The Bali Climate talks begin today. The goal is to develop an agreement that can replace Kyoto.
Perhaps it's the skeptic in me, but I don't hold out much hope for this week's sessions. Especially with continued posturing by the US and China.
Maybe they'll prove me wrong. I doubt it.
I continue to feel we need stronger economic incentives before we will seriously address climate change.
Perhaps this will come out in Bali, but I'm not holding my breath.
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For an alternative take on the Bali climate talks, check out Alter Eco – Offsetting Emissions, which you can download from http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17652
Alter-Eco is published by a group of NGOs, IPOs and social movements at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change COP-13 who came together to make a unified call in support of real solutions to climate change and against the false market-based solutions to climate change that are being implemented under the Kyoto Protocol.
We join together to produce Alter-Eco as an instrument through which to project our collective voice, which reflects the views and concerns of grassroots constituencies and impacted communities all over the world.
Samoa, like other Pacific Island Countries (PICs), is more concerned about the lack of concern that our PIC donor 'partners' have for Pacific Islanders. I call them our 'raid partners' as our forests are being raided by the same donor countries, our pelagic tuna stocks raided, even our land leases are being made for the next 100 years with local resource owners having little knowledge and understanding of the impacts, and our mangroves replaced with modern Integrated Resorts for Pacific tourists (see Denarau Island resorts, Nadi, Fiji). Well, these rainforests and coral reefs, wetlands and mangroves are the carbon sinks the world needs. I'm equally sceptical of voters and tourists and UNFCCC delegates and have expressed our responses to the Global Environmental Facility's funding opportunities for the Pacific Alliance of Sustainability (GEF-PAS) on http://gef-passamoa.blogspot.com for those of you who are watching Pacific Islanders facing some serious global climate change impacts, including rising poverty, less food security, drought, sea level rise, the worst coral bleaching ever recorded over the past 10 years here in the Pacific according to USP, and some serious climate health issues (increased malaria and dengue fever, typhoid and more). Money alone will not reverse these trends, yet 10,000 so-called committed Conference Delegates converge on Bali bringing home with them few further solutions, solutions that were available to us all over 20 years ago. The Pacific has fewer funds these days to repair such damages as epidemics like HIV/AIDS spreads throughout PNG - already 1.6% of the PNG population infected, so how can we Pacific Islanders address the small impacts of climate change when we have diseases like AIDS spreading so fast, and on the doorstep of the Pacific Rim aid donors. I'm more than sceptical, but hopeful thanks to Australian (and American)voters.
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