Crisis no excuse to ignore climate change: UN chief

Stevie Emilia, The Jakarta Post, Poznan | Fri, 12/12/2008 10:37 AM  

Developed nations must stick to their commitments to curb global warming in spite of the global financial crisis, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Poznan climate change conference in Poland on Thursday. 

"Yes, the economic crisis is serious. Yet, when it comes to climate change, the stakes are far higher. The climate change affects our potential prosperity and our people's lives, both now and far into the future," he said. 

"There can be no backsliding on our commitments to a future of low-carbon emissions." 

The Poznan talks is the half-way mark in the negotiations on an ambitious international response to climate change that will be concluded and ratified in Copenhagen next year and enacted in 2013 following the expiration of the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. 

The treaty sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 5 percent from 1990 levels during the period from 2008 to 2012. 

The European Union (EU) has yet to agree on its 2020 climate package. The world's biggest emitter, the United States, is waiting for president-elect Barack Obama to take office in January. 

Obama has pledged to return his country's emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to invest US$15 billion a year on clean technologies. 

"What we need today is leadership. We look for that leadership from the European Union. We look for leadership from the United States," Ban Ki-moon said. 

Eyes are also set on the two-day meeting of European heads of states and governments in Brussels on Thursday to decide on the EU's climate change policies up to 2020. 

"The EU is assuring us that it will stick to minus 20 percent (emissions) by 2020," said Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Yvo de Boer. 

The previous UN climate change talks were held in Bali last year. 

"Of course the world has changed since Bali ... when the world has recovered from the economic recession, it will not have recovered from climate change," de Boer said. 

The session was attended by four heads of states, including Poland President Lech Kaczynski and Sweden Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, as well as 145 environment ministers. 

Outside of the talks, activists held colorful but peaceful protests. 

Youth delegates handed out statements to negotiators, encouraging them to ensure that any global climate deal reached would safeguard the survival of all countries and peoples. 

When meeting with the Indonesian Civil Society for Climate Justice late Wednesday, Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said Indonesia would not allow developed countries to use developing countries as tools to wash their hands of emissions. 

"Indonesia cannot be responsible or be used by developed countries to wash away their sins (from causing high carbon emissions)," said the society's spokesman in Poznan, Giorgio Budi Indarto. 

On Thursday, Minister Rachmat and the UK's Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband signed a deal to form a working group to improve forest conservation and develop energy supplies. 

"The UK and Indonesia have much to learn from one another; about the circumstances we have to deal with, the opportunities available to us and the solutions that could help both countries do our bit to tackle climate change," Miliband said.