Sunday, September 16, 2012

Climate and food prices -- severe impact

Jaya Ramachandran in the Eurasia Review via IDN:  While there are hardly any signs of substantive and forward-looking agreements being reached at the United Nations climate change conference from November 26 to December 7, 2012 in Doha, latest research cautions that impact of climate change on future food prices is being underestimated.

“By the end of the most recent round of climate talks in Bangkok (August 30 to September 5), there was no movement from developed countries to increase the level of their ambition with regard to emissions reductions – the low pledges, subject to many conditions, made in Durban, South Africa, last December remain unchanged,” wrote Chee Yoke Ling and Hilary Chiew of the Third World Network (TWN) in an article for the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) web site.

“Even as scientific evidence mounts on worsening climate change, developed countries are not willing to meet their legal obligations to make deep greenhouse gases cuts under the Kyoto Protocol,” they concluded.

Representatives of civil society organizations reacted angrily at the end of the UN climate talks in Bangkok, and said it is apparent that the 8th annual session of the Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol to be held in the Qatari capital Doha will not approve further action on climate change this decade.

“The United States government is opposed to a top-down structure under the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period,” said Meena Raman, legal advisor to the TWN. “The United States wants a voluntary pledging system to cut emissions that is not based on science nor based on equity.”

She added: “The United States and its allies want the UN to ‘be silent’ on issues where they haven’t yet reached agreement. To be clear that means they want the UN to be silent on solving climate change. The US is taking a wrecking ball to the climate convention and any hope of stopping run away climate catastrophe.”...

Threshing rice near Malang, in Indonesia. Shot by Dhr. J.D. (Jacob Derk) de Jonge (Fotograaf/ photographer), from the Tropenmuseum Collection, via Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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