Kyoto next: Roadmap to save the climate soon

New Delhi: 10,000 delegates are attending a crucial conference in Bali. The target is to negotiate a new pact to succeed the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.

Prime ministers, industry icons, Hollywood actors will all be here on the island resort of Bali sharing space with government officials, UN agencies and NGOs to fight for the climate cause. The Kyoto protocol, that currently binds 36 industrial nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of 5 per cent below 1990 levels will lapse in 2012. It is indeed a tough challenge to get the world at large to agree to one roadmap to fight global warming by 2009. However, the crucial development has come at the very outset, with Australia signing the Kyoto treaty.

"It is great news that Australia has finally agreed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. It is the world's biggest coal exporter, Australia, which has to really ask itself a question, whether it is going to get serious and deal with climate change or it is going to keep exporting coal and simply fuel the problem and make it worse,” says Shane Rattenbery, Political unit of Green Peace International.

The conference comes amid dire warnings that global warming is already irreversible. As global surface temperatures continue to climb, glaciers melt and sea levels rise, developing nations and island countries face the worst risk. However, it is problematic when most countries have not even managed to meet the Kyoto targets set in 2001.

The question that comes up is, if Bali is really poised to find a solution to this crisis?

Experts say conference is not expected to deliver a fully negotiated climate deal right away, but set the necessary wheels in motion. India's stand at Bali is clear that as a developing nation, it will not commit to any binding cuts at the cost its economic development.

India's official report states that cost of climate change mitigation will cost 2 trillion dollars, something it cannot afford to spend when its per capita emissions is only 1.5 tonnes, 20 times less than the US.

While a new and improved substitute to Kyoto is sometime away, the Bali talks may just achieve a few things, like finally providing incentives to countries for preventing deforestation, which cause more carbon emissions than the transport sector. Also a roadmap for clean technology transfers between rich and poor countries to better mitigate and adapt to climate change in the future may be seen soon.

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