Cuban Expert Predicts Fragilities in Durban Climate Meeting

Havana, Nov 18. -The 17th UN Conference on Climate Change, to be held in South Africa, might emerge as a conservative scenario, in face of the industrialized countries'' refusal to commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a Cuban expert stated on Friday.

"And it would be a backward step if the Kyoto Protocol is buried in Durban," Orlando Rey, director of the Environment Department at the Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, told a news conference.

According to the official, the fragilities of the meeting, scheduled from November 28 to December 10, are given by two reasons.

First, a substantial increase in mitigation commitments by developed countries, which have turned a deaf ear to scientists' warnings, is not expected.

According to the 4th Assessment Report of the Inter-Governmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) to stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gases to acceptable minimum levels, we require that developed countries reduce their emissions by 25-40 percent by 2020, and by 80-95 percent by 2050.

In response to a question from Prensa Latina, the expert recalled that the first period for the commitments of the Kyoto Protocol will expire in 2012, so what is at stake now and in serious risk is its continuity, which in tune with science should be much higher.

According to the UN Development Program in 2007, the United States, with 4.6 percent of the world population, generates 21 percent of CO2 emissions per capita, hence the per capita emissions increase about 20 metric tons of CO2, causing a damage to climate that is nine times bigger than the one caused by an inhabitant from the developing countries.

Organizers for the Durban Conference, said Ray, state that among their premises are to seek continuity of the Kyoto Protocol, and the position of the main political bloc of developing countries, the Group of 77 plus China, also defend that stance, but it is a very complex situation, because there are even legal problems.

Another fragility of the South African meeting is the limited financial commitments by industrialized countries to developing nations, regarding mitigation and adaptation to climate change, the official said.

Rey noted that at the Durban Conferences, the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) will discuss the positions agreed upon by consensus in the main negotiations, regarding mitigation, adaptation and finances.

The ALBA comprises Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. (Prensa Latina)