Where do the intenational climate change talks in Durban leave us?
An agreement of sorts was achieved after negotiations were extended long into the weekend, but there are mixed views as to whether the summit was successful. Have they really "saved tomorrow, today" as the South African chairman claimed? Or have we a disaster in the making because the emission pledges countries have made will take us to a world 3-4oC warmer, on average, by the end of the century than in pre-industrial times?
The main points of the Durban Platform agreement are:
- The EU will place its current emission-cutting pledges inside the legally-binding Kyoto Protocol, a key demand of developing countries.
- Talks on a new legal deal covering all countries will begin next year and end by 2015, coming into effect by 2020. The conclusion was delayed by a dispute between the EU and India over the precise wording of the 'roadmap' for a new global deal. India did not want anything legally binding and a compromise was reached with the words 'legal force'.
- Management of a fund for climate aid to poor countries (the Green Climate Fund) has also been agreed, although how to raise the money has not.
- There has also been significant progress on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).
An open letter arising from the Agriculture and Rural Development Day and endorsed by 16 leading agricultural organisation, including COPA-COGECA and the World Farmers Organisation, was sent to the main summit. It called on “negotiators to recognise the important role of agriculture in addressing climate change so that a new era of agricultural innovation and knowledge sharing can be achieved”.
Elsewhere at the summit, Caroline Spelman talked about the need to raise agricultural yields through improved productivity - a need for "climate-smart agriculture" which would help address adaptation, mitigation and food security. She also spoke of the sector having to adapt to increasingly variable and unpredictable growing conditions, including increased incidence of floods and droughts, higher temperatures and different patterns of weeds, pests, and diseases.
The 120 countries pushing for a legal deal in Durban were doing so in an attempt to try and limit the world's temperature rise to 2oC above pre-industrial levels, estimated to be the limit beyond which climate change is irreversible. It now seems less likely that this limit will be met. Does this mean that agriculture must start now to prepare for a world warming more than 2oC, probably 3-4oC? It might also mean that technologies such as bioenergy with carbon capture will be necessary to perform an absolutely crucial planet-saving role in the decades ahead.
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- trevor farrer - 27/12/2011
The Durban meeting recognised that there will be no change in emissions until at least 2020; by which time hopefully reality will have entered the debate and mad schemes which only raise energy costs will have come to an end. The NFU should fight to contain members energy costs, not join hairbrain renewable schemes subsidised from our taxes.
- Andrew Bevan - 21/12/2011
I think thst all these agreements are pointless as all climate change are perfectly natural and nothing mankind will do wil have no effect,
All these climate scientists are getting paid billions of £ &$ 's around the world to prove CO2 is causing it and they don't want to lose it.
CO2 is good for agriculture as any increase in it will make plants grow faster or produce more.
Any wind power is useless as a study in Holland discovered that they produce 1% more than if the electricity was produced conventally.