Namibia - CountryWatch

Global Environmental Concepts Environmental Overview
all of whom warned of the catastrophic impact of climate change on their citizens. Tuvalu also called
for more aggressive action, such as an amendment to the 1992 agreement, which would focus on sharp
greenhouse gas emissions and the accepted rise in temperatures, due to the impact the rise in seas. The
delegation from Kiribati joined the call by drawing attention to the fact that one village had to be abandoned
due to waist-high water, and more such effects were likely to follow. Kiribati's Foreign Secretary,
Tessie Lambourne, warned that the people of Kiribati could well be faced with no homeland in
the future saying, "Nobody in this room would want to leave their homeland." But despite such impassioned
pleas and irrespective of warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that
the rise in sea level from melting polar ice caps would deleteriously affect low-lying atolls such as
such as Tuvalu and Kiribati in the Pacific, and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, the oil-giant Saudi
Arabia was able to block this move.
Meanwhile, within the developed countries, yet another power struggle was brewing. The European
Union warned it would only agree to raise its target of 20 percent greenhouse gas emissions reductions
to 30 percent if the United States demonstrated that it would do more to reduce its own emissions. It
was unknown if such pressure would yield results. United States President Barack Obama offered a
"provisional" 2020 target of 17 percent reductions, noting that he could not offer greater concessions at
Copenhagen due to resistance within the United States Congress, which was already trying to pass a
highly controversial "cap and trade" emissions legislation. However, should that emissions trading bill
fail in the Senate, the United States Environment Protection Agency's declaration that greenhouse
gases pose a danger to human health and the environment was expected to facilitate further regulations
and limits on power plants and factories at the national level. These moves could potentially
strengthen the Obama administration's offering at Copenhagen. As well, President Obama also signaled
that he would be willing to consider the inclusion of international forestry credits.
Such moves indicated willingness by the Obama administration to play a more constructive role on the
international environmental scene than its predecessor, the Bush administration. Indeed, ahead of his
arrival at the Copenhagen summit, President Barack Obama's top environmental advisors promised to
work on a substantial climate change agreement. To that end, United States Environmental Protection
Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said at a press conference, "We are seeking robust engagement
with all of our partners around the world." But would this pro-engagement assertion yield actual
results?
By Dec. 12, 2009, details related to a draft document prepared by Michael Zammit Cutajar, the head of
the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action, were released at the Copenhagen climate
conference. Included in the document were calls for countries to make major reductions in carbon
emissions over the course of the next decade. According to the Washington Post, industrialized
countries were called on to make cuts of between 25 percent and 40 percent below 1990 levels --
reductions that were far more draconian than the United States was likely to accept. As discussed
above, President Obama had offered a provisional reduction target of 17 percent. The wide gap
between the released draft and the United States' actual stated position suggested there was much more
negotiating in the offing if a binding agreement could be forged, despite the Obama administration's
claims that it was seeking greater engagement on this issue.
In other developments, the aforementioned call for financial support of developing countries to deal
with the perils of climate change was partly answered by the European Union on Dec. 11, 2009. The
European bloc pledged an amount of 2.4 billion euros (US$3.5 billion) annually from 2010 to 2012.
Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren of Sweden -- the country that holds the rotating presidency of
the European Union at the time of the summit -- put his weight behind the notion of a "legally binding
deal." Meanwhile, Yvo de Boer, a top United Nations climate change official, focused less on the
essence of the agreement and more on tangible action and effects saying, "Copenhagen will only be a
success if it delivers significant and immediate action that begins the day the conference ends."
The division between developed and developing countries in Copenhagen reached new heights on
Dec. 14, 2009, when some of the poor and less developed countries launched a boycott at the summit.
199 Namibia Review 2013