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Long road from Bali

THE United Nations climate conference in Bali ended much as expected, in a fog of self-protection by the principal polluters. The United States kept to its anti-Kyoto treaty stance by blocking mention of fixed targets of carbon reduction, of 25-40 per cent by 2020 as proposed by Europe, in the main language of the Bali framework agreement. As the framework accord is itself only a statement of intent, to be used as a guide to produce a successor to the Kyoto pact by the end of 2009, the hard bargaining that is to come is painfully evident. Success in the next two years is not assured. The US was joined by Japan and Canada in holding off for as long as they could the day of reckoning. Newly industrialising nations were, conversely, not going to be dragooned into accepting mitigation programmes that are not only costly to execute and for which they lack the know-how, but which could impede their economic expansion. It has been estimated that the centuries of early industrialisation in America and Europe raised heat-trapping gases to their present level, which had not been reached for 650,000 years. The scientific accuracy of such a snapshot may be challenged, but not the deadly serious race by China, India and Brazil to reduce poverty and build infrastructure. Developed nations can hardly throttle their growth now on environmental grounds. This disjunction is hard to square when the common problem they face is the deterioration of the gifts of nature. It will continue to bedevil negotiations between unbalanced economic forces.

Yet, all was not gloom. The Bali conference did show some yield, although very slight, by the main emitters of carbon. The release of reams of scientific data on global warming by the UN climate panel has changed the thinking of governments. This has been the one bright spot in an otherwise depressing picture. For instance, the Group of 77 representing the developing world acknowledged humankind's shared responsibility in warding off planetary damage when it said it aimed 'to develop a climate-friendly path to development...Many of us are doing it anyway, for our gown good'. Even a stubborn holdout such as the US conceded that developing countries needed help with the use of clean technologies in industry through multilateral funding programmes and transfer of green technologies. Nations with forest covers large enough to influence weather patterns, such as Indonesia and Brazil, will receive incentives for halting forest stripping and with regeneration. All these are contained in the Bali framework pact. The little momentum that has been generated cannot be allowed to stall. The next two years will be decisive.

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