Bali outcome fails to enthuse green activists

Green NGOs have expressed disappointment at the outcome of the UN summit on climate change in Bali despite the fact that the talks managed to get the world to agree to a common road map to reduce CO2 emissions.

The talks, which failed to set any targets on reduction in emissions, however, got the United States to agree to the fact that the CO2 emissions be cut by half by 2050 though the UN has targeted 80 per cent cuts by that year.

The US had refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which imposed binding emission reductions of 5 per cent on developed countries.

Reports from the United Nations cited that UN Under Secretary of State, Paula Dobriansky, talked about halving emissions by 2050.

"We are very committed to long-term greenhouse gas emission reductions," she said, adding the US would work with other large emitters to halve global emissions by 2050.

But the agreement is yet to set any targets for cutting emissions even as the scientists writing for the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have warned that the world has just eight more years to reverse the carbon emission trends.

IPCC Chairman RK Pachauri yesterday said the Bali agreement was a road map and hence stoped short of targets.

"That is unfortunate. But the fact that countries are talking of deep cuts is a positive development and one must welcome it," he said.

The Bali agreement, worked out at the last minute after talks had to be extended following the summit. Now, meetings are scheduled to be held in Poland in 2008 and in Denmark in 2009 to finally decide on the next plan of action.

Sunita Narain, director of the NGO, Centre for Science and Environment, told agencies that the Bali agreement was no agreement at all. "It is a repeat of the Rio earth summit 15 years back. The US attitude remains the same, for which the world will have to pay a heavy price," she said.

"The climate agreement finalised in Bali has been stripped of the emission reduction targets that science and humanity demands," NGO Greenpeace has said.

The key outcomes of the Bali summit:

All agree to talk for two more years

Ad hoc Working Group on Cooperative Action formed. First meeting in April 2008

Adaptation Fund Board to be set up

Pact on technology transfer for poor countries

US talks of 50 per cent cuts by 2050

The Bush Administration was humbled by the firm resolve of the developing countries ""China, India, Brazil, South Africa "" which came to Bali to play their fair share in global efforts to prevent dangerous climate change. However, they were in for a strategy by Bush to challenge all the issues vital to the millions who are already suffering from the impacts of climate change," said Srinivas Krishnaswamy of Greenpeace India.

He said that the US statement on halving emissions by 2050 is something which is not acceptable even by the standards of the IPCC report which says 80 per cent cuts have to come by.