The 12-day effort to sketch a pact to fight against climate change saw major controversy on Tuesday, over an early Danish draft text. Then on Wednesday, the first cracks appeared within the developing bloc itself, due to divide and rule policy of the western bloc. The pacific island state of Tuvalu - backed by other poor countries most exposed to climate change - called for talks that would lead to emerging giants China, India and Brazil taking on binding emission curbs.
The United States and China, meanwhile, treaded words over blame for the green house-gas crisis. Provision of financial support to developing countries by developed countries cannot be regarded as an act of charity, but must be seen as a legal and historical responsibility. The developed countries are paying for reparation to the nature out of a sense of guilt and not giving charity.
Our planet cries for attention when US and China, two main opposite blocs are fighting for rights. The draft proposal prepared by host nation Denmark for the climate change summit starting on Monday, removes the distinction between developed and developing countries and will be disastrous for India and other developing countries.
Because of this statement, the UN Copenhagen climate talks were disarray on Tuesday, after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that showed that world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all climate change negotiations. The document also sets unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.
The agreement prepared by US, UK and Denmark, leaked to the Guardian, is departure from Kyoto Protocol's principle. This document is described as a very dangerous document that may destroy the beautiful world. The figure of our planet - a shining blue and white orb silhouetted against the stars, the swirl of clouds with the blinding white of polar ice caps set against ocean blue - is an image almost every human carries inside as the symbol of our common home. The cryosphere -the regions of our earth covered by snow and ice - has long been considered the "canary in the coal mine" for global warming. We already knew things were bad, but we now know the future of snow and ice on our blue-white planet is actually much worse.
Loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet has increased threefold just in the last decade. Snow cover is decreasing, and land glaciers from the Himalayas to the Alps are disappearing at rapid rates with greatest loss in the Andes and American Northwest. Even mighty Antarctica is showing signs of overall ice loss now as temperature rises. What is needed in Copenhagen are visionary leaders: those willing to look beyond narrow national interest, or issues of blame and compensation, to the threatened future of our fragile planet. We also need an emergency plan for the cryosphere, acting now to preserve as much global ice and snow cover as we possibly can. That means reducing short-lived climate forcers not currently covered under any climate agreement, such as black carbon and ozone, and more focussed attention on short-lived climate gases such as HFCs and methane.
Black carbon contributes as much as 12 per cent to overall global warming; and even more in the cryosphere, where it darkens snow and ice to vastly increase melting. The capacity of oceans to absorb CO2 has been compromised. It fell from 27 per cent to 24 per cent between 2000 and 2007. Ocean acidification rate is accelerating due to carbon emission, and if it continues to go unchecked, many key parts of marine environment - particularly coral reefs, algae and plankton, which are essential for fish, will be severely affected.
The Copenhagen agreement needs both mid-term and long-term goals for 2020, 2030 and 2050. Not hopeful of an agreement on climate change at Copenhagen -the negotiations for which has already started - the group of four emerging economies, Brazil, South Africa, China and India, have set June 2010 as the next date by when a consensus could be arrived at.
The BASIC draft prepared by China to be considered during the high profile negotiations, clearly points out that the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action shall without any delay hold further sessions, in order to complete the work specified in the "present decision" (Copenhagen outcome) and the Bali Action Plan.