Tck partners respond to outcome of COP17

Courtesy: Green Climate International, 2011

Here are a number of responses from our partners to the outcome of the COP17 International climate change negotiations held in Durban, South Africa:

World Wildlife Fund (WWF):

After two weeks of sparring and a day-long extension, governments once again failed today to provide the inspiration and ambition to tackle climate change and provide hope for hundreds of millions around the world who suffer and will continue to suffer from climate-related impacts.

Governments reached a weak agreement that established a Green Climate Fund with little money, postponed major decisions on the content of the Kyoto Protocol, and made an unclear commitment to a global agreement from 2020 that could leave us legally bound to 4 degrees of global warming.

Read More: WWF >>

International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)

Trade Unions in Durban demanded the extension of the Kyoto Agreement, a globally negotiated legally binding agreement and a plan to operationalise and fill the Green Climate Fund.

“The Kyoto Protocol, a critical piece in the climate agreement, survived the talks but without key countries, without commitments on emission reductions and with major loopholes. A Green Climate fund was agreed, but without commitments to fill the fund. And a new negotiating round was launched aimed at being implemented in 2020,” said Sharan Burrow.

Scientists, environmental groups have warned the delay to 2020 puts the planet, and people at great risk of irreversible damage from rising temperatures.

Read More:  ITUC >>

Greenpeace:

Despite the rallying calls that filled the hallways of the conference center yesterday, polluters have won this round of talks with politicians making little progress on a global deal to tackle climate change.

Two years ago in Copenhagen, politicians promised a US $100 billion fund would be set up to help the poorest countries adapt to and mitigate climate change. They came to Durban two years later only planning to design a way to collect and distribute the money. It turns out they could not even manage to do that.

While the details of the talks may be complex the truth is simple. We are nowhere near where we need to be to avert catastrophic climate change.

Read More: Greenpeace >>

Oxfam:

Negotiators at the UN climate talks have narrowly avoided a collapse, agreeing to the bare minimum deal possible as the UN climate talks in Durban went well beyond the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth hours.

There were two key issues that they debated, drafted, discussed and dissected over two long weeks of talks. Firstly, how to increase the ambition of emissions cuts and ensure a legal framework – the bedrock of which was a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (KP)– with a separate fair, ambitious and binding agreement covering all major emitters. Secondly, how they raise the money needed to fill the Green Climate Fund – the instrument that is designed to pay for developing countries to adapt their economies to a greener path and help their people mitigate against the affects of a changing climate.

The plan that was finally agreed, as the talks overran into a second night, gets the Fund up and running without any sources of funding, preserves a narrow pathway to avoid 4 degrees of warming and gets a second commitment period of the KP without key members.

Read More: Oxfam >>

Green Cross International:

rotracted UN-led climate change negotiations in Durban struggled to respond to the urgency of our planet’s global warming crisis, underscoring the impotence of the global governance system, according to Mikhail Gorbachev, Founding President of Green Cross International.

“It is unacceptable that world leaders are still stalling on a global plan to cut emissions of carbon to curb the increase of temperatures,” says Mr Gorbachev.

“We witnessed in Durban wrangling and hair splitting over legal terminology, as well as bald-faced delaying tactics that threatened to derail the negotiations,” he adds. “The decision-makers must wake up to the fact that the lives of billions of people today and in the future depend on them to act in unison to respond to the global challenge that climate change poses.”

Read More: Green Cross International >>

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