GERMANY: NGOs Prod North to Meet CO2 Reduction Targets
BONN, Dic 24 (IPS) - Germany's non-governmental organisations (NGOs) want all industrialised nations to commit themselves to reducing their emissions of carbon dioxide to a level that is at least 20 percent below the 1990 level by the year 2005.
In a catalogue of demands listed in run-up to the Berlin ministerial meeting on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change next March, more than 50 NGOs are calling on the developed countries to start negotiating additional commitments.
These, they say, should contain specific targets and timetables for limiting emissions of methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorocarbons -- greenhouse gases not controlled by the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
The Berlin meet from March 28 to April 7 is the first session of the so-called 'Conference of the Parties' (COP) -- comprising 154 governments plus the European Union (EU) -- which signed the Climate Change Treaty at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
The COP will mark the formal beginning of the implementation of the treaty which has in the meantime been ratified by more than 90 countries and the EU.
The gathering in Germany's official federal capital will be preceded by the deliberations of the representatives from some 150 governments at U.N. headquarters in New York early next year.
In asking for a legally binding agreement, the German NGOs, organised in the 'Forum Environment and Development', in fact backed in a paper made available to IPS Tuesday, the demands of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which groups together 35 island states from around the world.
These countries feel particularly vulnerable to the risk that climate change will cause sea-levels to rise.
On their behalf, Trinidad and Tobago formally submitted a proposed protocol to the Climate Change Convention end of September beating the deadline by just a few days.
This action put the protocol on the official agenda for the COP in Berlin. Under the terms of the treaty, proposals for a protocol had to be submitted and circulated to governments by Sep 28, or six months before the start of the meeting.
But even before the AOSIS action, discussions at the August meeting of the inter-governmental negotiating committee in Geneva demonstrated that there may not be agreement among governments on the need for a protocol, let alone the specific contents of one.
© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service