A summary of the UK-based aid agency’s position on climate change ahead of the upcoming COP-13 summit in Bali, Indonesia

The many schools of thought regarding climate change range from those that vehemently deny the very fact to those who not only acknowledge that it is human induced but demand compensation from nations that are deemed to have caused the most harm to nature through emission of green house gases by way of their industrialisation. While some countries like the United States and Australia are yet to become a meaningful party to the Kyoto Protocol and allegedly, quite understandably at the behest of the corporate interests, try to silence researchers who voice concerns over climate change there are quarters that have already begun to put together an agenda for the developing countries, particularly the least developed countries.
   It is rather ironic that the least developed countries that have induced the least climate change are destined to be the worst sufferers. Millions of people across the world in Africa and Asia are predicted to become climate refugees while some areas will experience severe droughts and other severe bouts of flooding in the next few decades. Crop failures will become a regular phenomenon while thousands will have migrated from their homes in search of safer places.
   According to a recent report compiled by over 35 development and environmental groups including Oxfam, there is growing consensus about the challenges facing Asia. Immediate action is vital, says the report, ‘Up in Smoke’.
   This report brings several points that surely deserve due attention in Bali, where world leaders will try to forge the beginning of a framework that determines an international response to climate change. But the facts that this report bring out quite clearly warrant immediate action. Asia will apparently warm with less predictable rainfall, monsoons and more extreme tropical cyclones. Bangladesh appears to have experience all of that in a single year. While the monsoons have perceptibly become shorter and fiercer, farmers are at a loss over the planting seasons since the crop cycle is designed around presumed weather patterns, shorter and colder winters are also beginning to take their toll in agriculture. The report states that an increase of one degree Celsius in night-time temperatures during the growing season will reduce Asian rice yields by 10 per cent, while wheat production could fall by 32 per cent by 2050. Since Asia is home to 87 per cent of the world’s known 400 million small farms it will face immense difficulties since they would be particularly vulnerable to climate change because the rely on regular and reliable rainfall. In Bangladesh — over half the labour force and almost 70 per cent of the people rely on farming — temperature and rainfall changes have already affected crop production, says this report.
   More than half the population of Asia that lives near the coast and would be vulnerable to rises in sea-level forcing them to migrate elsewhere. People from small island states like Vanuatu, Kiribati and Tuvalu in the Pacific have already fallen victim to sea-level rises and entire nations are at risk.
   In the established jargon of climate change the possible means to handle the fallout of this changing weather pattern is called ‘adaptation’ while the possible means to prevent climate change or bring it down to a tolerable level by reducing the amount of carbon emission is called ‘mitigation’. The last G8 summit in Rostock saw leaders of the worlds richest countries strongly disagreeing with the required emission cuts with Germany, given the presence of a strong environmentalist presence in the government, advocating for far higher cuts than the US would even agree to voluntarily.
   As environmentalists pointed out that a 50 per cent reduction 1990 levels by 2050 would be too little too late and suggested that the richest countries should commit to at least 80 per cent reduction. As one analyst pointed out referring to a leaked draft, there was an attempt to delink economic growth from energy use because, as he put it, growth must be sacrosanct. Instead of pushing for radical cutbacks of carbon emission and serious reduction of automobile use, it is accepted that the number cars would double to an astounding 1.2 billion by 2020 and the push is rather to expedite and advance non-fossil energy use, which the analyst indicates is rather denying the responsibility of mitigation or providing for adaptation.
   Oxfam’s response to the G8 declaration was simple. It plainly told the club of richest countries to stop harming and start helping. Oxfam demanded $50 billion to the help the poorest countries cope with the impact of climate change. There was also a call to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius as these countries are worst polluters.
   The Oxfam press release stated that human-induced climate change is already causing harm to the world’s poorest people, who are the least responsible for emissions and least able to adapt to climatic shocks. ‘Developing countries cannot be expected to foot the bill for the impact of rich countries’ emissions,’ said Celine Charveriat, head of Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign.
   She said the G8 countries face two obligations—stop harming by cutting their emissions to keep global warming below 2°Celsius and to start helping poor countries to cope by paying their share of $50 billion per year, by 2010, in adaptation funds which Oxfam said was a conservative estimate that would rise sharply if emissions were not cut drastically. It also says that the G8 must follow the lead of the Netherlands and ensure the money is over and above the UN agreed aid target of 0.7% of national income.
   Another report of Oxfam, ‘Adapting to Climate Change,’ outlines the share that each country should contribute towards financing adaptation. It ranks countries based on their responsibility for carbon emissions from 1992 up to 2003, and on their capability to pay, based on their position in the UN’s Human Development Index. It puts the United States at the top with a responsibility to meet nearly 44 per cent of developing country adaptation costs, Japan with about 13 per cent, Germany over seven per cent, the United Kingdom over five per cent, Italy, France and Canada with 4-5 per cent each, Spain, Australia and Republic of Korea three per cent each.
   ‘Justice demands that rich countries pay for the harm already being caused to those who are least responsible for the problem,’ said Charveriat. ‘But it’s also crucial in building the trust between nations essential for the success of any truly global agreement to tackle climate change.’
   Oxfam works in more than 100 countries with poor communities already on the front lines of climate change. It says adaptation funds must not be diverted from current aid which is already needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals. ‘This is not about aid, it is about the world’s biggest and richest polluters covering the costs forced upon those who are most vulnerable — an entirely separate and added responsibility,’ said Charveriat.
   Oxfam field staff and partners are seeing first-hand the harm that climate change is already causing poor people, particularly farmer which mirrors the consensus of the world’s leading scientists.
   Adaptation costs are difficult to estimate because the scale of inevitable harm is still uncertain and will depend on how fast greenhouse gas emissions are cut. But the report says this is no excuse for rich countries having pledged ‘a fraction of a fraction’ to date—just $182m for all developing countries, and even that measly amount is taken from existing aid budgets. Charveriat noted that the rich countries were making huge investments at home to adapt to climate change — which means they are fully aware of the effects—but they stall when it comes to providing money for poorer countries to do the same.
   It is likely that more innovative solutions will be needed to raise funds on the scale required, the report says. These could include creating carbon and aviation taxes, extending levies on carbon trading, and ending fossil fuel subsidies.
   The G8 declaration agreed to work within the established UN process and to complete negotiations on a post-2012 UN multilateral framework by 2009. They would consider the commitments by the EC, Japan, and Canada to cut emissions by 50 per cent by 2050. But the declaration did not have specific numerical emissions reduction targets for the United States or Russia. Oxfam pointed out further that there was no commitment from the G8 as a whole to staying below two degree warming mark.
   Oxfam’s Senior Policy Advisor, Antonio Hill said, it was welcome that there would be a framework under the UN framework, guaranteeing the poorest countries a seat at the negotiations of solutions to their problems. He said, ‘However, it is profoundly disappointing that some members, including the world’s leading polluter, the US, have failed to sign up to specific targets or even an indicative global stabilisation goal. This means that the world is still on track for global warming above 2C — dangerous climate change that will devastate poor countries and massively undermine the fight against poverty.’