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]]>Joyraz fell just after reaching his half century consisting six boundaries and Pinak who struck five boundaries and the only maximum in the innings was out for 60 when the score was 157.
Nazmul Hossain and Mehedi drove visitors home with 32 balls to spare unbeaten on 23 and 15 respectively.
South African bowling was errant and they conceded 37 extras including 34 wides. Dayyan Galiem and Dean Foxcroft picked up one wicket apiece.
Earlier, Right and left bowling combinations of Bangladeshi seamers Abdul Halim and Mehedi Hasan Rana picked early wickets and only Wiaan Mulder of the home side scored a substantial innings of 62 amid regular fall of wicket.
Halim picked up 3-22 and skipper Mehedi picked up 2-27, while Rana Saleh Ahmed and Mosabbek Hossain picked up a wicket each.
The second match will take place at the same venue on Tuesday.
-With New Age input
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]]>A last moment drama blew a fresh air into the Durban climate conference as the US surprisingly agreed to an EU proposal that says the bloc would sign the second phase of the legally binding Kyoto protocol, provided all major economies sign a legal climate deal by 2015.
But frayed and tired negotiators are yet to reach their goal as India rejected the proposal and China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gas, has yet to endorse it.
The EU proposal, which it calls a road map to a new climate deal, has been backed by more than 120 countries.
But even if the Kyoto protocol gets a second lease of life, it would deliver very little in terms of cutting greenhouse gas and checking rising temperature as the EU represents only 11 percent of the global greenhouse gas emission. And the EU was anyway committed to reducing carbon emission by 20 percent by 2020.
The surprise US declaration came when Todd Stern, US special envoy for climate change, told a press conference: “The EU has called for a roadmap. We support that.”
The EU wants action from other countries as the Kyoto Protocol accounts for just 15 percent of world emissions as it was never ratified by the US and does not cover major economies such as China and India.
Kyoto protocol, the only legally binding agreement on emission, was signed in 1997 and is to expire in 2012. This is why a second commitment period is so important if the world has to bind itself within the target of keeping the global temperature rise to 2 degree Celsius by the end of this century.
But when the Kyoto was signed, the countries which committed to cutting emission accounted for 70 percent of the greenhouse gas. Since then China and India, which were not obliged to cut emission, have emerged as the biggest and the third biggest polluters. The US never signed the commitment.
As such, even with the EU signing the second commitment of the protocol, that would cover only 11 percent of the global greenhouse gas after Japan, Canada, Russia and Australia have walked out. And environmentalists see it a great defeat in the fight to check global warming that has been causing havoc across the world, more so in the poorer countries.
Chris Huhne, Britain’s minister for energy and climate change, declared the United States was giving ground in the face of a united call from two-thirds of the world’s nations.
“I think the US is reflecting the pressure that’s been brought to bear and is continuing to be brought to bear on many of the other members here who have yet to agree,” he said.
But other big emitters such as Brazil and South Africa have said they are willing to discuss the proposed programme.
The EU road map says negotiations should begin soon on a new global emission cut agreement under which all the major emitters would make commitments by 2015 to cut emissions, starting from 2020.
The US is reluctant to agree to specific dates yet but wants negotiations to start promptly.
-With The Daily Star input
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]]>UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and South African President Jacob Zuma are trying hard to get a decision that will keep the Kyoto Protocol on virtual life support until all countries find a way of sorting out a new legally binding mechanism in which all countries will be participants.
Negotiators think that the lowest possible outcome of the Durban climate conference could be that the EU will ‘pledge’ to cut their emission but will not enter the second commitment through an agreement. Meanwhile, other countries which are not in the Kyoto protocol will discuss and find a way to enter it at a later date.
A harder proposition is that the countries which signed the protocol to cut emission will not ratify the second commitment but will agree to enter it provided the other big polluters commit themselves to cutting their emissions too.
But this looks difficult to achieve because the US is in a mood to talk out the conference without any commitment.
“As the situation evolves now, it seems that Kyoto will be left on life support,” said Dr Saleemul Haque, senior research fellow of the International Institute for Environment and Development.
There is also talk about reviewing the achievements of the Kyoto Protocol in 2015. The BASIC group comprising Brazil, South Africa, India and China — countries which are under tremendous pressure to legally bind their emissions, have taken a position that it should be reviewed as to how far the countries which had agreed in Kyoto to cut emissions had kept their commitment. BASIC has demanded this as a pressure tactic as evidence is clear that the Kyoto countries did not cut their emission as promised.
In such a situation, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has noted that if the current rate of carbon emission continues, global temperature will rise by up to 3 degree Celsius from the pre-industrial period by the end of this century. But the last climate conference in Cancun had targeted keeping it at 2 degrees although the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) had demanded a cap of 1.5 degree Celsius.
