Rejoice. The world has a second “road map”! Judging by the bad karma given off by the original Middle East version, one would have expected the world’s political elite to avoid the term at all cost, but no. Following two weeks of intense debating and tabling, participants of over 180 countries at the December UN Conference on Climate Change (UNCCC) accepted the “Bali Roadmap.”
The Kyoto Protocol, which requires its 178 member states to cut their 1990 levels of green house gas emissions by 5%, expires in 2012. The Bali mega-conference aimed to reassurance the world’s increasingly concerned citizens about the environment.
But the Bali Roadmap nearly never saw the light of day.
At the UNCCC’s dramatic grand finale, negotiations were broken off. The Europeans suggested cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 25% to 40% by 2020, which would mean an immense incentive to boost investments in cleaner, greener technology. Yet the suggestion proved too hot to handle for countries such as the US, Canada, and Japan. Washington was especially averse to putting figures in the final text
With an embarrassing deadlock looming, the Europeans thrashed out an 11th hour compromise, which, amid tremendous pressure, forced the US into a dramatic U-turn, accepting that “deep cuts in global emissions will be required to achieve the ultimate objective (to curb climate change).”
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Over 10,000 ministers, state officials, experts, weathermen, Al Gore and any self-respecting environmentalist from any corner of the earth was in Bali, to stay two weeks in a five-star air-conditioned hotel to discuss the obvious. Charles Clover of The Daily Telegraph estimated that the two-week conference produced some 100,000 tons of CO2, which is about as much as Chad omits annually. The US blasts 60,000 times as much into the atmosphere and heads the world emission rankings.
“It’s a framework that is quite weak,” admitted France’s Deputy Ecology Minister, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. “The public will understand that we brought the United States into the negotiations.”
Paula Dobriansky, head of the US delegation, proved quite delighted with the world’s second roadmap. “I think we have come a long way … the US is very committed to this effort and just wants to really ensure that we all act together.”
After years of doing it alone, refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol, Dobriansky presented the US as a modern day musketeer with a “All for one, one for all” attitude. The US argues that developing nations have to make a bigger effort. This may be a reasonable argument regarding emerging giants like China and India. However, it is quite off the mark regarding the vast majority of the world’s countries. Bolivia is facing melting glaciers and dwindling water reserves, yet it has no industry to speak off.
George Bush did not exactly appoint Dobriansky for her green fingers. In 1997, she was among the 32 founding members of the “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC), a private club for Neocon America that calls for military-backed US hegemony over the world. These are the same people who urged President Bill Clinton to invade Iraq in 1998.
Dobriansky is not only convinced that what is good for America is good for the world, she is also a true believer in the blessings of the free market and thus opposes any regulation. Voluntary emission cuts will do, she argues. Most environmentalists would disagree and argue that the main cause for having reached the current state of over-exploitation and pollution is a lack of rules and regulations, as well as the failure of the economic model to qualify environmental issues as cost determining factors.
The rather unsettling truth seems to be that destruction is the inevitable flipside of the mythical coin called “progress”. The UN’s 4th Global Environmental Outlook (GEO) states that 20% of the world population produces 57% of global GDP, as well as 46% of greenhouse gas emissions.
And as global trade and GDP grow, coral reefs are dying, fish stocks are declining, deforestation continues, and some 16,000 species are threatened with extinction. It has been nearly 40 years since the Club of Rome first warned about the limits of economic growth, yet the 2007 GEO concluded: “there are no major issues for which the foreseeable trends are favorable.” Unfortunately, the Bali Roadmap to nowhere fits the picture perfectly.
Peter Speetjens is a freelance writer and analyst based in Beirut.
