Climate negotiators from 145 countries and leading scientists opened a weeklong conference yesterday to complete a concise guide on the state of global warming and what can be done to stop the Earth from overheating.
Environmentalists and authors of the report expected tense discussions on what should be included and what is being left out of the last of four UN reports to be issued this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
The document to be issued on Saturday sums up in a few dozen pages the scientific consensus on how rapidly the Earth is warming and the effects already observed; the impact it could have for billions of people; and what steps can be taken to keep the planet's temperature from rising to disastrous levels.
A summary of about 25 pages will be negotiated line-by-line this week, then adopted by consensus.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will attend the launch of the report, which will provide the factual underpinning for a crucial meeting next month in Bali, Indonesia.
That conference will begin exploring a new global strategy to curb greenhouse gas emissions after the 2012 expiration of the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the landmark agreement that assigned binding reduction targets to 36 countries.
Janos Pasztor of the UN Environmental Program, a parent body of the IPCC said this week's report, synthesizing the three scientific reports released earlier this year, will be the one document that the thousands of delegates at Bali "will be packing in their suitcases and carrying in their back pockets".
This week's report will be the first to include a brief chapter on "robust findings and key uncertainties", in which the authors pick out what they believe are the most relevant certainties and doubts about climate change.
"We summarize which kind of things we are very confident in and what is much less certain. That can be quite a complex discussion," said Bert Metz, one of about 40 authors. Some delegations want to stress certain points that others would prefer to avoid, he said.
Among the uncertainties cited in an early draft: the lack of data from key areas of the world, conflicting studies on the effects of cloud cover and carbon soaked up by oceans, and projections on how planners in developing countries will factor climate change into their decisions.
The World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), one of several environmental groups invited to observe the process, said yesterday "governments cut vital facts and important information" during the negotiations.
Without naming them, the WWF accused governments of "politically inspired trimming" of facts from the summaries, which it said diluted the urgency to make deep cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article