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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

18th conference on climate change opens

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20121126

DO­HA-The 18th Unit­ed Na­tions cli­mate change con­fer­ence (COP 18) opened in oil and gas-rich Qatar yes­ter­day with a call for ac­tion as ma­jor re­ports cite in­creased fre­quen­cy and in­ten­si­ty of ex­treme weath­er events and con­tin­ued rise in glob­al green­house gas­es.

Ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) Chris­tiana Figueres said the con­fer­ence in the Gulf Arab state had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to move in­to the im­ple­men­ta­tion stage of out­stand­ing is­sues.

Among them are the sec­ond com­mit­ment pe­ri­od of the Ky­oto Pro­to­col -the on­ly ex­ist­ing and bind­ing agree­ment un­der which de­vel­oped coun­tries com­mit to cut­ting green­house gas­es- from lengthy ne­go­ti­a­tions to im­ple­men­ta­tion as of next Jan­u­ary 1, and com­mit­ment of fi­nan­cial sup­port to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries which coun­tries have agreed must reach a lev­el of US$100 bil­lion a year by 2020.

Ne­go­tia­tors would al­so have to reach an ef­fec­tive, fair and am­bi­tious uni­ver­sal cli­mate agree­ment that is to be adopt­ed in 2015 and to en­ter in­to force from 2020. About 17,000 peo­ple from 194 coun­tries would at­tend the two-week long meet­ing at the Qatar Na­tion­al Con­ven­tion Cen­tre for the lat­est round of talks on cli­mate change.

At the for­mal open­ing, Figueres said the con­fer­ence was unique since it would ush­er in ma­jor mile­stones for process­es launched in two pre­vi­ous Asian Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COPs) in Ky­oto and Bali.

"Un­der your guid­ance and with im­por­tant in­put from the sub­sidiary bod­ies, CMP 8 (Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties serv­ing as the meet­ing of the Par­ties to the Ky­oto Pro­to­col) will mark the clo­sure of the first com­mit­ment pe­ri­od of the Ky­oto Pro­to­col and launch the pro­to­col in­to its next pe­ri­od of im­ple­men­ta­tion," she said.

She added: "Un­der your guid­ance and with im­por­tant in­put from the sub­sidiary bod­ies, COP 18 will move the Bali Ac­tion Plan from plan to ac­tion, from de­sign to the full and ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion that ex­pe­dites ur­gent re­sponse to cli­mate change and en­ables much need­ed fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance and tech­ni­cal sup­port for de­vel­op­ing, while clar­i­fy­ing the path for­ward on im­por­tant pend­ing is­sues."

The new­ly-elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties (COP 18/CMP 8), Ab­dul­lah bin Hamad Al-At­tiyah, chair­man of Qatar's Ad­min­is­tra­tive Con­trol and Trans­paren­cy Au­thor­i­ty, urged the con­fer­ence to stick to agreed timeta­bles and speed­i­ly im­ple­ment al­ready agreed de­ci­sions.

"Cli­mate change is a com­mon chal­lenge for hu­man­i­ty. We must work in earnest for a bet­ter fu­ture for present and for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. "We have a pre­cious op­por­tu­ni­ty over the com­ing days and we must make full use of it. Many del­e­gates have stressed the im­por­tance of fi­nal­is­ing work on time and that re­quires that we all show flex­i­bil­i­ty," he told in­ter­na­tion­al del­e­gates.

Civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions at­tend­ing the con­fer­ence al­so ex­pressed in­creas­ing con­cern that Do­ha was a cru­cial year if the UN process was to yield a glob­al, sci­ence-base, prin­ci­pled and legal­ly-bind­ing agree­ment on cli­mate change from now un­til 2020.

"Do­ha is a cru­cial turn­ing point to ad­dress the plan­e­tary emer­gency of cli­mate change. With the cur­rent lack of spe­cif­ic tar­gets, ad­e­quate fi­nance or re­al com­mit­ment, we are con­demn­ing our­selves to a ter­ri­fy­ing six-de­gree fu­ture," said Meena Ra­man, ne­go­ti­a­tion ex­pert, Third World Net­work.

The lat­est UN cli­mate change con­fer­ence opens as in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports warn that green­house gas­es which warmed the earth reached record lev­els. How­ev­er, all re­ports un­der­line that the tech­nol­o­gy, the fund­ing and the pol­i­cy op­tions to re­main be­low the two de­grees Cel­sius goal are al­ready avail­able, pro­vid­ed that gov­ern­ments and so­ci­eties take the nec­es­sary ac­tion rapid­ly enough.

The World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­gan­i­sa­tion said the amount of green­house gas­es in the at­mos­phere reached a new record high in 2011. Be­tween 1990 and 2011 there was a 30 per cent in­crease in ra­dia­tive forc­ing - the warm­ing ef­fect on our cli­mate - be­cause of car­bon diox­ide (CO2) and oth­er heat-trap­ping long-lived gas­es.

Since the start of the in­dus­tri­al era in 1750, about 375 bil­lion tonnes of car­bon have been re­leased in­to the at­mos­phere as CO2, pri­mar­i­ly from fos­sil fu­el com­bus­tion, ac­cord­ing to WMO's 2011 Green­house Gas Bul­letin, which had a spe­cial fo­cus on the car­bon cy­cle. About half of this car­bon diox­ide re­mains in the at­mos­phere, with the rest be­ing ab­sorbed by the oceans and ter­res­tri­al bios­phere.

"These bil­lions of tonnes of ad­di­tion­al car­bon diox­ide in our at­mos­phere will re­main there for cen­turies, caus­ing our plan­et to warm fur­ther and im­pact­ing on all as­pects of life on earth," said WMO sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Michel Jar­raud. "Fu­ture emis­sions will on­ly com­pound the sit­u­a­tion," he added. More than 100 min­is­ters are sched­uled to at­tend the high-lev­el seg­ment of the meet­ing, which be­gins on De­cem­ber 4 and ends with a de­ci­sion-mak­ing ple­nary on De­cem­ber 7.

The open­ing of the high-lev­el seg­ment will be at­tend­ed by UN sec­re­tary gen­er­al Ban Ki-moon.


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