Nature Features
No deal for developing world at environment conference
By Wolfgang Bunse and Thomas Mueller Mar 17, 2007, 19:55 GMT
The Ministers of Environment of the G8 countries and five threshold countries met in Potsdam to debate on climate change. EPA/NESTOR BACHMANN
Potsdam, Germany - A discordant note was sounded when the conference of G8 environment ministers and five of their counterparts in the developing world came to end in Potsdam near Berlin Saturday.
US delegation leader Stephen Johnson made clear the United States would not cooperate on the 'balance of interests' between the industrialized countries and the developing world sketched out by German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel.
Johnson also made clear the US would not join the Emissions Trading Scheme that has allowed companies in energy-intensive industries in Europe to trade carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions since 2005.
'We regretted this very much,' Gabriel said as the conference, held under the auspices of the German G8 presidency, came to an end.
But he was more positive about the decision to invite Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa to join the proceedings in the historic Cecilienhof Palace on Lake Jungfernsee.
The contact with these countries had been 'very open, very honest and very free,' Gabriel said.
Throughout the conference, which opened formally on Thursday, Gabriel stressed that developing nations needed to be assured that demands from the industrialized world for them to combat climate change would not hinder their growth and would receive due recognition.
The German environment minister noted that Brazil had reforested large parts of the Amazon that had been cleared but had received only the 200 million euros (260 million dollars) in aid pledged by Germany.
Originally, 1.2 billion had been pledged by the international community.
Gabriel said that the failure of the US to give their share of financial compensation meant that the G8+5 was unable to present a joint statement ahead of the G8 June summit in Heiligendamm, northern Germany.
Conference head Gabriel was nevertheless able to put forward several points of agreement at the final press conference in Potsdam.
These are to go forward for further discussion in Heiligendamm and at the UN conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, in December, to take forward the process initiated by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as host in Heiligendamm, will be left with the task of reconciling the interests of the G8 countries with those of the developing world, due to be represented by the same five countries.
The 13 countries together are responsible for two thirds of the world's CO2 emissions.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
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Let's jusr be clear.THe brazilians did not cut down their trees,some brazilians did that,see the difference SP4 ?THose who did it were the fazendeiros ,and some poor buggers trying to eke out a living for themselves in a country were about all the good land is allready ib the hands of a few wealthy farmers enjoying the support of a mostly corrupt police force .THese bloodsuckers also force agricultural workers into slavery,forcing the poor people to work on their gigantic haciendas without proper pay of living facilities.THe trees that are chopped down are sold and replaced by soya used to feed the cattle that provides for you hamburgezrs SP4.At least have the decency to tell the whole picture ,moron.
...here's the whole picture. The Brazilian gov't greenlights settlement of the interior, greenlighting the burning and destruction of the rain-forest. Then, they schlep up to the worlds, guilt-ridden moralists, and squeeze money to replant. Chances are, the money never gets there.
How's that for the whole picture?
By the way, my hamburger comes from Montana.
SP4: Initially, I'm with you on this one, and at the moment I'm not seeing the connection between the Billion or so the Brazilians are expecting and what Europe is getting in return.
Now, where we may differ is in what I see as a possible return on investment though it is not clear from this article whether or not this is the case. The bleeding heart arguments aside, in a sophisticated cap-and-trade system, forested land should be taken into account when determining the total CO2 burden of a country/industry/etc. Specifically, since forests remove CO2, then people that own forests should be able to rent credits to those who generate CO2. In affect, such a system would pay land owners (in this case the Brazilian government perhaps?) to keep the land pristine or to replant. There are two major benefits to this approach:
First, the market will actually put a realizable value on forested land. Currently, the only way to value land (and get a return on that ownership) is to sell it to a developer to strip and build. We are beginning to understand that the rate of strip/build is unsustainable without the very real expectation that within a few decades urban sprawl will have whipped out the environment. This could slow, halt, or even reverse the urban sprawl. Incidentally, this is actually already happening for another reason in NY/PA where NY City rents/buys pristine land around the city in order to guarantee clean drinking water.
Second, it provides another safety valve in that the biggest polluters can mitigate their pollution through yet another method. Currently, most people figure that in a cap and trade system, polluters can either upgrade their systems or they can buy credits. Another method would be to either buy land and replant or rent credits from current land owners. All of these methods cost money, but some can be better implemented then others (ie: it could be a lot quicker and ultimately less expensive to simply buy land/rent credits then upgrade systems for instance).
As a business person, I like diversification of options. I have not done a background search on the deal Brazil/Europe deal, but perhaps it is something like what I described above. Then again, it could be some bleeding heart reason with which I myself would probably not agree.
The American Republic can help with stopping the Global Warming!
Trading carbon credits is just as ridiculous as blaming Global Warming on CO2 emissions. The world is very immense and 71% of the earths surface is covered by water and also much of the rest of the land base is still vacant. Carbon dioxide repersents only about.04% of the atmosphere and has virtually no effect on the climate.Solar radiation and possibly the tilting of the earths axis relative to the sun are the reasons for global warming and cooling..
Walter - you really ought to research more carefully. There is clear proof that CO2 DOES affect the earth's climate, and the effect of the rapid CO2 increase in recent years easily outweighs the longer term effect of the changing sun and the earth's tilt. I hope you're not labouring under the illusion that the ideas put forward in 'the great global warming swindle' are valid - several of the scientists involved in this have withdrawn support because they were misled and misquoted, the producers have admitted they used wrong or skewed graphs and many other 'facts' in the programme have been proved false (probably deliberately fabricated to mislead). In particular, the cornerstone of the programme - a supposed cooling effect from the 1950s onwards, has been proved absolutely wrong because the data was incorrectly presented
also see todays article about 420 million years of CO2 analysis
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SP4: Ho Ho HoMar 17th, 2007 - 22:07:15
Let me see if I understand this correctly: The Brazilians cut down the rain forest, then want money, from the G8 to reforest it? All in the name of 'global warming?'
Anything else they want? How about a man in a red suit and 8 tiny reindeer?
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