By Mohamed Adow | 16 June 2011
Since I last reported back, delegates at the UN climate talks in Bonn have finally managed to agree on the agenda and began substantive negotiations that aim to lay the basis for a fair, ambitious and binding global regime.
Unfortunately that's as good as the news gets.
For, as the impacts of climate change intensify and the scientific evidence continues to pile up, the negotiations to combat climate change have run aground.
We should note that climate change has markedly fallen off the world agenda; we cannot in all honesty say that ‘the world is watching’.
It seems obvious to all at these talks that those responsible and with the power to change things have taken their eye off the ball.
This underscores why the negotiations are not delivering as fast as the planet and poor people need them to.
The climate pledges of the developed countries are much too low, riddled with loopholes and do not commit to ambitious binding emissions reduction targets.
All the while, the richer nations are pushing developing countries to commit to higher emissions reductions targets than they themselves are willing to adopt.
In relation to the Kyoto Protocol, we need parties to secure a second commitment period to continue the legally binding emissions reductions for richer countries.
The current pledges put the world on track for a global temperature increase of 3-5°C. This level of warming is potentially devastating for the whole world.
This highlights how important it will be for Christian Aid and our partners to put pressure on our leaders to prioritise climate commitments in the run-up to the UN talks in Durban later this year.
World leaders need to recognise the urgency of the climate problem, and work together to confront the climate challenge to make the upcoming UN talks in Durban later this year a success.
Inadequate ambition and a lack of legally binding commitments together makes for a planetary disaster.
The parties need to ratchet up their ambition in an equitable way if we are to curb dangerous climate change.
Tweets from the Bonn climate talks
