Posted on March, 13 2000
At ongoing intergovernmental discussions in Bonn on how to pay for the costs of climate change, WWF called on governments contributing most to the build-up of global warming gases such as carbon dioxide to accept they must compensate those suffering from its effects. The call comes one week after the dramatic floods in Mozambique that left thousands stranded, and days after the nine atolls of the small Pacific island nation Tuvalu were swept over by extreme high tides.
"These are not isolated incidents, and are very likely to occur more often in a warmer world," said Jennifer Morgan, Director of WWF's Climate Change Campaign. "Long debates over the responsibility of industrialized countries for the consequences in developing countries of the changing climate ignore the fact that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people are already suffering the effects. Governments have to accept that if they are not prepared to take domestic measures to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, they will have to pay the price."
A number of industrialised country governments already compensate their own citizens for unusual extreme weather events, and have started to implement climate adaptation measures at home. But none as yet accepts its responsibility towards developing countries. This, despite substantial new and accumulating evidence of a rapidly changing climate in the five years since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report suggested there was a discernible human influence on global climate.
Developing countries are responsible for around one-third of the world's energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main global warming gas, but they are expected to suffer the most severe impacts from climate change. None of the western industrialized nations that are responsible for the bulk of global CO2 emissions has yet ratified the Kyoto Protocol (1), agreed in 1997, nor enacted adequate domestic measures to reduce emissions.
"It cannot be right that, while negotiations creep agonisingly forward, the victims of climate change are to be left unprotected and uncompensated," Jennifer Morgan added. "If the US tobacco industry can be held responsible for smoking-related deaths and illnesses, and ordered to pay very hefty fines, wealthy countries must be held responsible in some way for the contribution their carbon pollution is almost certainly making to recent droughts and floods."
For further information:
Jennifer Morgan: + 1 202 778 9514; mobile: + 1 703 623 2527
Mark Kenber: + 44 1273 676 477
Kyla Evans: tel: +41 22 364 95 50, email: kevans@wwfnet.org
Notes to Editors:
(1) The Kyoto Protocol, signed in December 1997, would require industrialised nations to reduce their output of global warming gases 5% below their 1990 levels over the period 2008-2012. Governments have spent the last two years wrestling over the rules for operating the Protocol. Decisions to be taken by the world's environment ministers when they meet for the "climate summit" in The Hague, Netherlands, in November 2000, will decide whether the Kyoto Protocol evolves into an effective first step in combating climate change, or whether loopholes in the agreement allow emissions of global warming gases to continue increasing.