Warsaw Climate Change Conference    

-DR. ABDUL RUFF COLACHAL

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Climate change, like NATO war on Islam, remains the gravest threat to human survival. UN has the central role in arresting global warming process to spoil atmosphere, causing devastating climate change.

Wars and nuclear emissions, radioactivity, among other such disastrous factors directly affect environment, negatively.

Science has confirmed that unless nations begin to reduce emissions immediately, the opportunity to keep global warming below the critical 1.5 degree threshold could be irrevocably lost.

UN launched a new round of talks for a 2015 deal to cut Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, in the aftermath of a devastating Philippines typhoon the UN's climate chief labeled "sobering". The typhoon is feared to have killed 10,000 people, with Filipino delegate Naderev Sano among those anxiously waiting for news on loved ones. Ahead of the Warsaw Climate Change Conference, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres said the meeting is a pivotal moment to advance international climate action and showcase a growing momentum to address climate change at all levels of society.

The 19th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC and the 9th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol is taking place from 11 to 22 November. The UN Climate Change Conference in Warsaw Poland began today the 11 November with calls for governments to harness the strong groundswell of action on climate change across all levels of government, business and society and make real progress here towards a successful, global climate change agreement in 2015.

Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international treaty that sets binding obligations on industrialised countries to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. As part of the Kyoto Protocol, many developed countries have agreed to legally binding limitations/reductions in their emissions of greenhouse gases in two commitments periods. The first commitment period applies to emissions between 2008-2012, and the second commitment period applies to emissions between 2013-2020. The protocol was amended in 2012 to accommodate the second commitment period, but this amendment has (as of January 2013) not entered into legal force. The treaty recognizes that developed countries have contributed the most to the anthropogenic build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (around 77% of emissions between 1750 and 2004)

In September, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted global surface temperatures could climb on average by as much as 4.8 C (8.6 F) this century -- a recipe for catastrophic heatwaves, floods, droughts and sea-level rise. The UNEP has said that in order to contain warming to two degrees C, greenhouse gas emissions must drop to 44 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2020 and then halve by 2020.

The UN has set a target of limiting global average warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels -- at which scientists believe we can avoid the worst effects of climate change. The world seeks to reach that goal by curbing emissions of invisible, heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels which provide the backbone of the world's energy supply today. Though the stakes are high, no specific targets have been set for this round of the annual talks, hosted by one of the world's biggest coal polluters just two years before the tortuous global process must deliver a global deal.

Talks on a new legal deal inside the legally-binding Kyoto Protocol, as demanded by developing countries, covering all countries will begin next year and end by 2015, coming into effect by 2020.

Management of a fund for climate aid to poor countries has already been agreed in 2012 though how to raise the money has not. A management framework was adopted for the Green Climate Fund, which will eventually gather and disburse finance amounting to $100bn (£64bn) per year to help poor countries develop cleanly and adapt to climate impacts. There has also been significant progress on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD).

Many then argued that only a new legal agreement eventually covering emissions from all countries - particularly fast-growing major emitters such as China - could keep the rise in global average temperatures since pre-industrial times below 2C (3.6F), the internationally-agreed threshold. Several nations believe in maintaining the current stark division where only countries labeled "developed" have to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. The fast-developing countries such as China will need to cut their emissions several years in the future if governments are to meet their goal of keeping the rise in global average temperature since pre-industrial times below 2C.

The only existing international treaty stipulating emissions cuts is the 1997 Kyoto protocol, the first commitment period of which expires next year. Between 2012 and 2020 countries are relying on a series of national emissions targets that were agreed at Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancún last year, but these do not have the same legal force as Kyoto. For many countries that system of voluntary national pledges does not provide a guarantee – they fear that without an international framework governments will be prone to renege on their commitments.

Tentative Observations

Every time U.N. negotiators meet for their annual climate talks, they come up with a new set of unintuitive acronyms, as if to make sure that people outside the climate bubble won't understand what they're talking about. In 2011 countries agreed in Durban, South Africa, to craft a new global climate pact that would include both rich and poor nations. Negotiators gave themselves a 2015 deadline to adopt the agreement, which would enter into force in 2020. All eyes are now on China, the world's biggest emitter, which has not decided its position on the EU roadmap and according to some insiders has been giving conflicting signals.

The UN climate change talks, a historic deal on greenhouse gases looked tantalisingly within reach– but with a handful of major economies holding out, the end result could still be discord and the death of the Kyoto protocol. One hundred and twenty countries, led by Brazil, Japan, Canada and many African nations, threw their weight behind a proposal from the European Union for a roadmap towards a new global agreement onclimate change. Under the plan all the world's major emitters – both developed and developing countries – would negotiate a new pact in 2015 to cut emissions substantially from 2020.

The climate change issue has dogged the talks for two decades. For some major developing countries, such as China, any international agreement should impose binding obligations on rich countries, but poorer ones should be exempt. For the US, it will be impossible to accept any deal unless it is equally legally binding – or non-binding – on all major emitters. Reducing this pollution requires a costly shift to cleaner, more efficient energy, which partly explains why the UN negotiations have been such a battlefield. Rich economies have yet to show how they intend to meet a pledge, made back in 2009, to muster $100 billion per year from 2020.

Environment groups felt it had done nothing to change the course of climate change. Western nations have not cut their own emissions as they had pledged; so why should poorer countries have to do it for them. Many studies indicate that current pledges on reducing emissions are taking the Earth towards a temperature rise of double the 2C target. Western nations have not cut their own emissions as they had pledged; so why should poorer countries have to do it for them.

COP19/CMP9 affords an opportunity to consolidate responses to climate change and to showcase the many ambitious adaptation and mitigation initiatives being implemented around the world. By scaling and speeding up action we prepare for a universal global agreement and move toward a safer future. We need to be prepared for nine billion people on this planet, as we all deserve a decent and secure life. By being creative, the world can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while creating jobs, promoting economic growth and ensuring better living standards.

The Warsaw talks are scheduled to wrap up on November 22, at ministerial level. The gloves are expected to come off over help for poorer nations to cope with climate change. Observers hope negotiators will do some legwork for the much-trumpeted agreement, due to be signed in Paris in 2015 for implementation five years later.

Pledges of money and their implementation for a Green Climate Fund meant to disburse resources to developing countries for coping with climate change.

Where there is a will, there is a way.