“It was agreed at the Kyoto conference that greenhouse gas emission would be reduced by 5 percent from the 1990 level. Instead, it has risen by 17 percent, making the situation even more precarious and reaching almost a tipping point,” said Dr Atiq Rahman, executive director of Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS).
Meanwhile, the LDCs have called on the developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emission by at least 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
-With The Daily Star input
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]]>The window was proposed at the last climate conference at Cancun and its modalities were approved yesterday.
Bangladesh and Canada are the co-chairs of this new window, which will provide ways for countries to assess their loss and damage from climate change.
Once they can quantify their damage, the countries will then be able to demand funds from the window.
So, when a cyclone will hit Bangladesh, it will follow the modalities to assess the damage and then claim funds.
The new window will go into operation at the next climate conference at Doha next year.
Meantime, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) yesterday at a press conference said not all hopes are lost for the Kyoto Protocol and funds.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UNFCC that hosts the conference, said a ray of hope can be seen at least on two issues — Kyoto protocol second commitment period and an adaptation fund.
She said many countries have agreed to commit to the second commitment and hoped that a compromise agreement will take place.
Kyoto protocol, the only legally binding emission agreement that was signed in 1997 is to expire in 2012 and efforts are afoot to give it a new lifeline by asking countries to assign it for a second term.
But complexities have arisen as US is not interested to sign it and neither is India.
-With The Daily Star input
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]]>Durban burned with sweltering heat yesterday and the UN’s weather agency World Meteorological Organisation’s just-released report that 2011 is the 10th hottest year since records began in 1850 had probably something to do with a new-found formula to save the Kyoto Protocol.
The compromise formula to give a fresh lifeline to Kyoto Protocol that ends next year suggested that the countries which had signed the legal binding on emission should continue their commitment for a second phase. In return, the USA which did not sign the protocol should commit to cut carbon emission earlier than 2020.
However, politics has once again complicated the new formula as the US is firm on its stance that it would not talk anything about emission cut before 2020. And India, the fourth biggest carbon emitter, has outright rejected any commitment.
But a silver line appeared with China saying it is ready to cap its emission. Chinese press has also slated Canada’s decision to leave the protocol.
With such undercurrents flowing high, the climate conference at Durban looks set to pick up more heat in the coming days. The worrying prospect is that if countries fail to commit to the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the funding to the poor and developing countries through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) would be dead as well.
Last year about $1.2 billion had flown to the developing and poor countries in CDM. The CDM allows emission-reduction projects in developing countries to earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits. These credits can be traded and sold, and used by industrialised countries to a meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.
A new tension is also folding regarding the CDM between the poor countries and the developing countries like India, Brazil and China. The major part of the CDM fund has flown to India and China because of their solar and wind power projects. The LDCs now want that CDM should be specifically focused on the poor countries and not the developing countries.
Meantime, as the debates continue, Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), yesterday said scientific evidence is clear about weather extremities because of climate change. He also said different parts of the world are witnessing different outcomes and the problems of the flood deltas (Bangladesh is one of them) are witnessing heightened crises.
He mentioned the latest IPCC special report on risks from extreme events as evidence of his claims.
The report has said since 1950 extreme weather conditions are witnessed and heavy rainfall will increase in the 21st century. Frequency of warm and cold spells will also increase and it is likely that the average maximum wind speed of tropical cyclones like typhoons and hurricanes will increase throughout the coming century.
Droughts will intensify over the coming century in southern Europe and the Mediterranean region, central Europe, central North America, Central America and Mexico, northeast Brazil, and southern Africa.
At the same time it is very likely that average sea level rise will contribute to upward trends in extreme sea levels in extreme coastal high water levels.
So when such signs and warnings are visible, Pachauri said time is ticking by to fight such a grim future.
His warning coincides with the UN’s weather agency World Meteorological Organisation’s report that 2011 was tied as the 10th hottest year since records began in 1850. Arctic sea ice, a barometer for the entire planet, had shrunk to a record low volume.
-With The Daily Star input
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]]>For the period 1991-2010, Bangladesh was followed by Myanmar and Honduras, the report said.
However, Bangladesh is not on the list of the 10 worst affected countries in 2010.
The report, titled “Global Climate Risk Index 2012”, was published yesterday in Durban, South Africa, at the UN Climate Change Conference.
Germanwatch, a Germany-based NGO that works in the areas of food, agricultural and climate change, analysed the quantified impacts of extreme weather events both in terms of fatalities as well as economic losses due to weather-related events.
