African Anger at European Calls for 'New Mandate'

By VIOLET MENGO

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA - Today - Civil society leaders from across Africa, with support from global movements, launched a letter to climate negotiators that warns that focusing on launching a new mandate at the Durban talks risks backtracking on promises to the poor and the planet.

The letter calls on developed countries to urgently scale up the ambition of their emission reduction targets and reminds negotiators that current emission reduction pledges will lead us to a world that is 5°C warmer. For Africa, this means 7 or 8°C of warming and unimaginable human suffering.

Michele Maynard from the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) said:

"Following what some delegates say you would think that the purpose of these negotiations was a 'new roadmap' - that's just not true. Of central and agreed importance is the need to negotiate deep emission cuts as a part of a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. Coming up with new 'mandates' and 'roadmaps' is a distraction from that very necessary action. It's also a breach of faith, in 2007 all countries agreed to do this."

"A climate agreement that does what is necessary to protect Africa is like cooking a good recipe. It needs just enough emission cuts and a dollop of finance and technology for responding to climate impacts. We've got the recipe from the Bali Action Plan, we've got all the ingredients, even started cutting up some of the vegetables, but now some people want to cook something else. That's a recipe for doing-nothing and delay."

"This letter is a clarion call to negotiators - you either see the science and recognize its urgency; or you don't. You either hear what the world's poorest people are saying and care; or you don't. Any outcome which locks in the current proposed emission cuts or puts off talking about how to bring those cuts into line with the science is utterly unacceptable."

The letter, signed by movements representing hundreds of organisations across Africa and the world, includes the follow quotations:

"Agreeing to a new mandate that replaces the Kyoto Protocol would mean action is effectively delayed for five to ten years. A new treaty will take several years to negotiate with several more years needed for ratification. Further, there is no assurance that countries that have repudiated the existing legal architecture, like the United States, will agree to or ratify a new agreement, nor that such agreement will not be a weak and ineffective "pledge and review" system."

"While many developed countries seek to end the Kyoto Protocol, they simultaneously attempt to retain and expand their favored elements of the Kyoto Protocol, like the CDM, in a new agreement and shift their responsibilities onto developing countries. Without legally binding emission reductions under the Kyoto Protocol, developed countries must not be allowed to have access to the carbon markets."