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Bonn Climate Change Talks -May, June 2010

Thank you chair for giving us the floor, My name is Hansha. I will be 65 years old in 2050.

Article 6 and the New Delhi Work Programme are among the most promising commitments you have taken under the frame of the UNFCCC. Education, awareness raising and public participation are the three pillars that will enable all of us to develop and put into practice the shared vision we have been speaking about for so long.

18 years have passed since Rio and political leaders are still confronted in their constituencies with skepticism and lack of basic understanding on climate change. This situation contributes to reduce popular support for more ambitious policies.

As article 6 workshops demonstrate, Young people are already potent agents for change. We will keep rising up ourselves, and we invite you to join us on this path.

With Education, Public Awareness and Public Participation as its main three pillars, the review of the New Delhi Work Programme provides a unique chance to build a bridge between actions by governmental and citizens.

We call all governments without delay to:

• Adopt a systematic approach to education on climate change in integrating this issue through all elements and at all level of formal national curricula.
• Parties must recognise the role of NGOs and youth organisations as key providers of non-formal and peer education. And, considering their different capacities, provide financial support to enhance the initiatives of civil society across borders.
• In parallel to education, public awareness raising should be considered a priority and all forms of communication involved in fostering a broader understanding of the social implications of climate change.
• Finally, Public Participation is a key to good governance and to political support for actions at all level of decisions making.

We call you to relish the potential of our generations and enable all stakeholders to address this issue.

Investing in education and young people today is investing in the future. And unlike some of your other investments, we can promise you high returns.

American cities as unequal as African and Latin American cities according to UN-HABITAT’s new State of the World’s Cities Report 2008/9: Harmonious Cities

Major cities in the United States, such as Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington D.C., Miami, and New York, have the highest levels of inequality in the country, similar to those of Abidjan, Nairobi, Buenos Aires, and Santiago. At the other end of the world, Beijing is considered to be the most equal city in the world while, on average, the most egalitarian cities in the world are located in Western Europe.

These are some of the startling findings of the new UN-HABITAT report on the State of the World’s Cities 2008/9: Harmonious Cities. As Ban Ki-moon the Secretary-General of the United Nations points out in his foreword to the report, “The data and analysis contained in this report are intended to improve our understanding of how cities function and what we, as a global community, can do to increase their liveability and unity.”

Aimed at policymakers and planners and all those concerned with the welfare of a rapidly urbanizing world, the report breaks new ground by taking the Gini coefficient , normally used to measure inequality at the national level, and using it to measure inequality at the city level.

Basing their research on such economic statistics, the authors find that though the cities in the United States of America have relatively lower levels of poverty than many other cities in the developed world, their levels of income inequality are quite high, and have risen above the international alert line of 0.4.

According to the report, in Canada and the United States, one of the most important factors determining levels of inequality is race. In western New York State, for instance, nearly 40 per cent of the black, Hispanic, and mixed-race households earned less than US $15,000 in 1999, compared with 15 per cent of non-Hispanic white households. The life expectancy of African Americans in the United States is about the same as that of people living in China and some states of India, despite the fact that the United States is far richer than the other two countries.

At the global level, the report finds that, on average, the most egalitarian cities in the world are located in Western Europe. In the developed world, specifically European countries, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Slovenia, exhibit relatively low levels of inequality (Gini coefficient below 0.25, the lowest in the world). Inequalities are also low in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxemburg, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, where the Gini coefficients range from between 0.25 and 0.3. Low levels of inequality reflect the performance of national and regional economies in these countries and the regulatory, distributive and redistributive capacity of the national and local welfare states.

Analysing the rate of urban inequality in the developing world, the report finds that the cities of Asia are the most equal: the urban Gini coefficient of Asian cities is 0.39, slightly below the unacceptable inequality threshold of 0.4. However, there are significant income distribution differences among cities, even within the same country, which shows that national aggregatesare not necessarily reflected at the local level.

For instance, Beijing, the capital of China, is the most equal city in Asia; its Gini coefficient is not only the lowest among Asian cities, but is the lowest in the world (0.22), whereas Hong Kong, the Special Administrative Region of China, has the highest Gini coefficient among all Asian cities, and a relatively high value by international standards (0.53).

