LIMA, Peru, November 24, 2008 (ENS) – Leaders of the Asia-Pacific countries expressed their willingness to work together to “confront the challenge of climate change,” which they agreed “will be crucial to the wellbeing of future generations.”

At the close of their annual meeting Sunday in Lima, the heads of state and government belonging to the Asia-Pacific Economic Council, APEC, affirmed their support for “decisive and effective long term cooperation now, up to and beyond 2012 to address climate change” under the United Nations process.

The language in the final statement echoes that in proposals put forward by Chinese President Hu Jintao.

“All parties should, in keeping with the requirement of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol and the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” actively conduct negotiations for the implementation of the “Bali Roadmap” and take effective policy measures in light of their respective conditions to mitigate climate change,” the Chinese president said in his proposal.

The APEC leaders statement supports “a global emission reduction goal” for heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions that is the primary issue to be negotiatied through the UN process.

The next step in this process is a 12 day set of talks opening in Poland December 1. An agreement acceptable to all parties is to be finalized in Copenhagen in December 2009. The agreement will follow the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

“We also noted the declaration in this regard by the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit held in July this year,” the APEC leaders stated.

APEC leaders in an informal moment. U.S.
President George W. Bush, center with
blue tie, enjoys his last trip as president.
(Photo courtesy APEC)

On the surface, there appeared to be no measureable progress in climate change during the talks in Lima. But senior Japanese officials seemed pleased that the APEC leaders’ statement mentions the G-8 summit.

“It was not easy to include a clause on the G-8 summit in the declaration,” as China and many other fast-growing APEC economies are not part of the G-8 framework, one of the Japanese officials told the Kyoto News Service

At the G-8 Summit in July, the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States sought to share the goal of at least halving global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 with other major greenhouse gas emitters such as China and India.

Climate change is triggering natural disasters that are increasingly difficult to deal with by countries acting alone, the APEC leaders acknowledged.

“The frequency and intensity of natural disasters related to the distortion of climate patterns in the region is increasing and the location of, and growth of, cities and mega-cities in vulnerable areas increases the impact of catastrophic events,” they stated. “Improving risk reduction, disaster preparedness and management in the region is a critical human security issue facing the region.”

“We agreed that the challenges in this area are significant and growing in complexity and required greater international cooperation and coordination with the private sector, international organizations and nongovernment organizations,” the leaders stated.

Alleviating poverty is tougher with the added challenges of climate change and natural disasters, the APEC leaders said. “Reducing poverty is likely to become more difficult in those developing economies most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change and related natural disasters.”

A concern related to climate change and natural disasters is food security, the leaders stated, saying, “We are deeply concerned about the impact that volatile global food prices, combined with food shortages in some developing economies, are having on our achievements in reducing poverty and lifting real incomes over the last decade. The poor are especially vulnerable to increases in food prices.”

The APEC leaders stressed not only the urgency of getting stalled World Trade Organization talks moving again, and also emphasized the potential of renewable energy development to move economies forward while fighting climate change.

“Conscious that access to adequate, reliable, clean and affordable energy resources is vital to sustaining economic prosperity in the region, we reaffirmed our commitment to supporting the energy needs of regional economies by promoting open energy markets and free energy trade and investment,” the leaders stated.

“Such markets are crucial to the development of renewable sources of energy and the dissemination of low emission energy technologies, including new and alternative energy resources and technologies,” they said, adding, “We encouraged our officials to promote such developments and urge them to pursue regional energy efficiencies and maximize the potential development of clean energy technology.”

U.S. President George W. Bush and Peruvian
President Alan Garcia at the APEC meeting
in Lima (Photo courtesy APEC)

The two-day APEC meeting in Lima was U.S. President George W. Bush’s last trip as president. He told the APEC leaders, to applause, that he has attended every APEC meeting held during the eight years of his presidency.

But while the other APEC leaders were focused on climate, natural disasters and renewable energy as well as recovery from the current global financial crisis, President Bush said little about these issues, preferring to emphasize the merits of democracy and free trade.

Bush said only, “Over the past eight years, we’ve taken measures to protect our people from terror and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We’ve responded to natural disasters. We’ve worked to prevent the spread of potential pandemic diseases like avian flu and SARS. We’ve worked to confront climate change and usher in a new age of clean energy.”

APEC consists of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.

The APEC annual conference will be held next year in Singapore, followed by Japan in 2010, the United States in 2011 and Russia in 2012. In the Peruvian capital, Indonesia offered to host the summit in 2013.

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NEW YORK, New York, October 27, 2008 (ENS) – Young artists from around the world have raised $21,000 for the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, to spend on climate-related disasters by auctioning off 26 of their paintings in New York Saturday night.

The auction, held at the Harvard Club, was organized by the UN Environment Programme as part of its Paint for the Planet event, which attracted nearly 200,000 entries worldwide.

