GLOBAL DEAL ON CLIMATE CHANGE PROMISED – FOR 2015

A global deal on climate change will be reached at Paris summit in 2015, says Ethiopian negotiator; Tewolde Egziabher questions how effective such a deal will be

Frank McDonald, May 3, 2013 (Irish Times)

[Tewolde Egziabher, chief negotiator, Ethiopia:] “My expectation is that we will come out with an agreement [at the UN climate summit in Paris towards the end of 2015], but a number of countries will fail to ratify it and, in any event, its effectiveness will not match the change which is looming… I’m afraid I’m being cynical. I wish it would be otherwise and there was more hope,” the softly spoken diplomat said sadly. “We sit here and talk, talk, talk but there is little sign of action to match the scale of the challenge we face.”

[Tewolde Egziabher, chief negotiator, Ethiopia:] “…[W]e see the climate is changing and the weather is becoming more erratic than ever. And if it has changed so much in our short lives, how much is it going to change in future for our children and grandchildren?...[But] things move much faster in other areas…I’m pretty certain this is due to economic factors, because any decision we take has so many implications for our economies that we keep repeating the same thing again and again…”

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“Tewolde has played a role in negotiating international legal instruments such as the UN conventions on biodiversity, desertification and the trade in endangered species. But they were all ‘much more narrow’ than climate change…He describes the 1987 Montreal Protocol on the ozone layer as the only really successful environmental convention because the thinning of the ozone layer was at the north and south poles, and it was going to affect richer countries the most…[so] it was made to work.”

[Tewolde Egziabher, chief negotiator, Ethiopia:] “But now the reverse is true – the greatest impacts of climate change are being felt in the poorest countries of the world. We have made some very serious suggestions about what should be done, but is anyone listening to us?”

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