Delegate elaborates on tasks for dealing with climate change

BALI—Chinese delegate Su Wei to the UN climate change conference, which is opened here Monday, said the tasks of adaptation is especially urgent for developing countries who are most vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change.
The future arrangement should focus specifically on strengthening adaptation, so as to improve the adaptation capabilities of developing countries, Su said. Su said the future arrangement to address climate change should focus on enhancing implementation of current provisions of the Convention and its Kyodo Protocol, and further strengthen those provisions in accordance to the latest scientific assessments.
He said developed countries should at least reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. For developing countries, they should make commitments to take policies and measures to address climate change to contribute more, and the developed countries should provide them financial resources, technology transfer and capacity building in this regard.
He also called for establishing a technology cooperation mechanism to remove barriers and provide incentives to technology transfer, and to provide incentives for technology cooperation and transfer, to enhance the developing countries’ adaptation capacity. Meanwhile, he said, adequate and predictable funds must be secured for developing countries to address climate change, so as to support their mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer, reducing deforestation, economic diversification and scientific research activities. Indonesia renewed its call for developed nations to actively help tackle the impacts of climate change through technology transfer and financial support as it gears up to host the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali from Dec. 3 through 14.
“Developed countries should take the lead to combat climate change, because climate change started when the industrial revolution began, the Jakarta Post daily Saturday quoted Emil Salim, head of the Indonesian delegation to the meeting, as saying. “The industrial revolution initiated the increases in carbons, thus the developed countries are responsible for this,” Emil, who is also a member of the UN High Level Advisory Board for Sustainable Development, said here on Friday.
“Developed countries need to support developing countries in terms of technology transfer and funding,” Emil said. Emil added that several delegations would ask developed countries to help developing countries by eliminating the patent for using technology as a form of support in coordinating towards the protection of the environment. Poverty and education remain big issues for developing countries. “We tend to feed our hungry nations rather than spend money on expensive technology,” he said.
Meanwhile, Indonesian State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar said the Clean Development Mechanism strategy under the Kyoto Protocol has been agreed on to place a value on carbon. Through a market mechanism, carbon’s value will increase and people will have to pay when they pollute the environment. “Indonesia will discuss more about this carbon trading, because the mechanism appears to give a license to developed countries to pollute,” he said.
The coming conference is expected to provide a forum for the international community to formulate an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol before it is finalized and approved at the Denmark conference in 2009. The main issues to be negotiated are the emissions reduction target after the Kyoto Protocol, positive incentives through the market, adaptation and climate change funds, investments, mitigation, technology transfer and new modalities.
In the Kyoto Protocol, developed countries listed under annex I agree to reduce 5.2 percent of their carbon emissions below the 1990 level by the end of the protocol agreement by 2012.—Xinhua