All nations must commit to binding and verifiable goals to reduce their carbon emissions to reach a new international climate agreement as the Kyoto Protocol expires next year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday.
“We now need concrete measures in every country,” Merkel told environment ministers and negotiators from 35 countries gathered in Berlin to lay the groundwork for an international climate conference in Durban, South Africa, starting on Nov. 28.
Germany and the EU are pushing to agree on “a single and legally binding treaty” to replace the Kyoto Protocol, with industrialized nations taking the lead and emerging economies also contributing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Merkel said.
The 1997 treaty, named after the Japanese city, bound nearly 40 countries to specific emission reductions targets.
“Kyoto expires. That’s why we have to make it clear what will be the way forward,” Merkel told the representatives at the informal two-day meeting co-chaired by Germany and South Africa.
The conference in Durban is unlikely to yield a final agreement, but major steps in that direction have to be achieved, Merkel said.
“We have a giant task here,” she added, referring to resistance from nations reaching from the US to China to agree on ambitious binding climate targets.
Merkel stressed that emission reduction targets must not only be binding, but also verifiable.
“As a matter of transparency ... it is necessary that someone can examine whether one sticks to the commitments,” Merkel said.
The institution or the process overseeing the progress toward achieving the goals will also have to be agreed on, Merkel said.
Taking steps to fight climate change now comes with a cost and requires efforts, “but inaction would be yet more expensive,” she said. “This is a challenge for humankind as a whole.”
Scientists say climate change already has begun with more extreme weather events, more frequent heat waves and the melting of Arctic ice.
In the negotiations toward a post-Kyoto agreement, developing countries have insisted that the nearly 40 countries bound to specific reductions targets by the 1997 treaty renew and expand their commitments when they expire next year.
However, industrialized countries stress they want the rest of the world to show willingness to accept legal obligations, if not now at least in the future.
The last time world leaders tried to break the rich-poor deadlock on climate change was at the 2009 Copenhagen summit, which ended in disillusionment. Instead of a legal agreement, it concluded with a political statement brokered by US President Barack Obama that failed to win unanimous approval and adoption by the conference.
Merkel said on Sunday that achieving the previously agreed goal of avoiding the planet’s overall climate to warm up more than 2oC will require to get carbon dioxide emissions per head down to 2 tonnes, with the US standing at 20 tonnes, Germany at 10 tonnes and China at more than 4 tonnes.
The chancellor said “emerging economies must share part of the burden because industrialized nations alone cannot reach the goal.”
Merkel also said she had “very detailed” discussions on climate change earlier this week with visiting Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), stressing “the fundamental importance it also has for China.”
In one of the world’s most ambitious climate targets, Germany has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2020 compared to the 1990 level.
In addition, the country decided to abandon nuclear power by 2022 and to replace it mainly by doubling the share of renewable energies in its electricity production to 35 percent within 10 years, and to 80 percent by 2050.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was