Paeniu prods G-7
p. 11 · Read in the full issue
TUVALU’S Prime Minister Bikenibeu Paeniu is leading a one-man crusade to get the world’s rich industrialised nations to face up to the dangers of global warming. While he was not able to persuade the leaders at the Tokyo Group of Seven Summit last month to act on his request for an emergency conference on global warming he has made a big impact on public opinions.
During a six-day trip to Japan Paeniu’s demands that the threat to the Pacific islands from climate change be taken seriously got coverage in all Tokyo’s major daily newspapers and on tele vision.
Perhaps most significantly, Asahi Shimbun, a leading daily with eight million readers dedicated an entire edition of its Tensei Jingo opinion column to a piece outlining the dangers of global warming and backing
Paeniu. The front-page column, which deals with ethical issues, is one of Japan’s most influential pieces of journalism.
Paeniu’s trip to Japan was the culmination of more than a month of lobbying the G-7 leaders. In a letter to United States President Bill Clinton, Paeniu said, “Worrying indications are building up, we fear, that the first signs of global warming might be appearing around the world.” In Tuvalu, he said, “we are now sure that we are seeing the first signs of dangerous changes in the stability of our regional climate. The statistics show we are expecting an increase in cyclone activity, and we can see the waves taking our land away.
“You will know from discussions with your own scientific advisers,” Paeniu said, “that I am being uncontroversial when I say that continued emission of the Greenhouse gases at today’s levels threatens Tuvalu and her sister low-lying nations with physical and cultural extinction, and perhaps within the lifetime of today’s children.” While Paeniu was keen to set out just how stark the threat is to small nations his main aim was to “suggest three courses of action whereby you can begin the process of setting the world on course for effective mitigations of the global warming threat.”
Paeniu has asked president Clinton to : • call a conference to review the evidence that emergency action is needed to deal with global warming and that current national policies are inadequate to save low-lying countries like Tuvalu; • help create a United Nations Agency on Renewable and Efficient Energy Technologies with funding appropriate to the spirit the massive environment blueprint negotiated at last year’s Earth Summit (known as Agenda 21); • take responsibility as leader of the world’s major greenhouse-gas emitting nations by setting immediate targets of at least 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide (the main Greenhouse gas) by the year 2005.
A similar letter went to leaders in Japan, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Canada. Although the environment was one of five issues on the agenda for the Tokyo summit it was, as one observe put it, “the dog that didn’t bark”. The only statement in the Summit com munique on global warming was a lame endorsement of progress with the much watered down International Climate
Convention which was signed at Rio. Worse still, many of the summit’s economic decisions will result in a big increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
The G-7’s Russian aid package is a case in point. Of the US$6lO million so far donated, every cent has been spent on developing greenhouse gas emitting oil and gas reserves. Add to that the summit’s support for the environmental de regulation included in the current GATT deal it is clear the G-7 leaders have failed to make the link between environment and econ omics.
While Paeniu’s demand for a 20 per cent reduction in carbon diox ide emissions may seem radical to those familiar with the targets the industrialised countries have set
themselves an increasing stack of prestigious studies are showing such reductions to be necessary and even cost effective. A United States Office of Technology assessment report issued in February 1991 estimated a 29 to 39 per cent cut in US carbon dioxide emissions over the next 25 years would result in savings of $2O billion a year under favourable legislative circumstances. In June 1991 the US Academy of Sciences found a 10 to 40 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide could be achieved at very low cost. Some reductions may even be at net savings if the proper policies are implemented. Other studies have shown that renewable energy sources could not only cut greenhouse gas emissions and save money, but create tens of thousands of jobs.
Comparing the energy efficiency of the industrialised countries also reveals just how much could be done.
While the G-7 leaders did not take up Paeniu’s suggestions that will not be the end of the story. Paeniu intends to continue his campaign, taking the issue up with other South Pacific leaders at this month’s South Pacific Forum in Nauru.
Both the political and scientific arms (the International Negotiating Committee on Climate Change and the Inter government Panel on Climate Change) of the international effort on climate change are still meeting and the scientific body (the IPCC) in particular is expected to continue to come out with more frightening evidence which may eventually be able to penetrate the current stranglehold the coal and oil lobby currently enjoys over many industrialised country governments.
Once 50 nations have ratified the Climate Convention, another avenue for action will be open, through the crucial Meeting of the Parties in which all signatories sit down together to examine each others national greenhouse action plans. The ratifications which will trigger that meeting are likely to take place in next couple of months.
Unfortunately, the Alliance of Small Islands States, which has played such a crucial role in getting the islands agenda on the climate change heard around the world, is likely to suffer from the withdrawal of its chairman from his post at the United nations in New York. The AOSIS chairman, Vanuatu’s respected Ambassador to the UN, Robert Van Lierop, is to be replaced by his government. □