SPREP remains optimistic

Vested interests fight change, but SPREP remains optimistic

By Giff Johnson

The $64 question is how do you get big, industrialised nations to reduce green house gas emissions enough to halt - or at least limit - the progress of climate change when the actions needed require fundamental

change in the way people are liv ing their lives?

Small islands that are leading the clarion call for greenhouse gas reductions may be on the front line of the consequent rising sea levels, but as the Association of Small Island States chairman, Samoa’s Ambassador Tuiloma Neroni Slade said recently, “AOSIS is not OPEC,” and isn’t in a position to force change in the industrial nations.

Despite ratification of the inter national Climate Change Conven tion several years ago, there has been little move to reduce emis

sions by the biggest polluters. Two

years ago, said Wayne King, the South Pacific Regional Environmental Pro gram’s climate change project manager, “the scientific community recommended a 60-to-8C per cent reduction in green house gasses to stabilize the situation.”

AOSIS, realising that this was a politically impossible figure to gain sup port for, lobbied for a 20 per cent cut.

But the outcome of talks two years ago that produced the Kyoto Protocol still not ratified - called only for an aver age 5.2 percent emission reduction, and even allowed some countries to increase pollution emissions.

Change must begin with industri alised nations that have fueled climate change since the beginning of the centu ry, King said. “AOSIS is clear,” he said.

“The large industrialised countries must make a commitment.”

But, he noted, the US, for one, has questioned why there is no action from large developing nations on greenhouse gas reductions. “We’re insignificant by comparison,” he said.

“But we’re doing scientific studies.

looking at our own greenhouse gas emis sions” to demonstrate a commitment to the process.

King believes that one of the troubles is that some of the industrialised coun tries have “lost focus” on climate change.

The attention of many countries shift ed onto the Kyoto Protocol of late 1997 because of the many new proposals put forward, including such plans as a so called “clean development mechanism” to encourage environmentally-friendly alternative energy and sustainable devel

opment projects.

But, said King, the Kyoto Protocol is not yet ratified. At a meeting of small island countries in Bonn, Germany in June, the consensus was that “we have to make sure industrialised nations don’t

forget the Climate Change Convention, which has already been ratified,” King said.

“Until the industrialised countries demonstrate progress, how can they ask the larger developing countries to reduce?”

The clean development mechanism

proposed in Kyoto is an innova tive way to involve the industri alised nations in helping develop ing countries to fund sustainable development projects.

Yet because bigger nations can get “credits” that count toward their required greenhouse gas reduc tions, small countries are con cerned that the big nations will simply look at “off-shore” actions without making change at home, where the climate change problem is.

“The clean development mecha nism is great,” King said. “But it must be supplemental to domes tic actions.”

While the record of industrialised nations leaves much to be desired from the AOSIS viewpoint, there is some blue sky on the horizon as far as King is con cerned.

First, he said, there is an increasing amount of scientific evidence on their side now.

“It’s only in the last several years that climate change negotiators are obtaining clear scientific knowledge on the effects of climate change,” he said.

“Previously, there wasn’t much research available. Now we’re getting the scientific information and it’s prov ing to be a great to help our negotiators (in the climate change convention

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SPREP climate change project manager Wayne King (on the right in green T-shirt) talks strategy with AOSIS workshop participants

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process).”

Another major obstacle has been and continues to be huge multinational corpo rations who see their bottom line profits imperiled by all this talk of greenhouse gas reductions.

Governments are under great pressure from “corporations who have a vested interest in keeping emissions” where they are. “But slowly, we’re seeing some changes,” he said. “A number of large

corporations have begun to turn around and look at issues more positively,” giv ing consideration to investing in renew able energy and sustainable development initiatives.”

Pacific islands, he said, intend to play their part in the emission reduction process - however minor that may be.

They will continue pressing their case internationally for industrialised nations to take bigger and continuous steps to slow climate change.

With an increasing volume of knowl edge now available about the effects of climate change and sea level rise, it may be possible to get the public worried about the problem and motivated to take action.

This is possible not just in the smaller nations but where it will count most toward policy change.

That is, not in the Pacific, but in coun tries such as the United States, Australia and in Europe. ■