Recently when delegates from around the world got together  in the UN-ESCAP in  Bangkok  venue between March 31 and April 4,   it was  strongly felt  that  complex  international agreements  alone would not  help countries  abide by a 2009 timeline  to goad them towards slashing global greenhouse gas emission levels, threatening the planet.   In effect  while ending the Bali meeting, UN member states, including Nepal,  had  agreed on   four main conclusions related to global climate change: namely its mitigation, adaptation, financing and technology adoption.  All four factors did  matter to developing countries of the world which  was led by India, China and  Brazil, as  much as industrialized countries  which  were termed  major 'polluters'. 

As  former US Vice President Al Gore and Head of  UNFCCC Rajendra Pachauri had put it,  if Bali was an opportunity to think about  re-tailoring Global Climate Change  the huge implication  of accepting  such change lies in  the participation of  smaller countries such as Nepal, Bhutan Maldives, and Fiji,  which have  a higher rate of  ecological threat, particularly  since they happen to be in highly susceptible  transformation zone, precisely,  ecologically disturbed countries.  Yet these smaller countries  are also  fully committed  to the post Kyoto Protocol scenario, despite having  little recognized environmental lobbyists who can cast their voice on the global climate change agenda.  

Now in Budapest, the U.N.  has  come up with some truly realistic scenarios on where the earth will be heading in the near future on global climate change, based on  recent statements from various climate change experts.  An IPCC report presented at the meeting said the decline of water quantity and quality would have a negative impact on health and result in more areas affected by water stress - the shortage of water for drinking and agriculture. For instance,  water shortages will become evident in the Mediterranean Sea basin, the western U.S., parts of southern Africa and northeastern Brazil.  The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Chairperson, Rajendra Pachauri stated that the rising frequency and intensity of floods and droughts could lead to a food crisis. He stated, “There is a serious concern. We may see a decline in agriculture production… but as could be expected with higher incomes and population growth, we could get an increase in demand for food."

In Africa,  250 million  people could  be affected  by  water stress in 2020. There would certainly be  higher proportion of rainfall,  as much as higher intensity of drought, leading to new mass migration movements,  inter-state conflicts and  famine.  U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer told reporters that Himalayan glaciers which "provide tens of millions of people in India, Nepal  and China with drinking water could potentially disappear” creating  a serious problem. There could be a general problem of glaciers and mountain snow melting elsewhere in other continents as well.  The IPCC report also mentions that in the U.S., the changes physically could be pretty intense with a high likelihood of the American West getting drier. The IPCC  is planning to complete its next climate assessment report, the fifth since 1990, by 2014.

Also, why is the   Bangkok summit so much in focus now? According to UN conference delegates, the most contentious issue in the Bangkok climate change follow-up talks was Japan´s introduction of a ´bottom-up sectoral approach´ proposal, which received support from major industrialized countries like the US, Canada and Australia but was turned down by developing countries, including China, India and Brazil. The irony is all these countries form the first and second tier of the global polluters list being either fully industrialized power houses or emerging lead developing economies.  They do have comparatively more stringent and better environmental  pollution checks than the majority of developing countries, but still they do pollute  more than the rest since they are advanced industrial economies.   Nevertheless, China, India and Brazil have been championing the interests of the developing countries since the Bali Meet in January 2008, and have a strong G-77 lobby backup, which basically thinks that the U.S  and  G-8 countries´  are not  cooperating enough with them and increasing economic production at unparalleled rates. 

Thus, Japan´s proposal  that industrial countries be given a target date around 2020 to reform their global warming reduction goals as compared to 2012 agreed at Bali earlier, was considered as being against the developing countries interest.  The developing countries, represented by ´G77 and China´ termed it a regressive act contradicting the Bali Roadmap. According to Yurika Ayukawa, World Wildlife Fund Japan´s special advisor for climate change,  Japan had also called for setting mid-term national emissions reduction targets based on industry-specific targets for all the economies. In effect, if Japan´s proposal were to be accepted, major developing countries would also have to set the same type of quantified GHG emissions reduction targets as Japan. Under the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, only industrialized countries have agreed to reduce emissions by five percent from the 1990s level. Besides, Japan also wanted to include China, India and Brazil as part of the industrial countries´ movement to curb global warming.  On the other hand, Japan, U.S. and China are working aggressively  to promote clean energy technology. 

The question that is again being repeated after the Bangkok Summit is: Why the uncontrolled global warming despite the Kyoto Protocol? The fact is, the Protocol is the ´Spring Baby´ as the Japanese say of the 1997 UN climate summit held in Kyoto, Japan. Its adherence can only  as strong as the UN member states commit themselves to. It had required nations to minimize carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gasses emitted by power plants and other industrial, agricultural and transportation sources to at least five per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12, a dream that will simply not hold true. Therefore, it seems there must be a closer  reality check on the environmental standards being adopted by  the poorer countries and those that are being  practiced by the richer ones.   The level of  environmental consciousness is not the same among both group of countries, one being  developing and the other developed.

The U.S.  and the  G-8 have continued arguing that most of the industrialized world already have environmental friendly ´recyclable´ economies that are still considered highly energy efficient and clean. Russia is a prime example of  a  winning country that is also focusing on clean energy. Besides the U.S has  invested  sincerely  in developing innovative clean technology mechanism under the leadership of President George W. Bush.    Thus in  the near future, there is a clear need for the UN, despite its  constructive efforts at Bangkok to  focus on the post  Bali environmental movement itself, and what I an achieve for the  Kyoto Protocol in reality.

U.N. voices in fact argue that there is a specific need to focus on how developed and developing countries both can generate alternate global energy demands to meet simultaneous demands since the time factor is really short.  For instance, these can be met by deploying half of the existing technology in the developed countries to the developing world.  According to clean energy experts, the industrial countries can still earn a neat 10% financial profit in such lending.  The industrialized countries did reluctantly agree to share these cuts in Bali this year and to provide quantifiable technological and financial aid to less well-off nations, including to the economically burgeoning China, India and Brazil, but  smaller countries  must not be left in this technological lurch.

Yvo de Boer,  Executive  Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which  hosted  the Thailand meeting,  had  reminded the conference participants  that the challenge over the next two years would be to negotiate an agreement that ensures that greenhouse gases stabilize over the "next 10 to 15 years" and "dramatically cut back" by the middle of the century. This is a goal worth working for both among industrial and developing countries. But can they make it without huddling closer together?  In future, smaller countries like Nepal need to be involved more closely in global environmental decision making given that the Himalayan glaciers flow from within its boundaries.

(Surya B. Prasai is an independent global strategic communications, media, and international development  resource consultant who writes frequently for this and other global media)

(Note from the Nepal Horizons Editorial Team: The views and opinion expressed in this article are that of the author and not of NHC. We request individuals with interest in Nepal to submit their views on contemporary Nepalese issues to the following e-mail address: editor@nepalhorizons.com.  Pictures of contributors or images that relate to submissions are welcome)