This past week, the global community saw the collection of delegations at the UN climate change conference in Warsaw, Poland (click here to visit the context in more detail at CBC news). Many looked forward to the active debate of climate change and the solutions to thwart the pending issue. But then, the delegates were rife in a state of deadlock.
“Developing” nations, namely China and India, objected to the word “commitment” in the resolution as they wanted to distinguish their responsibilities from developed nations. China, coherently, was the largest contributor to global carbon emissions in 2012. Previously, China and India had referenced an article from the 1992 UN convention on climate change to argue that it was only developed nations who had to make “commitments” to hinder climate change. At this recent conference, developed nations, such as the United States, expressed their desire to eliminate this distinction or “firewall” between the obligations of developed nations and developing nations. In the end, the word “commitment” was changed to “contribution” in the edited resolution. The revised resolution also gave more liberty for developed countries—with rich economies—to feel at ease that they were not going to be held accountable for any future climatic disasters in developing worlds.
Sufficient decisions were made at the conference, including reducing deforestation and aiding developing nations to transition towards cleaner energy. However, at the end of the day, is this enough? A climate activist for the World Wildlife Fund, Samantha Smith criticized the outcome of the annual conference with her remarks, “Negotiators in Warsaw should have used this meeting to take a big and critical step towards global, just action on climate change. That didn’t happen.”
The terms of the conference are expected to be adopted by 2015. Whether, we regard thwarting climate change with the word “commitment” or “contribution,” climate change is among us and it is something that the whole global community must account for.