The growing divide between the rich nations and those of the developing world over climate change erupted into full view this week, as poor nations staged a walkout at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. Citing the failure of rich nations to agree to a committment to continuing the Kyoto Protocols, the bloc of mostly African nations dubbed the G-77, staged a walkout, throwing the conference into chaos.
But in reality, the rift over Kyoto is only a symbol of a much larger issue. Poor nations, who stand to be the most affected by climate change, understand quite well that they are being punished by a global crisis they did not create. And they are standing up defiantly to the industrialized nations, who share the overwhelming responsibility for the dumping of pollutants into the atmosphere, to not only do more to curb their greenhouse gas emissions and reduce their gigantic carbon footprint, but to shoulder the financial burden that the poor nations now face in trying to react to climate change. Unlike the industrialized world, where denying man-made climate is a luxury, in many poor nations the all-too real effects are already being felt--threatening to bring famines to some, and to drown others in rising sea-levels. This "climate debt" has pushed itself to the front of the Copenhagen talks, as the smaller poorer denizens of the world now take their larger industrialized neighbors to task.
On Nov. 23rd award-winning journalist Naomi Klein sat down with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! to discuss the climate debt, and the growing call by many poor nations for reparations.
Showing posts with label Global Warming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Global Warming. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Climate Debt & Copenhagen
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Regreening Africa
No matter what happens at Copenhagen or beyond, the world is locked in to decades of temperature rise and the associated climate impacts: deeper droughts, fiercer floods, more pests. How populations in the global South adapt to these changes will help decide whether millions of people live or die.
The tragic irony about global climate change, is that it will affect the poorest nations of the global south the hardest. This, despite the fact that these nations have contributed very little to the crisis. No wonder earlier this month African delegates threatened to upset climate talks in Barcelona if the US and rich countries don't live up to their committments and accept responsibility for global climate change. Activist Naomi Klein has even gone as far to declare that rich nations owe a debt to the poor nations of the world for the global climate crisis. In the midst of these developments, Mark Hertsgaard examines how many who live on the continent are sowing the seeds--literally--towards countering the damaging environmental effects of this looming man-made disaster.
Regreening Africa
By Mark Hertsgaard
November 19, 2009
The sun is setting on another scorching hot day in the western African nation of Burkina Faso. But here on the farm of Yacouba Sawadogo, the air is noticeably cooler. A hatchet slung over his shoulder, the gray-bearded farmer strides through his woods and fields with the easy grace of a much younger man. "Climate change is a subject I feel I have something to say about," he says in his tribal language, Moré, which he delivers in a deep, unhurried rumble. Though he cannot read or write, Sawadogo is a pioneer of a tree-based approach to farming that has transformed the western Sahel in recent years, while providing one of the most hopeful examples on earth of how even very poor people can adapt to the ravages of climate change.
Read full article here.
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