Business, Economics and Consulting

As I am writing this column, the United Nations Climate Change Convention is in the concluding stages of negotiations between developing (G77) and developed (G8+5) nations on the next steps to combat the effects of global warming. If the news stories that have come out of Copenhagen in the past weeks are used as an indicator, then we can conclude – quite unfortunately – that these negotiations have been almost total failures.
The stand of the G77 is founded on the fact that while developing nations are not significant contributors of greenhouse gases and similar pollutants, they are most susceptible to and often bear the brunt of the effects of climate change. One need not look further than Ondoy and Pepeng, which were precipitated (pun intended) by an atypical and abnormally high amount of rainfall over a short period of time.
The stand of the G8+5, on the other hand, rests on the fact that they are resistant to providing reparations to developing countries that have been severely affected by global warming, despite the fact that these nations account for about 90% of total greenhouse gas emissions in the world.
Backtracking a little, we have to remember that the intentions of the Kyoto Protocol were envisioned to be fully realized by 2011. The Copenhagen talks are considered extremely critical as the convention should have provided a venue to thresh out some implementation details of the Kyoto Protocol that have yet to be agreed on by what most consider as “crucial” economies – crucial in the sense that if these nations signify their assent to the terms of the protocol, then half the battle against global warming would have been won. Unfortunately, again, these crucial economies have decided to defer their commitment to support the protocol since 1997. No amount of hard and soft means of coercion has convinced these nations to change their stance.
Fast forward to Copenhagen, more than ten years after Kyoto and it seems no headway still has been made with these crucial economies. It is actually quite ironic that the participation of the G77 has been more felt compared to their more guilty counterparts from the G8+5. The victims of climate change – developing nations who are not the cause of the problem – are more willing to solve the problem than the cause of the problem themselves.
President Obama’s declaration of support to the initiatives through his promise and rhetoric of a “Green Economy” were met with skepticism by most delegates to the convention as well as by the emerging economies of India and China. While the concept of a green US economy is ideal, the fact remains that even the president of the most powerful nation in the world still needs to seek the approval of his Congress to effect necessary structural and policy changes to fully implement the demands of both the Kyoto an Copenhagen agreements – if there are any in the first place. And his Congress has always been resistant to “damaging” the US economies because of the demands of other nations vis-à-vis climate change. There lies the rub of internal politics – and their effects to the rest of the world.
China and India have adopted a wait and see attitude on the next moves of the US. While they are willing to sign a deal in Copenhagen, they have also treaded these waters lightly because they do not want to be unnecessarily penalized when in fact other developed nations have been polluters far longer than they.
For now, let them bicker. For our part, the Philippines will adopt a carbon-reducing system and employ a climate change approach to existing legislation such as the Clean Air, Clean Water, Ecological Solid Waste Management, Biofuels, Renewable Energy and Climate Change Acts. We can do our part but no matter how hard we try the fact that we are part of a global ecological system means that the solutions must also be global in scope. (to be continued )
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