African countries attending the fifteenth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) have expressed worry over the outcome of the conference following a document that was leaked by the host country giving out its predictions of the outcome of the conference.
Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Climate Change advisor George Wamukoya said in an interview here that COMESA and Africa as a whole were saddened by the development in which Denmark is alleged to have been holding informal meetings with selected countries.
Denmark on Monday held an informal meeting with selected number of countries including two African countries – South Africa and Lesotho at which a document was circulated and later retrieved from the meeting.
Sudan which currently chairs the G77 was not invited, forced it’s way in the meeting.
The document has however created a shiver among the African and developing countries as a whole being the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Initially, negotiations for the continuation of the Kyoto protocol are underway here in which groups like the Least Developed Countries, G77 and China and the African Working Group have been closed up negotiation for a legal binding deal.
Mr. Wamukoya said if parties to the Kyoto protocol were for a deal that benefits both the developing and developed countries, it is wrong for Denmark to stab the least developed countries to a political deal.
The negotiations to the post-Kyoto protocol started at a meeting in Bali at which members agreed that Copenhagen would be the final destination where a second commitment to the continuation of the treaty was due.
However the actions from the hosts give impressions that developing countries will not be favoured by the outcome.
He said in Bali two years ago, Denmark was a landmark for the developed countries to make their commitment towards their emission of gas.
He said Denmark was being partisan as it was not the member of the party coming up with the document in question but the host nation with a few countries of whom it had bilateral talks with.
“The content of the document does not even reflect all the issues currently under negotiation at the conference, it is in favour of the developed countries meaning that Africa still has to bear the effects of climate change in a more sever way than before.
The document also does not favour the two tracks that have been tabled by the Bali Action Plan as well as the Kyoto protocol; this is done to bring America into track as United States of America is not Part to the Kyoto Protocol”.
“The document is political while the Kyoto protocol is a legally binding instrument that parties to this legal binding follow, the document is open ended and kills the Kyoto protocol”
Meanwhile the G77 and China chairman Lumumba Stanislaus gave a strong warning against the move by the host nation to predict the outcome of the conference.
Mr Stanislaus said countries from developing nations are looking for a deal that is binding and favours all.
He said the G77 and China will not take anything less than having the Kyoto protocol continue into its second commitment.
ZANIS
How do you expect us to comment without knowing what the contents of that “said” document are? Ba LT, c’mmon, you can do better than this.
There should be a mass waklkout from such imperialist gatherings. These hypocrites in the first world claim to care about the planet and yet they are the same ones building nuclear weapons and stiffling resources to africa that inadvertently kills people. It just shows how callous they are that they would rather impose levies on emission limits and create climate debt. Since when does the environment care about how much money comes out of our pockets to pay for some conspiracy theory called climate change. This is just new age colonialism to stiffle african development under the hypocritic guise of saving the earth. A
If anything the west are the ones that needs to sort out their own climate issues because it’s there industrial age that brought about this havoc. I bet you they have a plan where they will sell us equipment to supposedly stop climate change and charge us on top of that. The europeans and americans are the ones that sent all that CO2 thats messing with the climate so if anything we africans need compensation .
There is no proof that the climate changes we are having are man-made. Problems have to be individually fixed independent of the weather. When I was young Africa had food and water shortages already.
Try to get honest leaders and birth control. The west does not want to be under a global government by the UN.