Island States Seek Tougher U.N. Climate Deal

Alister Doyle and Gabriela Baczynska, PlanetArk 4 Dec 08;

POZNAN - A group of 43 small island states called on Wednesday for tougher goals for fighting global warming than those being considered at U.N. climate talks, saying that rising seas could wipe them off the map.

"We are not prepared to sign a suicide agreement that causes small island states to disappear," Selwin Hart of Barbados, a coordinator of the alliance of small island states, told Reuters at the 187-nation meeting.

The December 1-12 talks in Poznan, Poland, are reviewing progress at the half-way stage of a two-year push for a new U.N. treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. The new treaty is meant to be agreed by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen.

The 43 nations, including low-lying coral atolls from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, said global warming should be limited to a maximum of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, below a 2.0 C goal by the European Union.

Average temperatures rose by about 0.7 Celsius last century and many scientists say that even the EU goal, the toughest under wide consideration, may already be out of reach because of surging emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

Hart said it was the first time that the alliance had set a common temperature goal. Rising temperatures and seas would damage corals, erode coasts, disrupt rainfall and spur more disease, they said.

Low-lying states such as Tuvalu and Kiribati say they risk being submerged by sea level rises, spurred by rising temperatures that could melt ice in Greenland and Antarctica. Warmer water also takes up more space than cold, raising levels.

"A 2 C increase compared to pre-industrial levels would have devastating consequences on small island developing states," the nations said in a joint statement.

CORALS

"My country is really suffering," said Amjad Abdulla of the Maldives. He said some people in the Maldives were already living in partly inundated homes.

Bernaditas Muller of the Philippines said a 2C rise would wipe out a third of the territory of her country. Rising seas would also swamp low-lying coasts from Bangladesh to Florida.

The small islands said their goal would mean that industrialized nations would have to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by more than 95 percent by 2050.

Such cuts are far deeper than under consideration by industrialized countries, facing additional problems in making new reductions because of the financial crisis.

The EU, for instance, is struggling to get approval for a plan to cuts of 20 percent below 1990 by 2020. U.S. President-elect Barack Obama aims to return U.S. emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 after a rise of 14 percent since 1990.

The U.N. Climate Panel said seas may rise by between 18 and 59 cms (7-24 inches) this century and that sea levels are likely to keep on rising for centuries.

But some scientists say that may be an under-estimate.

"It's still likely that the average sea level will rise less than 1 meter by 2100 but higher figure cannot be excluded," said Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

He said that some studies indicated that seas could rise by up to about 1.55 meters by 2100 and 1.5-3.5 meters by 2300.

"If the Antarctic ice sheet melts down completely the global sea levels would rise by 57 meters (187 ft). For Greenland it's 7 meters," he said.

(Additional reporting by Megan Rowling and Gerard Wynn)

(Editing by Matthew Jones)

Small States Must Be The Benchmark, Says AOSIS
Samisoni Pareti, Pacific Magazine 4 Dec 08;

The negative impact of climate change on small island states must be used as a key benchmark to ascertain the adequacies of any long-term emission reduction targets amongst the world’s richer nations, a United Nations conference has been told.

All of the world’s small and poor island nations will be “challenged to survive and provide a livelihood for their population” even at the most stringent emission reduction rates put forward by scientists on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Such observations were made in the eleven-page submission of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) to a session on ‘Shared Visions’ at the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which opened on Monday in the Polish city of Poznan.

A working group will now consider the AOSIS submission together with submissions made by other groups and countries represented at the two-week long conference, before a draft proposal is put before the full Conference of the Parties (COP) for consideration next week.

After two days of submissions, AOSIS comprising 43 island states in the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, is suggesting the most ambitious reductions in carbon emission for industrialised countries.

“The avoidance of climate change impacts on small island developing states (SIDS) must be one of the key benchmarks for assessing the appropriateness of any long-term goal,” said the AOSIS submission.

“The long term global goal must be sufficient to ensure that long-term temperature increases are stabilized well below 1.5°C.

“A 2ºC increase compared to pre-industrial levels would have devastating consequences on SIDS due to resulting sea level rise, coral bleaching, coastal erosion, changing precipitation patterns, increased incidence and re-emergence of climate related diseases and the impacts of increasingly frequent and severe weather events.”

Warning that unless reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is “deep and rapid,” AOSIS said island countries, smaller and more vulnerable especially, would suffer from “runaway climate change.”

Industrialised countries referred to under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as Annex 1 countries need to reduce their emissions by more than 40 percent to 1990 levels by 2020, and more than 95 percent by 2050.

AOSIS said reductions should not be confined to the wealthier nations only, arguing that developing countries or “non-Annex 1” states should reduce their emissions as well.

The group of Least Developed Countries (LDC), which also includes the Pacific countries of Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu has rallied behind the AOSIS proposal.

The European Union argues the cuts being proposed by AOSIS would be too costly to implement. The EU is advocating a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 for its member countries, which they believe would keep the global temperature rise at 2°C or below. Many experts have argued that a 2°C rise in temperature would be devastating for the world’s islands and coastal areas.

Other key features of the AOSIS submission include:

* transfer of environmentally sound technologies for adaptation and mitigation;
* availability of new and sufficient financial resources (separate from current ODA commitments to vulnerable countries) to assist in capacity building and implementing adequate adaptation measures;
* expansion of access to renewable energy and energy efficient technologies as part of mitigating efforts for developing countries;
* addressing of demand-side management for developed countries through the use of economic instruments like taxes on carbon intensive activities, eco-labelling, removal of subsidies for fossil fuels and creation of incentives for uptake of renewable energy;
* discouraging the development of technologies that increase dependency on carbon intensive fuel sources;
* development of a “multi-window mechanism” to address loss and damage from climate change impacts with insurance, rehabilitation or compensatory and risk management components; and
* enhancing of existing financial assistance for recovery from “extreme events.”