Implications of the Durban climate conference

Pakistan should work fervently to firm up national defences against climate change, predicted to worsen this century.

Acrucial UN Climate Change Conference took place through November 28 to December 9 in Durban, South Africa. Delegates from over 190 countries were present at this year’s negotiations. While analysts of ongoing UN efforts to address climate change are offering varied predictions concerning the outcomes of the current talks, they concur that its end result is falling short of securing any significant breakthrough.

The need for slashing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions drastically to cap rising global temperatures is backed by a range of scientific studies. However, the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s only legally binding agreement to curb greenhouse gases, lost a lot of steam after the 2009 Copenhagen Summit. This time around, the ongoing global crisis and the continuing reluctance of the US, as well as emerging polluter nations such as China and India, have emerged as major obstacles to reaching global consensus on cutting emissions and addressing its ongoing impacts.

Due to a lack of capacity and resources, many developing countries are unfortunately at a high risk of being adversely affected by climate changes. Pakistan, Guatemala and Colombia have topped the list of countries worst hit by catastrophes cause by extreme weather events in 2010, according to a climate risk index compiled by Germanwatch, a European NGO.

Countries, like our own, should be working fervently to firm up national defences against climate changes which are predicted to worsen during this century. Pakistan incurred an economic loss of billions of dollars due to the 2010 floods, which affected the lives of millions of people across 84 districts in the country. Yet, even after experiencing such severe flooding, our government was unable to initiate proper disaster management systems which could have helped in coping more effectively with the flood that hit Sindh during the current year. National experts forecast climate finance needs in the range of $6-14 billion per annum.

An international commitment to help resource-constrained countries, like ours, meet financial requirements to address climate changes remains vital, given that many poor developing countries facing the brunt of climate change have hardly contributed to the overall global emissions responsible for the emergent problem.

Besides the challenge of trying to chide reluctant governments into making more serious efforts to curb CO2 emissions, negotiators in Durban have struggled to finalise the structure of a ‘Green Climate Fund’ (GCF) meant to mobilse $100 billion a year, beginning in 2020, for vulnerable countries to deal with climate change.

Besides our official delegation, a Pakistani has been appointed to track developments in Durban under the Global Campaign for Climate Action. Pakistan has actually won praise from climate change campaigners for proposing a financial transaction tax (FTT) as an innovative source of financing the GCF. The FTT, also known as the Robin Hood tax, is a small levy of 0.01 per cent to 0.05 per cent, imposed on the trade of stocks, derivates, currency and other financial instruments. The FTT has gathered support from several quarters since such a tax could also potentially discourage high frequency financial trading that causes big risks to the global economy. Yet a decision about having it as a long-term financing option for the GCF is still pending. It is also not clear at this stage how this fund will be distributed, used and what areas will be specifically addressed through it.

Besides our delegate’s proactiveness in Durban, it will be interesting to see what they will do in terms of subsequently convincing our policymakers to pay more heed to the issue of tackling our impending climate change challenges amidst lacklustre international support.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 10^th, 2011.