Why an umbrella will no longer protect you from the rain.
Posted on 07. Jun, 2010 by Leela Raina in trackers
On sunday , for a moment I thought I was not in Bonn , but in India caught in one of the torrential monsoonal showers and of course of all days I wasn’t carrying an umbrella. Completely drenched I entered into an egyptian museum in the university market in Bonn ( in case you were wondering , yes there does exist a life outside the UNFCCC and we trackers do get a break ). In the late evening when I was prepared for more showers , my tck tck tck climate action umbrella did not only mange to get me drenched but also had the umbrella drip over me throughout the taxi ride to the city centre.
I love the rains, we welcome it in India as they provide instant relief from the really scorching heat. But here at the UNFCCC talks its only raining emissions as we see that among the acronyms and policy statements the essence of this just gets lost.
Its raining irresponsibility!
In the current negotiations at Bonn with context to the forestry mangement and land use patterns for the developed countries we find that there is no level of shame. Not only do developed countries not want to provide numbers under the kyoto protocol but they actually want to get away with producing more emissions.
Currupt consensus among the spokes of the umbrella.
Apart from the member countries of the umbrella group and the european union which is basically the developed world have built a corrupt consensus on creating this big hole in the umbrella.
The umbrella has holes
Just like you reference a particular amount of income to make the poverty line similarly you have the reference level for the forestry emissions for the developed world and like the Indian politicians tweak the methodology of calculating the poverty line you have the accounting rules which have apparent loopholes in calculating the emissions. In actual emission terms they could account for all the emissions of Spain.Japan- 80 megatonnes,Germany - 75 megatonnes of loopholes gained;Australia. 50 megatonnes and following suit are Austria and Finland.
Old is Gold.
The older the reference is , the more some countries will have to reduce hence most of them use the argument that it is hard for them to account for past forest management related emissions.
The G77 wears a raincoat
The G77 is in strong oppostion of the countries cheating there way through the forest management negotiations. In a contact group on saturday the G77 has made a proposal trying to bridge the loopholes and putting pressure on the annex 1.They propose a cap of x% on all the parties onthe reference level and also a quicker review of accounting methodologies to keep the annex 1 countries in check.
What should you do when it rains now?
You can withe stitch the holes or you could listen to G77 and carry your raincoats along or well you can just keep sitting in that negotiating room untill forever.
Its raining irresponsibility