[It
assumes the culpability of the world’s most developed nations, including the United States and those in Europe , and implies a moral responsibility to bear the costs,
even as those same nations seek to draft a new treaty over the next two years
that would for the first time compel reductions by rapidly emerging nations
like China and India . As a group, developing countries will within a decade
have accounted for more than half of all historical emissions, making them
responsible for a large share of the continuing impact humanity will make, if
not the impact already made.]
By Steven Lee Myers and Nicholas Kulish
 |
Aaron Byrd
The Future of Storms:
Scientists disagree over whether climate change is altering hurricanes.
It is impossible, when looking
at one storm, to know whether global warming had an impact,
but researchers see a trend.
|
Calling the climate crisis “madness,” the Philippines representative vowed to fast for the duration of the talks. Malia
Talakai, a negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, a group that
includes her tiny South Pacific homeland, Nauru , said that without urgent action to stem rising sea
levels, “some of our members won’t be around.”
From the time a scientific consensus emerged that human
activity was changing the climate, it has been understood that the nations that
contributed least to the problem would be hurt the most. Now, even as the
possible consequences of climate change have surged — from the typhoons that
have raked the Philippines and India this year to the droughts in Africa, to
rising sea levels that threaten to submerge entire island nations — no
consensus has emerged over how to rectify what many call “climate injustice.”
Growing demands to address the issue have become an
emotionally charged flash point at negotiations here at the 19th
conference of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which continues this
week.
“We are in a piece of land which is smaller than Denmark,
with a population of 160 million, trying to cope with this extreme weather, trying
to cope with the effect of emissions for which we are not responsible,” Farah
Kabir, the director in Bangladesh for the anti-poverty organization ActionAid
International, said at a news briefing here.
With expectations low for progress here on a treaty to
replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, widely seen as having failed to make a dent in
worldwide carbon emissions, some nations were losing patience with decades of
endless climate talks, particularly those who see rising oceans as a threat to
their existence.
“We are at these climate conferences essentially moving
chess figures across the board without ever being able to bring these
negotiations to a conclusion,” Achim Steiner, executive director of the United
Nations Environment Program, said in a telephone interview.
Although the divide between rich and poor nations has
bedeviled international climate talks for two decades, the debate over how to
address the disproportionate effects has steadily gained momentum. Poor nations
here are pressing for a new effort that goes beyond reducing emissions and
adapting to a changing climate.
While they have no legal means to seek compensation, they
have demanded concrete efforts to address the “loss and damage” that the most
vulnerable nations will almost certainly face — the result of fragile
environments and structures, and limited resources to respond.
The sheer magnitude and complexity of the issue make such
compensation unlikely. The notion of seeking justice for a global catastrophe
that affects almost every country — with enormous implications for economic
development — is not only immensely complicated but also politically daunting.
It assumes the culpability of the world’s most developed
nations, including the United States and those in Europe , and implies a moral responsibility to bear the costs,
even as those same nations seek to draft a new treaty over the next two years
that would for the first time compel reductions by rapidly emerging nations
like China and India . As a group, developing countries will within a decade
have accounted for more than half of all historical emissions, making them
responsible for a large share of the continuing impact humanity will make, if
not the impact already made.
Assigning liability for specific events — like Typhoon
Haiyan, which struck the Philippines with winds of at least 140 miles an hour, making it one of
the strongest storms on record — is nearly impossible. It can take scientists
years just to determine whether global warming contributed to the severity of a
particular weather event, if it can be determined at all.
Many negotiators here have pressed to create a new
mechanism that effectively accepts the idea that the results of climate change
are irreversible and that the countries that are hit hardest first must be compensated.
“We’ve reached a stage where we cannot adapt anymore,” said
Ronald Jumeau, the United Nations representative for the Seychelles , who is his country’s chief negotiator here. He noted the
devastating effects not only of extreme storm events, but also of creeping
desertification, salinization and erosion that could result in financial losses
and even territorial issues that the modern world has never had to face.
