Essay on “Climate Protection and United Nations” Complete Essay for Class 9, Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Climate Protection and United Nations

Outlines: The  United Nations has approved, by consensus, a deal setting up a procedure reduce emissions of climate-altering gases into the next century, but it set no specific targets. The document set up a two-year negotiating process to elaborate policies and measures and set ‘quantified limitation and reduction objectives within specific time-frames’ for emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2). But the mandate for these talks did not specify how large these reductions should be, or when they should be achieved.

The deal represents a compromise between the European Union and developing countries—which had wanted clear-cut reduction targets—and leading CO2 producers such as the United States, Japan and Australia, which had wanted looser formulations.

The countries of the alliance of Small Island States were deeply disappointed with the result. Many tiny-low-lying Island States could be washed off the map if the worst climate change scenarios come true, and sea levels rise dramatically.

But after another meeting, Ministers of 24 countries, trying to come up with a common text for the International Conference on Climate Change, had still to get approval in full session from the near 120 States which have a say at the meeting.

The 11day conference to review and strengthen the 1992 Rio-de-Janeiro Convention on Climate has been badly bogged down by difference between developing and industrialised countries. It has also been haunted by divisions over how decisions should be taken.

The aim of the conference has been to come up with terms for a mandate, for the negotiation of a protocol to the Rio convention for signature in two years’ time. The Rio convention does not address the problem of so-called greenhouse gas emission beyond the year 2000. The environmental space being used up each year by the developed countries is worth a hundred billion U.S. dollars at a conservative estimate, and this is the ‘environmental rent’ that they ought to pay every year to the developing countries for eating into their space. India’s Mr. Kamal Nath, Minister of State for Environment and Forests, addressed the Berlin conference on climate change where India presented its own draft action plan to contain and stabilise the emission of greenhouse gases which are threatening to change the global climate drastically. Articulating India’s clear view that the responsibility should be placed on those who were responsible for the environmental mess, Mr. Kamal Nath, who led the Indian delegation to the conference, rejected attempts to water down the provisions of the Climate Change Convention signed at the Earth Summit, at Rio-de-Janeiro, Brazil, three years ago. He told those participating at the two-day ministerial level conference that the industrialised

North must fulfill its commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions down to the 1990 level.

“Even while we are talking here, the North is freely riding on the back of the south,” he said emphasizing the point that more than its fair share of environmental space had been used up by the rich countries and more continued to be consumed.

There can be no comparison between the ‘survival emissions’ of the developing countries and the ‘luxury emissions’ of the affluent nations, Mr. Kamal Nath stated. Ever since 1990, the G7 countries have, between them, emitted greenhouse gases that should have taken care of India’s development needs of the next 50 years, even if India were to develop at an accelerated pace.

India, he said, was willing to go along with any programme for enhanced commitments for reduction of greenhouse gases, provided these are only for developed countries. He said that any joint implementation of a programme to reduce emissions must recognise the differentiated responsibility—for the developing country any reduction must be voluntary. It was the profligate consumption by the West that had led to the present “unsustainable mess” that  the world finds itself in.

India sympathises with the group of small island nations, which are the most vulnerable to climate change, as rising sea level could swallow them up. This group has suggested an accelerated plan to cut back emissions of greenhouse gases.

Mr. Kamal Nath pointed out that India, with a 7000 km long seacoast, could also lose land to the oceans, and this would displace tens of millions of people. The threatened global warming could adversely affect food production. India was, therefore, eager to cooperate in drawing up a timetable for enhanced commitments for reduction of emissions, but naturally, these commitments should be for the industrialized countries who have been the biggest pollutes and continue to do so.

The Ministry of Environment here, which released the summary of Mr. Kamal Nath’s speech to the Berlin conference, has claimed that the Indian draft for a global programme has received wide media support, and has described it as the ‘green paper’ to combat global warming. India has been apparently taking the lead in articulating the viewpoint of the developing countries, and presented its draft to break the deadlock that threatened to disrupt the conference.