A bridge too far?

HE 20TH UN Climate Change Conference, or Cop 20, begins in the Peruvian capital of Lima today and will run for the next 12 days. It is a precursor to the big one – Cop 21 in Paris next December – where it is hoped a comprehensive, binding global agreement will be sealed.

Climate change is increasingly recognised as the biggest long-term policy challenge for governments around the world today. It has been estimated that every year for the next decade, 175 million children will be affected by sudden climate-related disasters, that will challenge much of the progress made towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Children are therefore bearing the brunt of the impact of climate change, despite being the least responsible for it.

While it is the world’s poor who are feeling the greatest impact of climate change – over 95 percent of deaths from natural disasters between 1970 and 2008 occurred in developing countries – climate change is no respecter of national borders and ultimately affects us all.

Over the past two decades, only a handful of the world’s most important green goals have seen significant progress. We have repaired ozone levels, and removed lead from petrol. But there has been little done on food shortages, ocean pollution, fish stocks or desertification. We have been wiping out species and destroying rainforests at an unprecedented rate. Our planet is getting hotter. Greenhouse gas emissions have risen so that they are now not far off the level that scientists fear will trigger irreversible climate changes.

We need a formal global deal. World leaders flunked the opportunity to reach such a deal in previous COP conferences. Expectations are not high this time around either. But the direction in which the world needs to travel if we are to avoid a climate disaster has not changed.

T