“This is new,” he said. “This is like, ‘The Martians are
landing!’ What do you do?”
John Kioli, the chairman of the Kenya Climate Change
Working Group, a consortium of nongovernmental organizations, called climate
change his country’s “biggest enemy.” Kenya , which straddles the Equator, faces some of the biggest
challenges from rising temperatures. Arable land is disappearing and diseases
like malaria are appearing in highland areas where they had never been seen
before.
Developed countries, Mr. Kioli said, have a moral
obligation to shoulder the cost, considering the amount of pollution they have
emitted since the Industrial Revolution. “If developed countries are reasonable
enough, they are able to understand that they have some responsibility,” he
said.
How to compensate those nations hardest hit by climate
changes remains divisive, even among advocates for such action. Some have
argued that wealthy countries need to create a huge pool of money to help
poorer countries recover from seemingly inevitable losses of the tangible and
intangible, like destroyed traditions.
Mr. Jumeau noted that Congress allocated $60 billion just
to rebuild from one storm, Hurricane Sandy, compared with the $100 billion a
year that advocates hope to see pledged to a Green Climate Fund by all nations.
The fund, intended to help poorer countries reduce emissions and prepare for
climate changes, has remained little more than an organizing principle since
its creation in 2010, its fund-raising goals unmet.
Others have suggested a sort of insurance program.
The United States and other rich countries have made their opposition to
large-scale compensation clear. Todd D. Stern, the State Department’s envoy on
climate issues, bluntly told a gathering at Chatham House in London last month that large-scale resources from the world’s
richest nations would not be forthcoming.
“The fiscal reality of the United States and other developed countries is not going to allow it,”
he said. “This is not just a matter of the recent financial crisis. It is
structural, based on the huge obligations we face from aging populations and
other pressing needs for infrastructure, education, health care and the like.
We must and will strive to keep increasing our climate finance, but it is
important that all of us see the world as it is.”
Appeals to rectify the injustice of climate change, he
added, will backfire. “Lectures about compensation, reparations and the like
will produce nothing but antipathy among developed country policy makers and
their publics,” he said.
Juan Pablo Hoffmaister Patiño, a Bolivian who represents
the alliance of developing nations known as the Group of 77 and China , said the issue was not so much about assigning
culpability for the looming climate disaster as doing something to help those
nations hardest hit.
“Trying to assign the blame is something that even
scientifically could take us a very long time, and the challenges and problems
are actually happening now,” he said in an interview here. “And we need to
begin addressing them now rather than identifying who is guilty and to what
degree. We can’t make this issue hostage to finding the responsible ones or
not.”
Meanwhile, global emissions continue to rise. A report this
month by the United
Nations Environment Program warned that immediate action must be taken to
reduce emissions enough to limit the rise in average global temperatures to 2
degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels. That is
the maximum warming that many scientists believe can occur without causing
potentially catastrophic climate change.
The current global turbulence, consistent with what
scientists expect to happen as the climate changes, is already taking a toll.
As the hundreds of diplomats and advocates assembled for
talks here, Justus Lavi was waiting for rain in Kenya . The wheat, beans and potatoes he planted on his farm in Makueni County
In northern Somalia , Nimcaan Farah Abdi’s 10 acres of corn, tomatoes and other
vegetables were ruined as violent storms swept the Horn of Africa. A typhoon
last weekend in nearby Puntland killed more than 100 people, a disaster
overshadowed by the far more destructive one in the Philippines .
“My farm has been washed away,” Mr. Abdi said. It was the
second year in a row of unusually heavy storms to have destroyed his
livelihood, leaving him uncertain about how he will provide for his six
children. “God knows,” he added, “but I don’t have anything to give now.”
Steven Lee Myers reported from Warsaw, and
Nicholas Kulish from Nairobi, Kenya Somalia
