Extreme rainfall and spreading drought are signalling rapid climate change in Latin America, prompting concern that wrenching changes like migration will worsen social equality. A greater concentration of land ownership, changes in water supplies and an expansion of deserts are the likely consequences as temperatures rise, the United NationsFood and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says.
"There have always been climate changes, but not with the current force," Jan van Wambeke, an FAO land and water officer for Latin American and the Caribbean, told dpa. Unprecedented changes in temperatures and rainfall are already being felt, while steps to fight them "will not be visible before 2050," he said.
When delegates from nearly 200 countries meet in Poland on Monday to work on a new global climate-saving pact, finding ways to help poorer regions deal with global warming will once again be on the agenda. In Latin America, melting glaciers along the Andean spine in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina spell trouble for the continent's water supply.
About 77 per cent of the world's fresh water is in glaciers. Meanwhile, changing rain patterns are making farming cycles unpredictable in a region that produces agricultural goods worth 120 billion dollars per year. "Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay are suffering a drought they have not suffered for years," van Wambeke said.
In Chile, the desert frontier is expected to shift some 500 kilometres south by 2050, threatening the country's lucrative wine industry, he said. Last year, a glacial lake in Chile's Patagonia region simply disappeared over two months.
As land becomes unusable for farming, people will face pressure to move.
"In Guatemala there are documented experiences of this type," van Wambeke said. At the same time, torrential rains caused flooding and hundreds of deaths across Central America in recent years.
Dozens have died in the Caribbean and Atlantic region, where the number of hurricanes has doubled from 100 years ago because sea surfaces have gotten warmer, a 2007 report by the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research concluded. Cuba alone was hit by five hurricanes this season and faces rebuilding entire sectors of its agriculture.
Governments must take steps to fight the effects of global warming, even though budget constraints make it hard to finance such policies, van Wambeke said. "The issue is slowly entering the agendas of governments in Latin America and the Caribbean," he said.
Nicholas Rigillo, Jean-Baptiste Piggin and Katerina: The challenge of saving the world from global warming has not fallen to a revolutionary or a visionary, but a down-to-earth conservative politician and mother of two. Connie Hedegaard, Denmark's climate and energy minister, will host next year's crucial UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, meant to find a successor to the Kyoto protocol on global emission levels.
In this exclusive interview with dpa the 48-year-old former journalist explains how to win over the sceptics and singles out a global price on carbon and a cap-and-trade system as the most efficient way of delivering greenhouse gas cuts.
DPA: Ms Hedegaard, why do we need a deal in Copenhagen? Hedegaard: Scientists tell us that we must stabilise global emissions within the next 10 to 15 years or we will reach a tipping point, and then any remedy will become very, very expensive. It is not difficult for politicians to decide what should happen in 40 years' from now, when they will no longer be in office. But we must have an ambitious mid-term target. And it is doable - we have the technologies and we have the knowledge. But we must hurry.
DPA: You are looking for global cuts in the range of 25 to 40 per cent. Aren't you being unrealistic? Hedegaard: By setting targets, you speed up efforts and you force people to think creatively. That is why they are so important.
DPA: What, in your view, is the biggest obstacle to a global deal? Hedegaard: While most political leaders acknowledge that we are facing a global challenge, their mindsets are still pretty much set on national action. Some key players just don't like being told what to do by the rest of the world.
All of us - the EU, the US, Japan, China and others - must get used to the fact that in a global world, global challenges require global responses.
DPA: Perhaps the global financial crisis, by reminding us that we are all interdependent, could actually help in this respect? Hedegaard: I agree. The sense of urgency stemming from the financial crisis has actually made governments cooperate, take initiatives, and address challenges in a way that would have been inconceivable only a few months ago.
We are now facing the same sense of urgency when it comes to climate and energy issue. That is why there is one encouraging lesson to be learned from the financial crisis.dpa: Two years ago, you accompanied US Senator John McCain and other US congressmen on a trip to Greenland. What were you trying to achieve?
Hedegaard: Politicians, like other people, are influenced by what they see. So, the very intangible issue of climate change suddenly became much more concrete to those who participated in the trip. One of them later told me: 'Now I really feel an obligation as a politician to act.'
DPA: EU leaders meeting in Brussels next month will be called to agree on an ambitious climate and energy package which calls for the bloc's emissions to be cut by at least 20 per cent below their 1990 levels by 2020. Poland, Italy and others are sceptical. How would you win them over? Hedegaard: I would first try to explain to them the Danish case. Back in the 1970s, we were 99 per cent dependant on fossil fuel imports. And it became so bad that we had to prohibit people from driving their cars on Sundays. Today, 17 per cent of our energy consumption come from renewable sources such as wind, biomass and biogases. And our energy-efficient technologies have turned out to be one of our best export areas. So what appeared as a cost in the beginning has turned out to be a source of profit, also in terms of job creation.
I would also tell them that I am not so sure that the way ahead for Europe is to protect the industries of yesterday. Take the car manufacturing industry: we are facing a basic choice - do we try to modernise it, or do we try to prolong the pain with bail-out packages?
And would it not be wiser to become more energy-efficient, less dependant on gas from Russia, and stop pouring so much money into the Middle East? In the end, the whole issue of climate change and energy efficiency is about strategic leadership in the 21st century.
