Bonn climate talks ends, many fundamental issues yet to be resolved: CSE

"The main achievement of the current talks was to restore a sense of balance in the text and to not exclude the voice of developing countries.  The earlier draft issued by the ADP Co-chairs was heavily tilted towards what the developed countries had been asking for. It had various issues such as the word equity being mentioned just once, very weak language on “differentiation” between developed and developing countries, being very mitigation-centric and just a passing mention of loss and damage, etc.," a CSE statement said.

 

“While the effort of going through the text line-by-line and adding missing elements has brought with it a sense of ownership and balance, this has come at the cost of critical time meant for real negotiations.  Much time has been lost in the process and this is going to make arriving at a Global Climate Change Agreement in Paris even more challenging,” said Chandra Bhushan, Deputy Director General, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

 

CSE has urged parties to keep the big picture of limiting global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius in mind at the final rounds of negotiations in December in Paris, and ensuring that countries, particularly the developed nations, do not exceed their entitled atmospheric carbon space. The world is left with just about 1,000 billion tonnes of CO2 that can be emitted and is currently consuming this space at the rate of about 50 billion tonnes per year.  At the current rate, the remaining carbon budget could be used up in just about 20 years.

 

“For the world to stay within the limited carbon budget, the developed world must make significant lifestyle changes and bring their consumption of resources down to sustainable levels. Consumers in rich countries waste as much food as is required by the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.  The US uses more electricity for air-conditioning than what is required by the continent of Africa, home to a billion people, for all purposes.  It is essential that the mitigation efforts of countries are distributed in an equitable manner and the global carbon budget is not exceeded,” said Sunita Narain, Director General, Centre for Science and Environment.

 

“It is also essential that there is a clear roadmap on the means of implementation, or finance to support climate action in developing countries and that there is mechanism to deal with climate impacts and extreme weather events in the Paris agreement,” said Arjuna Srinidhi, Programme Manager, CSE.