CLIMATE CHANGE: 'We Know Why We Are Dying' - Africa

• by Servaas van den Bosch (copenhagen)
• Thursday, December 10, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Few are more aware of the devastating legacy failure will leave than the teams of African negotiators in the Danish capital to hammer out a final position.

As talks began on Dec. 7, the Africa Group had put numbers to the hard line taken at a preparatory conference in Barcelona last month.

'Africa demands up to five percent of the GDP of industrialised nations every year, because of their historical debt and the continuation of causing the harmm,' Sudanese G77-chair Di-Aping Lumumba revealed to IPS.

'We are talking roughly about two trillion US dollars annually till 2050 for adaptation, mitigation and technology transfer.

'We do not believe this is a big amount of money as the U.S. spent 22 trillion on saving Wall Street .'

The Africa Group's position on global warming signaled a demand for steep cuts.

'We want temperatures to not go up beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius,' Lumumba told IPS, a departure that foreshadowed the position outlined by the island state of Tuvalu in its controversial proposal after the summit started.

Developed countries, as well as China and India, are reluctant to even consider working against this target, preferring to discuss measures to keep global warming to less than two degrees.

'But climate change will hit Africa at 150 percent of the global mean,' said Lumumba. 'So effectively we will have the effects of a 3 degree rise or more. This means we are being tunnelled into unfairness.'

How likely does he think the world will give in to these staggering demands? Lumumba: 'We will not accept them killing our people.'

The Africa Group has a challenge on its hands presenting a united position in Copenhagen; maintaining solidarity within the Group of 77 countries and China bloc will be still harder.

'For now nothing has been agreed,' says Bisi Tapere negotiator with the Nigerian delegation about the G77 joint resolve. 'We have to agree to disagree sometimes. The Venezuelans said they disagreed with the proposed course, but by the end of the day we will have to have a consensus.'

However Africa has no tools to pressure industrialised countries if they reject with the continent’s demand, admits Tapere.

She doesn’t feel that the widely varying needs of the African countries necessarily jeopardise a united position, not even for Nigeria, the second largest oil exporter in Africa stand to lose money from cuts in emissions from fossil fuels.

It will not be good for our revenue, not at all,' she says. 'But I am not against the cuts we propose. Oil income will drop, but it’s more important to have consistent revenue, than the current situation where every country is doing what it wants. If Africa is unified in the end it will be good for us. Nigeria doesn’t have to come out and fight for itself anymore, we are fighting collectively as Africa. Our voice has been heard and it will be heard more, we have firm punches to deliver.'

But as negotiations begin to move, the signs are worrying. Word of a split in Africa was to be addressed decisively in a series of Africa Group press briefings that were cancelled, suggesting negotiators are struggling to come up with a common formula.

By the time a leaked Danish document's demand for binding commitments from emerging economies had been succeeded by Tuvalu's draft proposal on Dec. 9, Africa's poorest countries were conspicuously louder in their support. Key players like China and India adamantly refused to consider it.

African negotiators are not ruling out a walk-out if their demands do not prevail. 'We are not planning a staged walk-out like in Barcelona,' said G77 chair Di_Aping Lumumba. 'We will listen to what they have to say and present our counter-arguments. However, if it doesn't get anywhere we will not hesitate to get up and walk out either.'

And what if at the end of the day no one listens to Africa? Lumumba pauses: 'It’s very simple... then we know why we are dying.'

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service