DPA: How should global emission cuts be achieved? Hedegaard: We must set a global price on carbon (emissions), because the minute you have a price for carbon, there is an incentive to become more energy efficient. In the end, the idea of using market mechanisms is the fastest way of disseminating (energy-efficient) technologies.
dpa: Can the election of Barack Obama facilitate a deal in Copenhagen? Hedegaard: Obama has said that he wants to stabilise US emissions compared to 1990. Only last April, President George W Bush was saying the US would continue to increase its emissions until 2025. With one single speech, Obama has cut this expansion by 35 years. That is why I am optimistic.
Car-buyers are being tugged two ways in a German debate over carbon-dioxide emissions: should they buy cars for the fast lane, or downsize to smaller cars more suited to the slow lane of German autobahns? The dilemma came to a head when Chancellor Angela Merkel's government debated an economic stimulus package in October.
With global talks on a new climate-saving pact due next week in Poland, the dispute underlined the conflict between ecology and the economy. Germany initially wanted to grant two-year vehicle tax rebates to buyers of all cars with sophisticated technology to reduce and purify emissions, but an outcry from environmentalists halted the plan.
The green camp was upset that even powerful sports utility vehicles with clean engines could claim the subsidy, while all cars would receive half the subsidy, no matter how polluting they were.
One group, Greenpeace, accused the government of encouraging "climate hog" motorists who drive heavy SUVs and limousines. Road vehicles account for about a fifth of Germany's carbon-dioxide emissions, so reducing car exhaust could help Europe's largest economy meet its climate goals.
The trouble is, cars are one of Germany's main exports. The cars that the world - and many Germans - want to buy from Germany are not small fuel sippers, but big, strong cars that eat up the kilometres and keep occupants in a steel cocoon of safety.
Despite localised speed limits and widespread congestion, there are still plenty of no-limit sections on German autobahns where the usual cruising speed in the fast lane is 160 kilometres per hour (100 mph) or more.
A few weeks ago, Germany's main Lutheran church group asked pastors to set a good, green example to their flocks by limiting their autobahn speed to 120 kilometres per hour. However, there seems to be no sign that such restraint is catching on.
Germany's auto industry regularly opposes efforts to introduce a national speed limit, and it suggests that environmentalists who call for weaker, slower cars are out of touch with ordinary Germans. The industry has lobbied against earlier implementation of European Union fuel-economy and carbon-dioxide standards for cars.
"The German government is trying to stop effective CO2 limits and acting as an errand boy for incorrigible auto executives," accused Juergen Resch, head of the German environmentalist lobby group DUH. The controversy in Berlin over vehicle-tax rebates, which has rumbled on for two years, has not gone away.
Under pressure, Merkel chose to delay. She has promised the half subsidy to all new-car buyers, and said that her government will next year fine-tune the low-emissions element of its subsidy programme.
The squabble seems set to continue next year, with environmentalists pushing for a tax scheme that acts as an incentive to buy lower-powered cars. Two states - Bavaria, home of BMW, and Baden-Wuerttemberg, home of Mercedes-Benz and Porsche - pressed ahead this month and said they would distribute the tax rebates in the form that environmentalists oppose.
The auto industry is also pushing for another incentive which it contends will be good for industry and good for the climate at the same time: a buy-in of polluting older cars. Martin Winterkorn, chief executive of Volkswagen, has claimed that scrapping every car made before 1999 currently on German roads would reduce total carbon dioxide emissions by 11.2 million tons.
General Motors' German subsidiary, Opel, has also argued for a buy-in as a way to help the stumbling industry. Czech President Vaclav Klaus, one of the most prominent climate change doubters, is about to get a new platform:the European Union presidency. Klaus has called man-made global warming a myth and questioned sanity of Al Gore, the former US vice president who received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for turning a spotlight on climate change.
Most recently, Klaus expressed hopes the EU would give up its ambitious plan to spearhead the global struggle against climate change in the face of the global financial crisis.
From his vantage point in Prague's Hradcany castle, Klaus could be involved in negotiating a new set of EU climate laws while the Czech Republic chairs the EU in the first half of 2009. That could happen if EU leaders fail to agree on a plan at their December summit. On the table is a disputed proposal to cut EU greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.
In any case, the Czechs will lead the EU in the run-up to a crucial global climate conference in Denmark late next year. Having Klaus at the helm of the 27-member bloc "is clearly going to cause some anxiety", said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the London-based Centre for European Reform.
While presidential office in the Czech Republic is largely ceremonial and the centre-right government of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek does not share Klaus' views, Western Europe worries that "Czechs would not attach as much priority" to the climate efforts, Tilford said.
"It is unfair to say: If we don't agree this year we won't have it," he said. "But there are some concerns because the Czech government is not as enthusiastic." The Czech government has tried to alleviate such fears.
James Hunt, the Czech environment minister's climate envoy, recently said that if internal EU squabbling spills into next year, "the Czech presidency will make every effort to achieve adoption" of the climate package in early 2009. But Czech officials also made it clear that they would prefer a softer, pro-business plan.
"We can't fight for the climate at the expense of our competitiveness. That is especially valid at a time of the global financial crisis," premier Topolanek said last week. Across the region, coal-fired power plants are a big reason why countries balked at the EU proposal.
Central European energy firms, including the Czech Republic's state-controlled CEZ that pours billions of koruny in dividends into state coffers, would like to see the package scrapped. They especially oppose a plan that would force them to buy carbon emission permits at auction from 2013. The rule would add an extra cost amid the financial crisis and certainly hike electricity prices, they say.
"A unilateral cut of emission limits combined with a brutal start of credit auctions will not help the climate because nobody will join the EU and our emission cut of 20 per cent ... will be easily offset and surmounted by a rise in emissions in China," Topolanek said.
Comments
Comments are closed.