Africa’s wants more than “climate change compensation” – Ethiopia’s PM
By Tesfa-alem Tekle
September 4,2009 (ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi who is elected to lead the African delegation to the Copenhagen World Climate Change conference said on Thursday that Africa demands more than just compensations to climate change damages from the rich nations.
“Africa’s primary interest is not to claim compensation to damages caused by global warming but to prevent that from happening most precisely because Africa’s ecosystems are amongst the most fragile in the world and hence highly vulnerable to catastrophic changes due to small changes in temperature.” Meles said at a meeting of the African Partnership Forum on Climate Change in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.
“Temperature rise of 2 degree centigrade is practically unavoidable” he underlined adding “Africa will live with the damage caused by the unavoidable levels of global warming hence we have no other option but to seek compensation and assistance to limit the damage.”
“What we are not prepared to live with is global warming above the minimum avoidable level.”
Meles stressed that Africa would not accept any global deal that does not limit global warming to the minimum unavoidable level, “no matter what levels of compensation and assistance are promised to us.” Meles stresses.
Developing nations accuse the rich of failing to take the lead in setting deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, and say they are trying to get the poor to shoulder more of the burden of emission curbs without providing aid and technology.
The outlines of the AU climate position include calling on developed countries to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to a level 40 percent below their 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 80 percent those levels by 2050, according to an AU report e-mailed to reporters last month.
The AU position also calls for developed countries to pay the developing world $200 billion by 2020 to help them reduce carbon emissions through projects like reforestation. The AU is asking developed countries to pay the developing world $67 billion a year to finance projects such as sea walls to adapt to the impacts of climate change like rising ocean levels.
‘WALK OUT’ OF CLIMATE TALKS
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi who has become continent’s most outspoken advocate on climate change says a united Africa will demand equal partner status at the global climate summit and he threatens that African nations will walk out of the Copenhagen World Climate Change conference if their demands are undermined.
“I do not want to be misunderstood,” said Meles, “Africa will not be there to express its participation by merely warming the chairs or making perfunctory statements. We want to be and deserve to be in the thick of it. While we will reason with everyone to achieve our objective, we will not rubber stamp an agreement by the powers that be as the best we could get for the moment. We will use our numbers to delegitimize any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position.
“If needs be, we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threaten to be another rape of our continent.”
The Ethiopian Prime Minister was chosen this week to lead the unified African delegation at the Copenhagen summit, where negotiations will take place on a successor to the Kyoto climate treaty.
Meles will head a 12-member delegation representing the 53-nation African Union in Copenhagen. He will be joined by AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, who holds the rotating AU chairmanship, and the leaders of Algeria, Congo, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Uganda.
(ST)