN Protocol. The industrialised nations – the G8 and the emerging economies like China, India and Brazil, mainly responsible for climate change must keep their pledges of disbursing $100 billion by 2010 but only seven percent of it has been released so far.
The UN is seeking to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels, but scientists say current emission trends could hike temperatures to more than twice that level by century’s end. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol (never ratified by the US), the first international agreement to reduce emissions, has commitment periods, the last of which expired in 2012. Attempts to negotiate a new treaty ended in fiasco at the Copenhagen Conference in 2009 and the pressure is on to avoid a repeat of that failure at the UN talks in Paris next year. France pledged up to $1 billion to the UN Green Climate Fund, which helps finance climate change reform in poorer countries, and the United States was expected to make pledges, but no-shows from the leaders of China, the world’s biggest polluter, and India, the number-three carbon emitter, cast a cloud over this UN climate event. No real hope is on the horizon.
