Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Minorities and indigenous people often experience the worst effects of climate change but receive the least assistance, according to a new report from Minority Rights Group International (MRG). "Climate change has finally made it to the top of the international agenda at every level but... recognition of the acute difficulties that minorities face is often missing," said Ishbel Matheson from MRG. "From the immediate aftermath of a disaster to the point of designing policy on climate change - the unique situation of minority and indigenous groups is rarely considered." Loss of land for biofuel production and deforestation policies may further disadvantage these groups.

The MRG report notes that minority groups frequently live in risky areas rejected by the more affluent. They tend to inhabit marginal lands and, dependent on nature, are particularly vulnerable to changing climate. "In our community the elders interpret certain signs from nature to know when to plant their crops or when to start the hunting season. But with climate change it is becoming impossible for them to make such predictions anymore," says David Pulkol from the Karamajong community in Uganda. Negotiations surrounding the successor to the Kyoto Protocol provide an opportunity to place minority and indigenous concerns on the climate change map, according to the report. "Minorities and indigenous peoples will add weight to their demands if they emphasize their role (where appropriate) as stewards of precious natural environments - notably tropical forests, which are major carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots that benefit the entire world," it concludes.

European leaders have pledged to adopt new climate change measures by the end of 2008. The measures must, though, "avoid excessive costs for member states." There is concern that implications for heavy industry may delay agreement. The commitment came at the end of a two-day meeting on global warming held in Brussels. The European Union (EU) plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2020.

The meeting also issued the threat of trade sanctions to nations that failed to commit to the climate regime, to be agreed in 2009. "Our main concern is to set up a mechanism that would allow us to strike against the imports of countries that don't play by the rules of the game on environmental protection," said French president Nicolas Sarkozy. German chancellor Angela Merkel noted that "industry, faced with global competition, could be exposed to a real disadvantage if no international climate accord is struck, but we in Europe have very strict rules."

A new projection of China's carbon dioxide emissions finds that the "growth rate is surpassing our worst expectations." This makes "the goal of stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide... much, much harder to achieve," says author Maximilian Auffhammer of the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. The study predicts an annual growth rate of at least 11 per cent over the period 2004-2010, compared to previous forecasts of up to five per cent.

The new assessment is based on more detailed information than previously used, employing waste gas emissions data at the provincial level. "Everybody had been treating China as single country, but each of the country's provinces is larger than many European countries, both in geographic size and population," commented co-author Richard Carson of the University of California, San Diego. The authors consider hopes that China would adopt energy-efficient technology to have been unfounded. "Wealthier coastal provinces tended to build clean-burning power plants based upon the very best technology available, but many of the poorer interior provinces replicated inefficient 1950s Soviet technology," they say.