It's Getting Warmer

Week one of the Climate Conference has just finished and I’m (Dave) tired. About 5,000 diplomats, activists, and members of the media have descended upon the sprawling UNEP facility in Northern Nairobi to hash out what the world is, and is not doing to combat global warming. Unfortunately, it is more of the latter than the former that is in discussion. The latest scientific estimates state that we are fast approaching the threshold concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that will raise global temperatures enough to cause dangerous interference with the climate and wreak havoc on cities, towns, and villages across the globe. Time is running out to turn things around and the U.S. - the world’s largest contributor of GHGs - remains on the sidelines, like a stubborn bully who refuses to listen to the teacher. Even those Parties, like the EU and Japan, who have committed to reduce emissions, are still experiencing increases. On top of all that, much of the developing world, especially here in Africa, has not been provided much opportunity to participate, even though most of world’s largest forested ecosystems (the Amazon, the Congo Basin, Indonesia) - which serve as giant storehouses of GHGs - are located in the global South.

Part of the reason for bringing the Conference to Kenya was to symbolize the need to address the inequities in the current system under the Kyoto Protocol. The basic problem is that countries with the most biological resources but few industrial ones, such as much of Africa, have generally been left out of the first round of commitments through 2012. Instead, the focus is on reducing emissions from industrial polluters in developed countries, an essential priority. The only way a country like Kenya can contribute directly is through a tool known as the Clean Development Mechanism, whereby polluters in developed countries may offset some of their emissions by financing projects in the developing world that reduce emissions. Forestry projects, such as protecting existing forests or reforesting a degraded area, represent the greatest opportunity for such emissions reductions in generally undeveloped places like Kenya or the Congo Basin. Indeed, if such projects were widely implemented, they could support the sustainable development of vast parts of the world that might otherwise industrialize in a much more destructive way. Unfortunately, the rules of the game were not drafted by the poorest and most vulnerable nations in mind, even though the vast forests contained in many of those countries represent one of the best ways of reducing GHG emissions from overwhelming the global climate system.

Hopefully, the delegates and other decision-makers here in Nairobi will get the message and begin to develop a more inclusive and effective system for beyond 2012 - one that includes the poorest among us. However, I am doubtful the location will play much of a role, given the fact that most participants are scared to hell by Nairobi’s dangerous reputation (someone told me the other day that Nairobi has overtaken Johannesburg as Africa’s most dangerous city). As a result, their experience is confined to the secure UNEP facilities and their colonial-style hotels (and perhaps a safari to the Maasai Mara). Only a generation ago one of those hotels, the Stanley, had signs posted that read “No Dogs, No Blacks.” Although the sign is long gone, the gulf between the developed and developing world certainly is not.