This year’s analysis underlines the fact that the less developed countries are generally more affected than the industrialised ones.
Last year’s most affected countries were Pakistan, Guatemala and Colombia. They were followed by Russia, Honduras and Oman.
All the ten most affected countries in the 1991-2010 period were developing countries.
All these countries were hit by different weather related events, including hurricanes, floods and heat wave.
On an average, 7,814 people died each year in 251 instances of extreme weather conditions in Bangladesh during the period, causing damage of $2,091 million a year that led to a 1.56 percent GDP loss.
In total, more than 7,10,000 people died as a direct consequence of more than 14,000 extreme weather events, and losses of more than $2.3 trillion occurred from 1991 to 2010.
Except for Russia, none of the 20 countries most vulnerable to natural disasters are developed nations.
-With The Daily Star input
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As the stories emerging from Africa to Americas, Asia to Australia tell the same grave situation of ever increasing drought, floods, storms and hot spells, a Climate Change Conference began here yesterday with hopes that the rich nations will keep their commitments to extend helps to the poor and that they would themselves pledge to reduce carbon emission.As negotiations will roll on for the next two weeks, the key focus will be on breathing a new life to Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding treaty to cut greenhouse gas, through agreeing to a second commitment period after 2012. The first commitment period mainly agreed by the European Union will expire next year.
The fate of Kyoto Protocol now mainly depends on whether the United States agrees to cut its emission. If the US does not agree, the whole thing is likely to fall through as other rich countries including the EU might step back. EU that contributes barely 11 percent of the greenhouse gas said it might renew its commitment for a second time. But that remains a big ‘might’.
The desperation to keep Kyoto alive was also reflected in the opening speech of South African President Jacob Zuma who opened the conference, also known as Conference of Parties (COP), at the International Conference Centre, Durban.
“You have before you the responsibility to re-affirm the multilateral rules-based system anchored by the Kyoto Protocol and to provide the funding needed to address impacts of climate change through activating the Green Climate Fund,” Zuma said.
“The expectation is that you must work towards an outcome that is balanced, fair and credible,” he stated.
The South African president also outlined how severe drought in Somalia is displacing people to Kenya — how scarce grazing land is leading to conflicts in Sudan and how hurricanes are pummeling coasts in the US.
“This meeting is taking place because climate change poses serious risks for humanity, especially in the developing world,” he said. “Climate change can no longer be treated as just an environmental challenge. It is a holistic, sustainable development challenge.”
But a sense of uncertainty prevails among the participants of the conference as nobody knows what will happen after the $30 billion Fast Track Fund timeline ends next year. The issue here is whether the developed world keep on funding the poor nations after 2012.
“We will also sit on the formation of the adaptation committee and technology transfer fund,” said Saleemul Huq, senior fellow of International Institute for Environment and Development. “We have to fix national adaptation plan modalities and look for funds from the rich nations. The rich have agreed to provide adaptation and technology transfer funds. But it is not clear how much they will contribute.”
Although there is a common sense of understanding that the rich nations will contribute their $100 billion to the Global Climate Fund from 2020, an agreement has yet to emerge on the structure of the fund. The transitional committee that was tasked with preparing the structure could only come up with a draft.
Meantime, smaller nations are declaring their own initiatives to cut greenhouse gas probably as a tactic to shame the rich nations.
“The good news coming into negotiations is a “growing momentum for action,” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said at a press conference on Sunday, pointing to recent actions in nearly 20 countries to reduce carbon pollution.
And the South African president yesterday made it clear that his country is progressing towards reduction of emission by 34 percent in 2020 and by 42 percent in 2025.
“But such efforts are not enough to cap the rising temperature to 1.5 degree Celsius of pre-industrial era,” said Saleem. “We need solid commitment from the rich to reach that level. Or else, many countries will go under water.”
Courtesy of The Daily Star
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]]>The post Getting a consensus in COP 17 appeared first on Dhaka Mirror.
]]>Shammunul Islam
The 17th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 17) will be held in the city of Durban, South Africa from November 28 to December 9. The world is waiting with hope that this time a fruitful and effective guideline will be made towards mitigating and adapting with climate change impacts. Much hype and expectation grew vis-a-vis this convention mainly hangs around the moods and stances of developed and some major developing countries. These countries aligned with capitalist interest may act as the main hindrance to a positive outcome from COP 17.Capitalism which requires rapid accumulation of capital has resulted into a continuous series of exchange between humans and the earth’s ecological system that went beyond its tipping point. This mind-boggling behavior of inhabitants resulted into multi-dimensional global environmental crisis which forebodes extermination of the basis of civilisation and the survival of the human species.
