AFRICA last week reacted angrily to statements by the United States that seek to undermine global climate negotiations.
Addressing students at Dartmoth College recently, US special envoy on climate change Mr Todd Stern questioned the two degrees Celsius temperature limit as a functional global target.
Mr Stern said agreeing to a framework to achieve the two degrees Celsius goal would “only lead to deadlock” and that a new agreement should give countries “flexibility”.
The African Group, a coalition of 54 African countries speaking with one voice at international climate talks, described the US statement as reckless and disappointing, one certain to set back global targets in a huge way.
Seyfi Nafo, spokesperson of the African Group, said: “That (temperature increases) means the destruction of crops on a huge scale, as has occurred in the heatwave that the US is experiencing today. But in Africa these crops belong to subsistence farmers and the result is devastation and famine.
“This is not a game with numbers; it is a question of people’s lives, and so I am not sure there is much space for the ‘flexibility’ Mr Stern has spoken of.”
Africa is at the forefront of climate impacts. Science shows that temperature increases here is approximately 150 percent the global average, so even a 1,5 degrees Celsius global target could mean over 2 degrees Celsius for Africa.
Scientists believe a warming of 2 degrees Celsius would be manageable. And this is where global climate negotiations have mostly centred around, pursuing actions that limit unsustainable increases in world temperatures.
However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that at the current rate of greenhouse gases production — estimated at 30 billion tonnes annually — the world risked a warming of up to 6 degrees Celsius by 2100.
Mr Nafo said Africa was concerned with the US always shifting goalposts, and that even after pushing for a global goal, which it has agreed to on numerous occasions internationally, it now questions the same targets.
“It is disappointing that the Obama administration has said it ‘supports’ the goal but does not support an approach that guarantees achieving it. It is like they agree they want to have their cake, but they cannot agree not to eat it.
It is increasingly hard for us facing the impacts of climate change today to take a progressively weakening US position seriously.
This is why Africa continues to push for a comprehensive global agreement based on what the science is telling us is required.
“For every day of delay in changing the global emissions profile the costs of adaptation to climate change mount.
Those costs are currently being paid by some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people: farmers, fisherfolk and the rural poor in Africa.
The less that Mr Obama does today, the more he will owe these people tomorrow.”
The US has refused to be bound by the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding global agreement committing nations to reduce emissions in an effective manner. Yet, together with China, the US produces more than 50 percent of all world emissions.
Instead, the US wants developing countries to enter the fray, even those whose emission levels are certain not to cause any noticeable changes in the world climate system.
Since Copenhagen in 2009, politics appear to have overtaken the climate agenda with embedded north-south rivalries threatening to derail the entire negotiating process.
At Durban last December, after many hours of talks that appeared headed for a deadlock, negotiators managed to establish, among other things, the Durban Platform, a plan of action, which would result in the crafting of a new “Kyoto” effective only in 2020.
The Durban outcome has been largely viewed as weak and lacking ambition.
Climate change is arguably the biggest story of the 21st century, bearing strong ramifications on livelihoods, biodiversity and the natural environment.
God is faithful.
first published in the Zimbabwe Herald