"Get It Done":
Urging Climate Justice,
Youth Delegate Anjali Appadurai
Youth Delegate Anjali Appadurai
Mic-Checks UN COP 17 Summit
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011, brings together representatives of the world's governments, international organizations and civil society. The discussions will seek to advance, in a balanced fashion, the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the Bali Action Plan, agreed at COP 13 in 2007, and the Cancun Agreements, reached at COP 16 last December.
The Sydney Morning Herald 11 December 2011 - 7:14PM
A United Nations climate conference has reached a hard-fought agreement on a far-reaching program meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change.
The 194-party conference agreed to start negotiations on a new accord that would ensure that countries will be legally bound to carry out any pledges they make. It would take effect by 2020 at the latest.
The deal doesn't explicitly compel any nation to take on emissions targets, although most emerging economies have volunteered to curb the growth of their emissions.
Currently, only industrial countries have legally binding emissions targets under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Those commitments expire next year, but they will be extended for at least another five years under the accord adopted on Sunday - a key demand by developing countries seeking to preserve the only existing treaty regulating carbon emissions.
The proposed Durban Platform offered answers to problems which for years have bedevilled negotiations on global warming.
Controversial issues include sharing the responsibility for controlling carbon emissions and helping the world's poorest and most climate-vulnerable nations cope with changing forces of nature.
The US was a reluctant supporter, concerned about agreeing to join an international climate system that was expected to be opposed in Congress....
Environmentalists criticised the package - as did many developing countries in the debate - for failing to address what they called the most urgent issue, to move faster and deeper in cutting carbon emissions.
"The good news is we avoided a train wreck," said Alden Meyer, recalling predictions a few days ago of a likely failure. "The bad news is that we did very little here to affect the emissions curve."
Scientists say that unless those emissions - chiefly carbon dioxide from power generation and industry - level out and reverse within a few years, the earth will be set on a possibly irreversible path of rising temperatures that lead to ever greater climate catastrophes.
Sunday's breakthrough capped 13 days of hectic negotiations that ran a day and a half over schedule.
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