COP18 "Historic Chance" to Save African Continent, African Official Says

Doha, November 30 (QNA) - The eighteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 18) negotiations are a "historic chance" to reach an agreement on lowering Greenhouse Gas emissions five years after the negotiations of the Bali Conference, the Chairperson of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) Emmanuel Dlamini said Friday. Speaking during a press conference held today by the AGN on the sidelines of COP18, Dlamini expressed his hope that the international community can agree in Doha on a "road map" for lowering Greenhouse Gas emissions, after negotiations stumbled in Bali in December 2007. Dlamini issued an emphatic warning to the international community, saying that the impacts of greenhouse emissions, particularly extreme weather, were becoming more evident now in Africa than in the past. He called on the international community to act swiftly in order to save the black continent before it was too late. Extreme weather are unusual weather changes that include heat waves or even cold waves as well as hurricanes. He added that the African Group of Negotiations came to the COP18 negotiations table in Doha with a clear set of objectives, with protecting the African continent topping that list. Dlamini said that more than a million people in the African continent were already suffering from the impacts of climate change. He warned that, one day, the impact of climate change on the ecological system in Africa will reach "unimaginable" levels. He added that the impact of climate change will also affect Africans, especially which they already have to contend with poverty and food security issues. The Chairperson of the African Group of Negotiators said that the current policies to limit the impact of climate change were not doing the trick, criticizing developed countries saying that they were being selective in dealing with the Kyoto Protocol. Dlamini said that the position of developed countries prevented AGN from dealing seriously with the threat of climate change on the African continent. He added that he looked for solid agreements that did not allow the agreeing parties to back down on their commitments in the future. He said that the AGN was ready to sign the second commitment period of Kyoto starting January 1. The African Group Chairperson said that tackling climate change requires 'urgent response', warning that everyone is talking about one case that "cannot be changed at a short time'. "We want to reduce the earth's temperature to less than 1 percent," he said. "For Africa, the talk about reducing it by 1.5 percent would be a disaster," according to Dlamini. "We want legal amendments to mitigate the degrees, and need the second commitment period under the Protocol to be from 2013 until 2017," he added, stressing that Africa wants the duration of this commitment to be 5 years. "It Africa does not want to see the second commitment period less than that." The African Group, he said, has a goal to reduce the degrees to 40 percent. "This means that we need to agree with nonmember states to become parties to the Convention and joint us." He stressed that all parties to the Protocol agreed on the need to find a "legal instrument" for the Convention in the second commitment period, to mitigate the effects of climate change, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as to adapt to it, and to reach a mechanism for technology transfer and financing by developed countries. "These are our demands that we have been seeking for a long time," he said, calling for an action on all of these issues in the Doha negotiations. Asked about the Doha negotiations, Dlamini said, "We are still in the first week of negotiations, and discussions and consultations are underway. And I think that the progress we are making is not enough, but we are here to negotiate and we are ready to work in order to reach a result in Doha." He was pessimistic when he spoke about the inflicted harm and the situation in the Continent as a result of the effects of climate change saying, "I cannot imagine the impact of this phenomenon on the Continent's population, who are having great difficulty in paying for their food, and I see that the provision of food in the future will be elusive". (QNA)