The report also marshals evidence to show that India is undergoing an inequality trend somewhat similar to that of China as a result of economic liberalization and globalization. All of these changes in the occupational structure of the country are affecting levels of inequality. In 2002, for instance, the income gain of the richest 10 per cent of the population was about 4 times higher than the gain of the poorest 10 per cent.

Focusing its attention on Latin America and the Caribbean, the report finds that the Gini coefficients in urban areas and selected cities in the region are among the highest in the world. For example, in Brazil, unemployment rose from 4.3 per centin 1990 to 12.3 per cent in 2003, and average wages of employees in the formal industrial sector fell by 4.3 per cent in 2003. Unemployment and declining wages in urban areas have polarized income distribution in urban areas. For this and other historical reasons, Brazilian cities today have the greatest disparities in income distribution in the world.

It comes as no surprise that cities in Sub-Saharan African have the highest levels of urban poverty in the world. Although rural poverty is pervasive in the region, more than 50 per cent of the urban population in the poorest countries lives below the poverty line. Though Freetown in Sierra Leone, Dire Dawa in Ethiopia and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania are among the most equal cities in sub-Saharan Africa, with Gini coefficients of 0.32, 0.39 and 0.36, respectively, the Gini coefficient in urban Kenya rose from 0.47 in the 1980s to 0.575 in the 1990s.

In South African and Namibian cities, inequalities are most pronounced and extraordinarily high, despite the dismantling of apartheid in the early 1990s. In fact, urban inequalities in these two countries are even higher than those of Latin American cities. The average Gini coefficient for South African cities is 0.73, while that of Namibian cities is 0.62, compared to the average of 0.5 urban Latin America. Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, also stands out as a city with high levels of consumption inequality, with a Gini coefficient of 0.52.

Concerned about the increasing levels of urban inequality, in her introduction, Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UNHABITAT, calls for enlightened and committed political leadership combined with effective urban planning, governance and management. She concludes by emphasizing the need to promote equity and sustainability in order to build harmonious cities.

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: “We can go into extra time but we can’t afford a replay.”
At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”.

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

(Source – http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/06/copenhagen-editorial)

Rt. Hon. Man Mohan Singh
Prime Minister
The Government of India
New Delhi, India

Cc. Mr. Jairam Ramesh, Minister, Ministry of Environment, The Government of India

Subject: Regarding the statement made by Honorable Jairam Ramesh, Minister of Environment, Government of India.

We the youth of Nepal are concerned by the statement made by Honorable Mr. Jairam Ramesh, Minister of Environment, and the Government of India that “there is no conclusive scientific evidence to link global warming and Himalayan glaciers and neither to link the black carbon in the atmosphere with the glaciers”

We would like to kindly draw your attention to the fourth assessment report of the IPCC, various scientific research and reports published carried out and published by individuals and reports published by institutions like Intergovernmental Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on Himalayan Glaciers. These researches substantiate the fact that climate change is accelerating glacial retreat in the Hindukush Himalayan region.

Mountaineer Mr. Apa Sherpa who has climbed Everest 19 times has observed changes in the mountain climate over the years. He reported seeing water 8, 000 meter above sea level where one has only witnessed snow in the past. Our own expedition to the Everest base camp has documented rapid changes in the mountain eco-systems. These changes in the climate have already made irreversible impacts on the life and livelihoods of the mountain community.

At the Regional Climate Change Conference FROM KATHMANDU TO COPENHAGEN A Vision for Addressing Climate Change Risks and Vulnerabilities in the Himalayas held in Kathmandu on August 31- September 1, 2009, South Asian countries, including India identified the HinduKush and Himalayan region as a climate change hot-spot to indicate changes due to climate change and how it would affect people and ecosystems from the mountains to the coasts.

We agree on the fact that this area requires further research to establish precise scientific evidences and critical knowledge gaps that exist. But observations and existing scientific literature indicate that unprecedented changes are happening very rapidly in the mountains. We need to further enhance our responses to climate change through the generation of required scientific data and also adaptation strategies at all levels with incremental adaptive steps meshing with agreed regional and global efforts to address the impacts of climate change.

We, the youth of South Asia request you to take a lead in the region to affectively tackle the problems of climate change. We also request you to raise the common voices of the region, including that of the Himalayas in the UNFCCC negotiations and other international forum.