Pacific Journalists Team Up At Climate Change Conference

 

By Nannette Woonton | Pacific Magazine

It’s an experience of extreme temperatures for the Pacific Communications Team that has travelled from hot humid conditions to brave the chilly winds while reporting on the world’s most important climate change meeting of the year.

For the first time the United Nations 14th Climate Change Conference of the Parties will receive a wealth of coverage for the Pacific Island nations with the Pacific Communications Team based in Poznan, Poland.

A team of four experienced Pacific reporters are currently attending the 14th Conference of the Parties as part of an initiative driven by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).

The reporters were selected from a climate change and media training facilitated by SPREP in October this year. The training was a partnership between SPREP, The Government of Canada, UNESCO and the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA).

“We are pleased that we have found the support to do this, we realised the need to help spread awareness of this extremely important climate change international event,” said Nanette Woonton SPREP’s Associate Media and Publications Officer.

Ulamila Kurai Wragg the Managing Editor of Pacific Magazine, Makereta Komai of PACNEWS, Samisoni Pareti of Islands Business Magazine and Cherelle Jackson of Talamua Media form the team led by SPREP’s Associate Media and Publications Officer Nanette Woonton and SPREP’s Editor and Publications Officer Lance Laack.

News from the team will form a daily bulletin of news that will be posted on the SPREP website www.sprep.org and distributed out to network lists.

“This is 10 years overdue!” said Wragg as she embraced the opportunity to report on such a significant event for the small islands states.

Over the period of 2 weeks, Wragg intends to help inform the developed countries about issues from the Small islands states.

The Pacific Communications Team met in New Zealand and travelled together over a period of several days, strategising ways to provide the widest coverage of the issues for the Pacific region.

Cherelle Jackson has had a strong interest on climate change issues, having approached SPREP in the past for news on the Pacific delegation at the UN Climate Change Conferences of the Parties.  Being a member of the Pacific Communications team has now enabled her to be able to share the news happening here, back home.

“This experience will help me learn more about climate change, the processes and to be the voice of the Pacific at this meeting,” said Jackson.

The team will be sending posting regular news with a daily news bulletin consisting of a compilation of all news filed, edited by Lance Laack.  The team have since familiarised themselves with the Pacific delegation and Pacific Non Governmental Organisations in Poland.

Continue reading here.

International Climate Change Forum Opens in Poland

By VOA News

Delegates from nearly every nation began discussions in Poznan, Poland Monday in an effort to create a new global climate change pact to replace the Kyoto Treaty, which expires in 2012.

Some 10,000 representatives will spend the next 12 days negotiating a new pact aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Delegates to the conference say they would like to have a deal ready to be signed next year in Copenhagen.

The Kyoto agreement has been crippled by the Bush administration’s refusal to have the U.S. ratify the agreement, saying it would harm the economy.

However, some countries have expressed hope the Obama administration will follow through on the incoming president’s promises to make the U.S. much more ecologically friendly.

Meanwhile, the U.N. climate chief is warning against what he calls “cheap and dirty” power as a quick fix to the global financial crisis, saying it will lead to another economic disaster.

De Boer said Sunday governments must not try to save money by giving up high-technology in favor of low-cost, but highly polluting energy sources, such as coal. He called this a new generation of bad investments that will have to be scrapped, and he predicted that wind and solar power plants will become a necessity as early as 10 years from now.

Many scientists blame global warming chiefly on emissions from cars and factories.

No friction with Obama at climate talks, says chief delegate

AFP

The top US delegate at world climate talks here said Monday he saw no likelihood of discord with the incoming administration of Barack Obama, who has vowed to overturn US policies on global warming.

Harlan Watson, heading the US team at the 12-day UN talks that opened here Monday, said “the principal differences” on climate change between President George W. Bush and President-elect Obama were on addressing domestic emissions of greenhouse gases.

“I would say, don’t look so much at the differences domestically. On the international scene, there’s broad-based agreement,” he told a press conference.

Watson said he saw “broad consensus with regard to a number of important issues internationally — it’s a global issue, we need all parties in the [UN Climate] Convention involved, in particular major developing economies. There’s no difference in opinion on that.”

The United States has been isolated on climate change since Bush walked away from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.

Abandonment by what was the world’s biggest carbon polluter at the time nearly destroyed the landmark treaty to curb greenhouse gases.

Bush said the emissions targets negotiated under President Bill Clinton were too costly for the US economy.

He also said it was unfair that emissions curbs only applied to developed countries, not emerging giants such as China and India.

Talks resumed in Poznan on Monday on building a successor to Kyoto’s provisions beyond 2012 under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Delegates have been wondering whether the Bush administration will take a hard line at these talks, choosing to obstruct agreement or set down positions that would then have to be unwound by Obama.

Members of the US Congress will attend the talks next week, and report back to the president-elect.

Watson promised the United States would not hamper progress.

“We’re going to be making positive contributions so that the next team can pick up the ball and carry it forward,” he said.

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U.K. : Climate advisors take electric road

By Richard Black | BBC News

“Welcome to the electric future.”

That was the key message from the Committee on Climate Change, the government’s new advisory body, as it delivered its recommendations on how the UK should meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.

There is a wealth of detail tucked away in its 500-plus page report.

It proposes five-yearly “carbon budgets” that the government should adopt, and suggests a range of policy options for achieving them – among which weaning the nation’s power providers off fossil fuels is clearly the priority.

The targets are incredibly ambitious Jayesh Parmar, energy analyst

“One particularly important development is the de-carbonising of electricity,” the committee’s chairman Lord Turner told reporters.

“Once we de-carbonise generation, we can apply electricity to new areas such as road transport and the heating of buildings.”

By 2020, renewables – principally wind – could generate about 30% of the UK total. Efficiency improvements, nuclear – a “cost-competitive” technology – and carbon capture and storage (CCS) could all play a role.

Or could they?

“The targets are incredibly ambitious,” said Jayesh Parmar, a partner in the energy and utilities practice of Oliver Wyman, the global management consultancy firm.

“We’re nowhere near on track to meet a 30% by 2020 target. The pipeline of development would have to be extended significantly and accelerated massively if we’re to meet it.”

Currently, renewables provide about 5% of UK electricity.

Frustrated academics, activists and businessmen have long complained that the government does not have the right raft of economic incentives in place, lauding Germany’s use of preferential, set payments for solar electricity and lamenting the UK’s deployment of Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs).

“The government would have to look again at economic incentives, for example for offshore wind, where some of the major investors are beginning to question the economics of the business,” said Dr Parmar.

“Reform of the planning process has constantly been talked about; but despite recent moves we are still not seeing planning consent coming through as quickly as we need it to.”

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Global Economic Crisis Loom Over UN Global Warming Summit In Poland

 

AHN Staff

Poznan, Poland (AHN) – The global economic crisis and rising greenhouse gas emissions in developed and emerging nations is overshadowing the UN global warming climate conference which opens Monday in Poznan, Poland.

The two-week climate change summit is an attempt by governments to come up with a new international agreement to save the environment. The output, which will succeed the Kyoto Protocol, is expected to be inked in Denmark in 2009.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said, quoted by Deutsche Welle, “The need for real progress on tackling climate change has never been more urgent… The effects of climate change that science has identified are already weighing upon those most vulnerable.”

Among the key points expected to be tackled in the forum is how developing countries could hasten financing and technological assistance to poorer nations to help them reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

De Boer admitted the Poznan conference is looming under the larger shadow of the global financial recession and recession which had hit many nations. “But we cannot allow this to detract from the fight against climate change… The effects of climate change… are already weighing heavily upon those most vulnerable,” he told BBC.