Climate change now poses the greatest threat among all the disturbing, pernicious symptoms the humans are experiencing and with the rapid pace of industrialisation, any respite from this threat seems a far cry unless the very systematic structure underlying this is not addressed. Thus only technical solution will not suffice if the geo-political consideration is not simultaneously addressed and different interests of countries not aligned and adjusted.
Capitalism which is mainly fired by the combustion of fossil fuels keeps pushing countries around the world in intensifying inter-state competition. This makes these countries to increase their frantic effort to accumulate capital resulting into more industrialisation and thus more rapid buildup of emission. So the real question is whether an attainable deal can be reached in the coming COP 17 to be held at Durban. Much hype and expectation has already grown centering this. It bears paramount importance for us as Bangladesh is believed to be worst-affected by climate change induced disasters and problems.
This could be proved as the last blood-drop effort of developing countries like Bangladesh to exert their existence. The most challenging task will be to get US and China on the same table along with other major developing countries aligned with the same interest of not exceeding the world temperature by 2 degree Celsius.
Now let’s have a look at what is the requirement for averting a self-perpetuating disaster induced by climate change. It is estimated by IPCC that global emissions of carbon dioxide must fall by 5085 per cent from 2000 to 2050 in order to prevent global warming temperature from rising beyond 22.4 degrees Celsius on that of pre-industrial times. This is considered as a must because beyond this temperature our climate change will go to a level where it will start to feed itself and even our complete halt of carbon emission will not be able to stop it. So a clear guideline has to be formulated at the COP 17 as the time for action is quickly running out.
The main threat to the fruitfulness of COP 17 comes from the once torchbearer of world economy — the US. In a competition for global superiority they always were the major polluters of the environment. As a capitalist country, they are compelled to use a substantial portion of their surplus product in generating more capital.
In this system everything is tagged with a price and can be traded with. This gave a false idea that economic growth can be attained with the advancement in technology and if not can be compensated with. With the existing physical and technical infrastructure running on non-renewable resources and ecologically unsustainable technologies, it is very unlikely that without forsaking this mode of generating power, the world can move towards a sustainable solution.
Along with this China’s surge for economic superiority makes it the other major polluter in the world. China and the US together share 40 per cent of the global emissions of one of the principal components of greenhouse gas — carbon dioxide.
One interesting event has to be mentioned here for highlighting how hard it is to get to a consensus. In July 2008, at the G8 summit in Japan, G8 leaders after a long hassle came to agree on a vague goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 50 per cent by 2050. A new hope emerged as these capitalist countries came to the realisation of the dangers climate change pose. But this hope was nipped in the bud as this was immediately rejected by the leaders of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.
They stressed that the onus is on the “developed countries” in reducing emissions by 80-95 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050 and demanded that financial support be provided for helping “developing countries” to adapt to climate change. The diplomatic wrangling gets clear from the words of Chinese President, Hu Jintao, who said that China, being a developing country, would not change its focus from industrialisation and would continue its activities in raising people’s living standards.
But it is also a true that without substantial emission reduction by these states (a World Bank data shows that low and middle income countries account for about half of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions and were responsible for about three-quarters of the world’s increase in emissions between 2000 to 2004), there is little hope of global climate stabilisation becoming a reality.
This demand by developing countries was rejected by developed countries and so a solution remained elusive for that time. Again COP 15 was the example of a diplomatic disaster and laid bare the fundamental political fault-lines. In COP 16, there was a participatory method where country leaders agreed to a consensus without the guideline on how to achieve it.
As the Kyoto Protocol is coming to an end in 2012, there is no scope for any further ado because, if CO2 emissions continue unabated, in the next twenty years, the climate system will cross tipping point beyond remission and global warming will begin to feed on itself and become just unmanageable. But the very capitalist structure of world economy prevents developed and BASIC countries from taking a concrete step. The step could be initialising a process which will focus on ways of articulating and operationalising benchmarks for environmental and equity outcomes for guiding the future evolution of the climate regime. This could address geopolitical uncertainties and could bridge the gap in COP 17.
If global leaders and environmentalist and researchers pay their attention to this, a consensus beneficial for all could be reached. But still the very nature of capitalism will always remain a problem and we must not forget what capitalism can result in if goes fully unregulated (e.g. the financial crisis in 2008). COP 17 could be the step towards this benchmarking and finding common ground and could be the catalyst in reformulating developed countries’ policies based on solid ground. Unless this can be done, COP 17 will remain as an example of another diplomatic disaster.
(Article originally published on The Daily Star)
The writer is a development researcher and a Senior Assistant Coordinator at Eminence. E-mail: shammun@eminence-bd.org and shammunulmds7@gmail.com.
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