Bali Action Plan (Roadmap)
AT the United Nations Framework Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) on the island of Bali in Indonesia in December, 2007, the participating nations adopted the Bali Roadmap (also known as the Bali Action Plan) as a two-year process to finalizing a binding agreement in 2009 in Copenhagen.
Representatives from over 180 countries attended, together with observers from intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations. Negotiations on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol dominated the conference.
Initial EU proposals called for global emissions to peak in 10 to 15 years and to decline to “well below half” of the 2000 level by 2050 for developing countries, and for developed countries to achieve emissions levels 20-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
The United States strongly opposed these numbers, at times backed by Japan, Canada, Australia and Russia. The resulting compromise mandates “deep cuts in global emissions” with references to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report.
What was agreed?
Cutting Emissions
The nations acknowledged that “evidence for global warming is unequivocal, and that humans must reduce emissions to reduce the risks of “severe climate change impacts”.
There was a strong consensus for updated changes for both developed and developing countries. Although specific numbers to cut emissions were not agreed upon, many countries agreed there was a need for “deep cuts in global emissions” and that “developed country emissions must fall 10-40% by 2020″.
Forests
The nations pledged “policy approaches and positive incentives” to protect forests.
Adaptation
The nations opted for enhanced co-operation to “support urgent implementation” of measures to protect poorer countries against climate change impacts.
Technology transfer
The nations said they would consider how to facilitate the transfer of clean technologies from industrialised nations to the developing countries.
Timescales
Four major UNFCCC meetings to implement the Bali Roadmap were planned for 2008. The first was held in either March or April and the second in June. The third was held in Berlin in September, followed by a major meeting in Poznan, Poland in December 2008.
The negotiations process is scheduled to conclude in November 2009 at a major summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Charges of Hypocrisy
It has been debated whether the Bali conference achieved anything significant. But many observers agreed that the conference contributed significantly to global warming, as follows:
- A November 25, 2007 article in Times Online reported estimates that the conference would release the equivalent of 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide, considered by leading climate scientists to be the biggest single cause of global warming and climate change.
- A December 18, 2007 article in the Sydney Morning Herald revealed new information that brought this total even higher. According to the article, a special custom air conditioning system was installed specifically for the conference.
The air conditioning system used hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HFCs), an outdated refrigerant gas used mostly by cold-drink distributors and one that is especially bad for global warming.
The article stated, “… the refrigerant is a potent greenhouse gas, with each kilogram at least as damaging as 1.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Investigators at the Balinese resort complex at Nusa Dua, where the conference was held, counted 700 cylinders of the gas, each of them weighing 13.5 kilograms, and the system was visibly leaking.”
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