A week left to the Copenhagen Summit, the UN summit on climate change, and today Denmark has submitted a draft that could become the basis for a political agreement. The proposal by the Danish government provides 50% reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and suggests that 80% of cutting emissions is the responsibility of rich countries.
The draft, which will then be reviewed from 7th to 18th December during the work of the UN summit, suggests 2020 as the year in which emissions will reach their peak. That's why they call for a reduction so high, by 50% (compared to 1990 levels) by 2050. But something is lacking, medium term forecast. Because is easier establishing cuts by 2050, forty years from today, harder to establish lesser cuts to be achieved within 5 to 10 years. The poorest nations on the planet are raising the alarm to the lack of attention on the medium term.
The text also states that it is necessary to keep the average global temperature increase by no more than 2 degrees centigrade.
Meanwhile, the European Union made is own request, too. The EuroParliament has approved the Community position with a request to partner countries by at least 30 billion euro annually for developing countries until 2020.
It is very likely that the Danish draft will be approved at the summit because the UN has the objective of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (insisted by the scientific community) and had a distant goal, that of the 2050, which will allow everyone to shrug shoulders the future responsibilities. A way to alert countries to move faster and voluntarily reduce their pollution within ten years, without any bond written. So it will be decisive the success of the proposal put forward by Danish Prime Minister: find an agreement to mandatory cuts for each country in 2020 to make it legally binding in the UN climate conference to be held in late 2010. An alert to the member states to introduce national laws in 12 months so to achieve the goal.
The developing countries, however, are not particularly enthusiastic about this proposal. Vandana Shiva, founder and director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, Indian activist and environmentalist is convinced that the summit will not give efficient answers just as the FAO summit didn't do it. I rather think - says Vandana Shiva - that the conflicts will emerge clearly and they will be difficult to resolve. The south of the world has obvious problems that the developed minority continues to deny. And if the recipes offered are always the same then we do not go forward.
She believes that the only ones that can really change things are the people and encourages them to be present in Copenhagen. She does not accept, then, who considered the less developed countries as a problem for a global agreement on CO2 reduction. They have not create the problem - she says - but they are paying the price. It is the face of the cruel climate injustice. They hide the truth, they deny the obvious.
Over the next seven days we will hear many opinions on the upcoming summit in Copenhagen, but it is unlikely that the world can agree to preserve the harmony, now destroyed, of nature.
Copenhagen Conference: two weeks crucial for the climate of Matteo Conci from Unimondo.org
Marianna Lepore
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