tpiclim

Climate Change (based on excerpts from the book)

The global problem

Climate change poses a more complex problem to the international community than ozone depletion, its causes being more integral to the functioning of modern society and the daily personal lifestyle. In addition, statistics are not readily available in some cases, and long time-periods are involved for assessing causal effects.

Climate change is caused by a complex interaction of physical and chemical phenomena, which results in an increased amount of particles emitted through human activity remaining in Earth’s atmosphere, thereby trapping more of the sun’s heat which would otherwise have been reflected back into space. Four contributing greenhouse gases (GHGs) are involved, with various aspects of lifestyle being responsible within each one. Carbon dioxide is emitted through fossil fuel burning, cement-making and deforestation. Methane is emitted through natural wetlands, rice cultivation, coal-mining, gas pipeline leaks, and enteric fermentation from livestock. Nitrous oxide is exuded naturally from organic soil compounds, and chlorofluorocarbons are the same manufactured compounds that cause ozone depletion. Carbon dioxide is estimated to contribute 55% of the problem; CFCs 17%, methane 15%, nitrous oxide 6%, and other causes 7%.

Climate change is likely to be manifest in temperature rise, wind pattern changes, precipitation changes, and changes in ocean circulation. The temperature rise is the one most popularly understood, with its consequent sea-level rise, but the other effects could be equally detrimental to national interests. The current IPCC models project an increase in global mean surface temperature of about 1 degree C. by 2025 and 2 degrees C. by 2100 in addition to what may have been induced by human emissions so far (range: 1 to 3.5 degrees). Temperature levels would continue to increase beyond 2100 even if concentrations of GHGs are stabilized at that time.. Sea-level rise is expected to be 0.2 meters by 2030, and 0.5 meters by 2100 (range: 0.15 to 0.95 m.). More than half the world’s population lives within 60 km of the shoreline, and this could rise to three-quarters by the year 2020. The effect on humankind is expected to include flooded lowlands, loss of territory, severe storm damage, agricultural dislocation and the spread of infectious disease.

The international community has recognised the degree of threat which climate change poses for humanity and the planet itself. In the framework treaty negotiated in 1992, it acknowledged that “change in the Earth’s climate and its adverse effects are a common concern of humankind”. It then expressed the concern “that human activities have been substantially increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, that these increases enhance the natural greenhouse effect, and that this will result in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere and may adversely affect natural ecosystems and humankind”.

The global objective and strategy

The global objective has been identified clearly enough by the international community. It is, in short, to:
protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with the Parties’ common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.

How, then, is the international community to protect the global climate system? The strategy is set out in the Framework Convention ratified, as at December 1997, by 167 nation-states. It is:

... stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. The climate system, it is evident, has already been anthropogenically ‘interfered with’. The question is whether such continued interference can be amended in a manner that falls short of the ‘danger level’. Although the Convention defined the long-term aim to be stabilization of GHG concentrations, that level has not been formally determined. While scientists have cited a ‘threshold of concern’ above which the predicted climate changes could assume dangerous proportions, there is no clear consensus on what that threshold is. The debate over the desired ‘target’ is pursued in the context of the associated economic costs to each nation and the world. The 1990 level of 350 ppmv, for example, probably guarantees no adverse climate change but would require redistribution of global wealth or an absence of sustainable development in most of the world. A level of 450 ppmv is generally seen as acceptable in terms of the most adverse climatic impacts but also costly. A level of 750 ppmv can be readily accomplished in terms of costs of abatement but probably entails quite severe climatic impacts. Some have identified the maximum threshold as a doubling of CO2 above the 1800 level of 280 ppmv, i.e. 560 ppmv. The associated goal, then, would be a stabilization of CO2 emissions at about 150% of the 1800 level, i.e. 420 ppmv, and thereafter a gradual reduction in the concentration. Although it is recognized that this would cause some climatic disruption, the ‘dangerous’ level of damage would be averted. Similarly, some environmental experts maintain that, with a current atmospheric concentration of 750 Gigatonnes of carbon, the maximum threshold permissible for future climatic stability will be another 300 Gt before the planet's climate becomes dangerously destabilized. At the current rate of net annual emissions of 3.6 Gt, this would occur within a century.

The prescribed national policies to implement the global strategy to date are comprised of two parts: the initial voluntary undertakings under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the commitments entered in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which, when it comes into effect, will be legally binding.

The Framework Convention

The 1992 Framework Convention struck effective obligations only for countries of the North – developed countries and those former socialist states with transitional economies. Each undertakes to:

adopt national policies and take corresponding measures on the mitigation of climate change by limiting its anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases and protecting and enhancing its greenhouse gas sinks and reservoirs. ....to this end, each of these Parties shall communicate, within six months of the entry-into-force of the Convention for it and periodically thereafter ... detailed information on its policies and measures ... as well as on its resulting projected anthropogenic emissions by sources and sinks of greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol ... with the aim of returning individually and jointly to their 1990 levels these anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol

It was well recognized at Rio that the Framework Convention would need to be augmented by a legally-binding protocol with emission limits for each country. The ‘Berlin mandate’ agreed at the Second Conference of the Parties in 1995 set the goal of the Third Conference at Kyoto for the successful negotiation of such a protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol negotiated in December 1997 marks a watershed in humanity’s battle with climate change. Under the Protocol, negotiated by over 160 nation-states, 38 countries of the North are obligated to reduce their combined GHG emissions by an average of 5.2% from 1990 levels by the years 2008 to 2012. The reductions are 10% below the projected combined level for 2000, since many such countries have increased their emissions since 1990. The reduction level is 30% below uncontrolled emission projections for 2010.

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