DAVOS-INTERVIEW-Developing nations deserve break on climate - UN
27 Jan 2007 08:55:26 GMT Source: Reuters
By Laura MacInnis DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Emerging giants China and India should not be required to cut carbon emissions as quickly as rich countries, despite being among the world's top greenhouse gas producers, the top U.N. environmental official said. Achim Steiner, head of the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), urged developed nations to "take the next big step" against climate change and negotiate tight new standards that may exempt their poorer neighbours. Otherwise, he warned that rich-poor tensions could sour efforts to extend the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. "If we don't have significant political momentum this year, the negotiations on a new climate change convention are going to be increasingly jeopardised," he said in an interview during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The United States, which is not a signatory to Kyoto, emits a quarter of global industrial greenhouse gases that scientists say trap solar rays in the atmosphere, causing severe storms, floods, droughts and ecological ruin. China's blistering economy has rocketed it to the number two worldwide carbon emitter, with India in fourth place, according to World Resources Institute data. While pledging shifts toward renewables and more efficient energy, both developing powers -- who do not face obligations under Kyoto -- have resisted calls to curb emissions in a way that could endanger growth. Steiner, a German who took over at UNEP last year after heading the World Conservation Union, said it was "a matter of fairness" to give developing countries extra slack on new emissions limits, given Western powers built their modern industries burning fossil fuels. "Even in China and India, nobody is arguing about the fact that they must face their carbon footprint. The question is, can we establish a symmetry between the industrialised world moving and the developing world moving that is fair?" he said. "At the moment ... those who have had the least to answer for are almost expected to make the fastest move." It is "a litmus test" for international diplomacy whether countries can develop a new climate regime that can bridge emerging countries' needs to create wealth with the rich world's aim to avoid the worst effects of global warming, he said. "We need to accelerate the way we deal with decarbonising our economy radically, and the faster we move up on that process the quicker developing countries will be able to enter that process as well." Low-income nations will also need international assistance to cope with pressures on their agricultural base and water supply, and to fight an expected spike in health threats from malaria and other infectious diseases, he said. Next week's report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, considered an authoritative take on the science of global warming, will present "an empirically more substantive idea" of how continued temperature increases will impact the world's landscape, Steiner said. The U.N. environment chief brushed off criticism from some Davos delegates that climate change worries had overshadowed other key issues, including Africa's developmental stumbles. "Climate change is a prism through which we are looking at the human condition on the planet, the economic development prospects, and the potential failures and opportunities that markets and governments offer us," he said. "At the end of the day we are talking about how we live together on this planet.
