Candles on birthday cake

Image by by graciepoo on Flickr

The 10th anniversary today of the Kyoto Protocol – which requires industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least five per cent from the 1990 level – was marked by a warning that the treaty is under threat at the UN climate change negotiations in Bali, Indonesia. The warning came from the Climate Action Network, a network of about 400 non-governmental organisations.

“The treaty is in danger”, said Kimika Hirata of the Kiko Network in Japan. “Australia has ratified it, but this week the Australian delegation seems to be doing everything it can to block progress”, commented Stephen Campbell of Greenpeace Australia-Pacific.

Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace Brazil said four countries – Japan, Australia, Canada and the US – “are trying to turn a celebration into a funeral. “In doing so, they are discouraging developing countries from taking up their responsibilities,” he added. “They act as though they have no responsibilities and owe nothing to the people around the world already suffering from the effects of climate change.”

Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said that many Southern countries were extending their hand to inustrialised countries in the Bali talks, but the US, Japan, Australia and Canada seemed not to want to cooperate.

“The science is clear,” he emphasised, and it was ironic that just as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was receiving the Nobel Prize for its scientific work, “some delegates are walking away from the IPCC”.

The warnings about the outcome of the Bali negotiations came a day before ministers from around the world join the talks. Some observers hope that their arrival might push the negotiations forward by injecting political will. Part of the problem of NGO frustration arises from expectations. NGOs say “the science is screaming” for action not words, but the aim of the conference is not to deliver a fully negotiated climate deal.

The UN process has set itself more modest targets: to launch more negotiations with a two-year deadline (the Bali road map), and to reach agreement in principle on the wording of issues such as transfer of technology, the governance of a fund to help developing countries deal with the effects of climate change and perhaps a first step towards tackling deforestation. These essentially institutional matters will probably be wrapped up in a declaration, to make them look more like a cohesive package.

The organisational details of the board of the Adaptation Fund – but not its funding - have been agreed, but delegates are struggling to find words on technology, forests and finance that are bland enough for every country in the world to sign up to.