Laurie Goering, Reuters AlertNet 12 Nov 09;
LONDON (AlertNet) - The declaration warns of a rise in temperature of 1 to 2 degrees Centigrade by 2030, notes the perils of rising sea level for small island states and urges richer nations to share technology, funding and training to help poorer nations limit climate change and its effects.
It could have been passed this week when the president of the Maldives convened a summit of nations most vulnerable to climate change, in an effort to persuade them to join his nation in becoming carbon-neutral. He failed.
Instead, the Male Declaration on Global Warming and Sea Level Rise dates from 1989. It shows how little efforts to deal with climate change have progressed over the past two decades.
"It's really frightening how we have not moved on very far in 20 years," said Ilan Kelman, a researcher who dug up and scanned the two-decade-old documents from Male and posted them on a Maldives sea-level rise website, launched on Thursday.
"I felt it was important to get the message out, as we move toward Copenhagen, that we don't need more knowledge. We knew what to do 20 years ago. Now it's time to get moving," he added.
Environmental ministers and heads of state from around the world gather in Denmark's capital early next month to try to sign a new global pact to curb climate change and deal with its effects.
But most observers doubt anything but a weak political statement of intent will emerge from the gathering. Negotiations have been tied up in political infighting as countries jockey for economic advantage under a new pact, and the United States - the world's biggest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases - has indicated it is unlikely to be able to promise any cuts at Copenhagen until it passes domestic climate legislation. That is widely expected to happen only next year.
DEEP WORRY AMONGST ISLAND NATIONS
That slow progress toward a new climate pact has created deep worry among small island states, which could see parts or all of their territory disappear if sea level rises as scientists expect.
"Although the entire world would be adversely affected by these processes, low-lying, small, coastal and island states will face a decidedly greater predicament," the 1989 report noted, a year before the first international climate panel report in 1990 published similar warnings.
The old report, researchers hope, will spur negotiators to recognize how much time has been wasted in international efforts to deal with a problem recognized for decades.
"A quarter of a century is too long not to have done much more to comprehend, reduce and adjust to the impacts" of climate change, said James Lewis, a researcher and writer on island hazards with Datum International, a UK-based architectural practice that deals with natural hazards.
Kelman, a senior research fellow with the Oslo-based Center for International Climate and Environmental Change, called on negotiators to set aside their differences and pick up the pace of negotiations for the sake of the world's most vulnerable nations.
"Let's not make it small versus big, islands versus non-islands," he said. "Let's recognize it's one planet. We've known about the problem for 20 years and it's time to help the people who need help."
Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.