The outstanding paintings from those entries were chosen for an art exhibition that is currently on display in New York and will later travel to climate-related events and meetings worldwide. It will be on display during the major talks on global warming scheduled for Copenhagen at the end of 2009.

Young artists whose works are in the Paint
for the Planet exhibit join their talents
in a special painting for UN Secretary-
General Ban ki-Moon. (Photo courtesy UN)

All the paintings in last night’s auction were sold, with two works – one by Charlotte Sullivan, a 14-year-old from Great Britain, and the other by Renee Wang, a 13-year-old from the United States – each fetching $2,200.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner, UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman and Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, were among the guests at the auction.

The Paint for the Planet exhibition opened at UN Headquarters in New York on Thursday. Children’s paintings from around the world are displayed on a 200-foot wall at UN Headquarters in New York.

The Paint for the Planet event is part of the global campaign “Unite to Combat Climate Change,” which aims to encourage a definitive agreement on global warming at the Copenhagen talks.

Meanwhile, a new environmental photo exhibit opened Thursday in the visitors lobby of UN Headquarters in New York.

Called “Gateways to Conservation: Connecting People to Nature,” the images of wildlife and conservation sites from around the world are the result of a partnership between the Wildlife Conservation Society, a 100 year-old organization based at the Bronx Zoo and the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, which maintains global networks of Biosphere Reserves and World Heritage Sites.

The revealing images dramatize the need for governments, the international community and individuals to unite for the conservation of natural and cultural diversity, from familiar landscapes to Madagascar and Patagonia.

“Humankind’s heavy footprint has already caused the disappearance of many, many species,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “Many more are endangered. This exhibition is a timely reminder not only of the wonders of nature, but of our dependence on the environment. I hope we will all leave here truly inspired to do our part for conservation.”

The exhibit features three distinct galleries – Healthy Humans, Healthy Environments, which looks at the interconnectedness of human, animal and ecosystem health; Protecting Habitats and Wildlife, which offers solutions to the challenges of preserving biodiversity; and Connecting People to Nature in an Urbanizing World, which builds awareness of and appreciation for ecosystem services.

Gateways exhibit photo of a Madagascar
child by Julie Larsen Maher (Photo
courtesy Wildlife Conservation Society)

“The reversal of current trends in the loss of biodiversity and degradation will only be possible if dealt with in an integrated and interdisciplinary manner that combines the fields of social and natural sciences, formal and informal knowledge and communications,” said UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura. “This exhibition is a superb example of the effectiveness of partnerships between science and policy through public outreach.”

At the exhibit opening, Dr. Steven Sanderson, president and chief executive of the Wildlife Conservation Society, said, “As we face climate change, emerging infectious diseases, and a staggering loss of biodiversity, the direct links between environmental conservation and long-term human security can no longer be disputed or ignored.”

“With the publication of the latest IUCN Red List in Barcelona just two weeks ago, we learned that one in four mammals face extinction. How will their loss, and the loss of so many other species, affect us? Chimpanzees, fruit bats, and peccaries spread seeds in the forests that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Elephants, hippos and wild pigs sculpt our landscapes. Never mind the vultures that clean up after us or the bees that pollinate our crops, or the marshes that filter our water. Their loss is our loss,” Sanderson said.

“But it’s not all doom and gloom,” he said. “Conservation work is yielding positive results and leading toward a better future.”

Dr. Sanderson announced a partnership between the Wildlife Conservation Society and the government of Madagascar to offer for sale nine million tons of carbon offsets from the protection of Madagascar’s largest rainforest – also the repository of one percent of global biodiversity.

“This venture will allow international corporations and governments to purchase carbon offsets to compensate for their carbon emissions,” he said. “The proceeds of these sales directly benefit the forest and neighboring local communities.”

“Gateways to Conservation: Connecting People to Nature,” will be on display at UN Headquarters through January 9, 2009.

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BONN, Germany, June 13, 2008 (ENS) – More than 2,000 participants from 170 countries are packing their bags and heading home this evening after winding up the latest round of UN-sponsored global climate change talks in Bonn with little substantive progress towards a seccessor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. The protocol’s first commitment period expires at the end of 2012.

The pressure is on to negotiate a strengthened and more effective international climate change deal before a meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“We now have a clearer understanding among governments on what countries would ultimately like to see written into a long-term agreement to address climate change,” said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer at the closing news conference today. “But with a little more than a year to go to Copenhagen, the challenge to come to that agreement remains daunting.”

The meeting in Bonn, from June 2 – 13, was the second major negotiating session this year. Three workshops on climate change adaptation, finance and technology took place, designed to deepen the understanding of the issues related to the building blocks of the Copenhagen agreement.

Luiz Figueiredo Machado, left, chairs
the Ad Hoc Working Group on
Long-term Cooperative Action.
Yvo de Boer is executive secretary
of the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change. (Photo courtesy
Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

“Parties have made the all-important transition from discussions and are entering the negotiating phase – this is important to move the negotiating process forward,” said Luiz Figueiredo Machado, who chairs the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the UNFCCC.

