This week, Belizeans tuning in to the Wake Up Belize morning show on KREM TV have been able to get live video updates of climate change negotiations in Durban, South Africa, and have been able to see the key officials representing our interests — including Caribbean Community Climate Change experts — discuss the pressing issues with Mose Hyde all the way from the African continent. The concurrent 17th annual Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (abbreviated COP) and 7th Conference of the Parties, which serves as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) kicked off on Monday, November 28 in Durban in the Republic of South Africa.
The annual meeting, established after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1995 (which is a commitment of the countries of the world to take certain stipulated measures to curb their actions which contribute to climate change and mitigate climate change’s effects), calls together all signatories to the Protocol, numbering about 192, to assess progress in the implementation of those measures and adopt decisions and resolutions to further enforce the Protocol.
At the last meeting held in Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico, a decision was taken to establish a Green Climate Fund, to which developed countries were to contribute US$100 billion by 2020, to help less developed and developing countries address the impact of global warming and climate change.
Belize, represented by Ambassador to the European Union (EU) Joy Grant, is a member of the Transitional Committee established in Cancun to design the Fund and write a proposal for its start-up. That committee has submitted its report which had been adopted as the best compromise possible, but Saudi Arabia and the United States both rejected it at the conclusion of the Cancun meeting, and Nicaragua and Cuba have threatened to do the same at this meeting.
The Fund is just one aspect of the wide-ranging negotiations taking place, and there to observe it all under the auspices of the UBAD Educational Foundation (UEF) and Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) is KREM Television director and co-host of Wake Up Belize Morning Vibes (WUB), Evan “Mose” Hyde.
Hyde sees the event as an opportunity for KREM Television to make climate change an issue that Belizeans at the lowest levels care about. “…We have a responsibility to those coming after us to become a part of this discussion… we must raise the awareness in the grassroots community that this conversation is real and relevant to them, and that they must play a part in it,” he told Amandala in an interview this afternoon (Belize time).
Hyde and KREM Radio senior technician and engineer J.C. Arzu have this week made historic daily live-stream broadcasts from Durban (since Tuesday; they called in on Monday), about eight hours ahead of Belize time, on the WUB, and in several interviews he has reached out in particular to representatives of South Pacific island states such as Tonga and Samoa, who share the same concerns as Belize about global warming and in particular its effects on the rise of the sea level, increase in global temperature (2011 was the 10th hottest year on record according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)) and increases in violent weather patterns such as tornados and hurricanes. For these countries, he said, “the fact that in 25 years there may not be a Samoa, or a Tonga, that they are faced with going into oblivion, is a real and everyday concern to them.”
Mose Hyde told us that climate change “is not a Hollywood movie. It’s not like this year you’ll get 10 storms, and the next year 30. It doesn’t happen all at once; it is a slow deterioration of favorability in the environment that will put small island states at risk…”
He explained that at the Durban conference, only a few are not still convinced that climate change is a real, “looming, present and future danger to humanity” – everyone, from the Himalayas to the Andes in Peru to astronauts at NASA are overwhelmed by the sheer overwhelming level of scientific data in support of global warming and its insidious effects, to which, he warned, Belize is especially vulnerable and exposed. In addition to storms, there is the matter of coral bleaching of our precious barrier reef, extended drought and other events.
The Caribbean Climate Change Centre, he told us, is a world-recognized body that has at the ready the data Belize needs to address the issue and the population needs to recognize that resource, which the World Bank and United Nations have lauded and other areas of the world are modeling in their own responses.
Belize’s official representatives, aside from Ambassador Grant, include director of the Protected Areas Conservation Trust (PACT), Sharon Ramclam; former deputy chief meteorologist Ann Gordon; Carlos Fuller, international and regional liaison officer for the CCCCC, and Dr. Paul Flowers and Chief Forest Officer Wilmer Sabido, with Minister of Natural Resources and Deputy Prime Minister Gaspar Vega headed to South Africa next week to address the conference.
Belize’s main negotiators, Ambassador Grant, Fuller and Gordon, are dealing with different aspects of the conferences. As a member of the Transitional Committee, Ambassador Grant is maintaining Belize’s position that the recommendations of the Transitional Committee should be adopted and that work should begin to ensure that a mechanism is established to ensure that the fund is capitalized and maintained with adequate and predictable funding.
Meanwhile, Fuller has been invited to co-chair technical groups addressing certain aspects of technology on climate change and present conclusions and a draft decision to the full conference on December 9, and Gordon, now with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, is with the Group of 77 on research and system observations, with conclusions due by Saturday of this week.
Other issues at the conference, according to KREM TV’s Mose Hyde, include the question of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the largest nation on earth, and categorized as a “developing country” under the protocol.
More developed countries such as the United States and Canada, the latter of which has threatened to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, believe that the PRC has escaped on the issue of emission of greenhouse gases and harmful products, and want it reclassified and better managed.
There is also the wide gap between developed and less-developed nations, the latter of whom have been experiencing the most adverse effects of climate change despite being the lesser contributors to it, and who now expect the more developed nations to foot the bill for greater education and adaptation strategies.
That request, Hyde notes, comes in a time when the U.S. especially has faced economic hardship and its President, Barack Obama, must deal with sustained opposition to its “green” policies from the Republican Party, whose leaders are mostly opposed to the very idea of global warming and are backed by the coal and petroleum industries.
Add to that mix the sustained pressure from NGO’s and environmental groups, along with private sector, civil society and other observers, and the reported possibility of protests at the meeting site, and COP 17/CMP 7 becomes a veritable “soup” of ideas and interests – and a great mining ground for the press corps.
It is widely believed, Hyde told us, that the 2009 conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, was a “flop” and disastrous, and that Cancun in 2010 was moderately better. Durban 2011 represents, according to some, the last chance before the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 to get a new agreement in place to reduce greenhouse gases. The discussion continues from year to year and 2012’s event is scheduled to take place in Doha, Qatar.
The broadcasts of the COP17 conference represent Belizean television’s first foray across the Atlantic, and the fact that it is in Africa, which Kremandala has always believed is the spiritual and ancestral home of our Creole and Garifuna populations, makes it a matter of pride for Kremandala. Receiving accreditation for the event, Hyde explained, was also a recognition of KREM Television’s dedication to positive, productive, enhancing content that develops and widens the Belizean mind.
To that end, there will be special productions in the second week of Mose’s “African renaissance” dedicated to the sights and sounds of the Mother Continent.
The broadcasts are being sponsored by Belize Telemedia Limited, United Airlines, the Social Security Board and Oceana. Mose would also like to thank all those others who have made his trip possible.