Accountable governance

[08.12.2008 09:28] Countdown to Copenhagen – time is running out Climate change will make poverty permanent. While it is a threat to all societies and ecosystems, climate change poses the biggest threat to people living in poverty in countries of the South and for many their lives and livelihoods are at stake. A wide range of civil society groups, including Norwegian Church Aid, its Aprodev partners and the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, are present in Poznan, Poland pushing government officials, delegates from international institutions and business representatives to take climate justice seriously. The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan opened on Monday, 1 December. The Conference is a milestone on the road to success for the processes which were launched under the Bali Road Map December last year. The meeting comes midway between COP 13 in Bali, which saw the launch of negotiations on strengthened international action on climate change, and COP 15 Copenhagen, at which the negotiations are set to conclude. The Poznań climate talks are critical for negotiating a framework for global targets and action in an attempt to reduce the threat of climate change. These negotiations, if not influenced in the right way, could in fact mean that poor people and poor countries will have to give up any hope for their own development since the ‘global budget’ for greenhouse gas emissions has already been used up. Norwegian Church Aid believes that in a climate constrained world, poor communities should have the right to develop and that industrialised countries should carry the bulk of the burden of avoiding climate catastrophe. Norwegian Church Aid works with sister ecumenical agencies, southern global alliances, and partners and churches around the world based on a conviction that the right to development must be reflected in any international climate change deal and shared concerns over how a bad deal might impact on the poor. This is our vision for an urgent and equitable outcome of the UNFCCC negotiations Urgency and commitment to staying below 2oC 1. There must be recognition of the urgency of staying below a 2oC global temperature rise, and of the need to decarbonise the global economy. 2. Each country must recognise its own responsibility for global warming, and capacity for responding to the urgency of climate change. 3. Annex 1 industrialised countries must commit to cuts in their carbon emissions of 40 per cent by 2020 and at least 80 per cent by 2050, with all reductions to be achieved within those countries, not through carbon offsetting. 4. In addition, each industrialised country must support, through substantial financing and technology transfer, the equivalent emissions reductions in developing countries. Financing climate change action in developing countries 5. Wealthy nations must support developing countries in achieving sustainable low-carbon development and implementing effective, pro-poor adaptation measures to counter climate change impacts. 6. Finance for developing countries must come from sources that are substantial, reliable, predictable and sustainable, and are additional to official development assistance (ODA). Equitable access for poorer nations 7. Technology that may help low carbon development and adaptation must be shared with poorer nations. 8. The developing world must be supported by the delivery of low-carbon sustainable development. 9. Adaptation measures must be provided in a way that prioritizes the empowerment of vulnerable people to take charge of their future, reduce their vulnerability to disasters, and realize their fundamental human rights (food, housing, health, security). For more information, contact: Therese Vangstad, Climate Change Advisor, Tel.: +254 727 531 911, email: therese@ncakenya.org Printable version Tip a friend about this article

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