“But what is required are more targeted proposals in the next sessions,” he said.

Climate change is viewed as one of the most serious threats to the global environment and to sustainable development. Adverse impacts on human health, food security, infrastructure, economic activity, biological diversity and natural resources are expected.

For instance, Vietnam will be one of the countries most affected by climate change, according to participants in a high level discussion on climate change with Vietnamese lawmakers held on May 25 and facilitated by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. A sea-level rise of only one meter could inundate over six percent of the total area of the country and displace over 10 million people, the participants heard.

Most of the world’s scientists agree that rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere emitted by human activities are leading to changes in the climate.

The most recent assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, completed in November 2007, finds with more than 90 percent certainty that human actions since the Industrial Revolution have contributed to the warming climate.

It is to limit the emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – that governments gathered in Bonn.

In Bonn, talks on further commitments for the 37 governments bound by the Kyoto Protocol, known as Annex I Parties, continued in an effort to clarify tools and identify options available to reach their emission reduction targets.

Countries considered the possibility of expanding the group of six greenhouse gases covered under the Kyoto Protocol to include more gases such as perfluoropolyethers, a class of liquid lubricants has been used for spacecraft applications for 20 years.

Harald Dovland (Photo courtesy
ENB)

“We have made some good progress under the Kyoto Protocol negotiations here in Bonn,” said Harald Dovland, chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol.

“But the pace was slow and difficult,” said Dovland.

“I do feel we need a completely new spirit of cooperation from here, because if we continue in this mode of work, I fear we will not succeed in achieving the goals set in the work program,” he warned.

Participating governments did agree that practical technology transfer efforts will be scaled up for Africa, small island independent states and least developed countries. This will include collaborative research and development of technologies and technology needs assessments.

Parties also agreed to develop performance indicators to monitor and evaluate progress on work on technology transfer.

With regard to adaptation, Parties agreed on activities that can be started immediately, including streamlined access to funding.

Delegates during a break in the plenary
hall (Photo courtesy ENB)

“This is good news for adaptation agenda, which is really moving forward,” said de Boer. “And this is critical for developing countries, which urgently need assistance to cope with increasing climate change impacts.”

“But what is ultimately required is a clever financial architecture to generate the money developing countries will need to green their economies and adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change,” he said.

In Bonn discussions, U.S. negotiator Ambassador Harlan Watson, who represents the outgoing Bush administration which did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, said a long-term goal for a future climate deal should be global, realistic, consistent with recent changes in economic development, based on science and aspirational.

Business and industry representatives underscored sectoral and market-based approaches and technological cooperation, emphasizing protection of intellectual property rights and removal of trade barriers.

Environmental nongovernmental organizations stressed the need to avoid climate change above 2ºC and meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals agreed by all governments in 2002.

Trade unions called for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent by 2050, underscored the social impacts and opportunities of technology transfer, and stressed the need for transparency of financial mechanisms.

The European Union, Japan, Australia and others underscored the need to accelerate the process.

Two further rounds of UN-sponsored global climate change talks will take place this year – the first in Accra, Ghana from August 21 through 27, and the second at the annual UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland December 1 through 12.

A further series of major UNFCCC negotiating sessions are planned for 2009, culminating at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.

With 192 Parties, the UNFCCC has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has to date 182 member Parties.

The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.

{Earth Negotiations Bulletin [www.iisd.ca] contributed information to this report.}

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Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently talked at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. Paulson advocates the removal of any trade tariffs on environmentally sustainable technology. ‘It’s economically and morally indefensible to have tariffs on environmental goods and services,’ said Mr. Paulson. Paulson believes that the path to environmental health lies through developed countries working with developing countries to make sure technology development is sustainable. He mentioned that the US advises China on how to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions, the implementation of clean coal technology, and to develop sustainable logging.

Mr. Paulson goes one step further to suggest that the World Bank should finance emerging nations who want to develop energy and transportation infrastructures. One has to wonder what strings would be attached to World Bank financing? Perhaps some experts on finance would like to comment on this issue? Could it be possible that sustainable technologies could be financed on consignment, with a percentage of profits from the use of the technology paying off a loan over a number of years?

All of these remarks come at this juncture because the Bush Administration is holding talks on Global Warming in Washington DC. The White House wants to control the debate and to be the player that sets up the terms of repairing the environment. As one major nation that did not sign the Kyoto pact, the U.S. seems to be trying to force the other 175 nations that did sign the pact to do it the American way, and only that way. Because of this attitude, China and a few other nation’s ambassadors have said that they will attend the climate meetings in Washington but that they prefer to attend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that will be held later this year. Could it be that the rest of the world is irritated by a U.S. environmental policy standpoint that seems a little bit arrogant?