Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Fears are growing that the global financial crisis may weaken prospects for a strong climate pact. "The problem of climate change is going to stick with us. But the pace and the scale of ambition may be less in the near term," reckons Elliot Diringer at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington DC. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat, is concerned that failure to meet the 2009 deadline in the Bali roadmap might mean a "slide into a WTO-like process that goes on without a clearly agreed deadline or, perhaps even worse, that you get a highly fragmented approach to climate change."

Others see potential benefits. "It's the environmental opportunity of a lifetime," said Bill Valentine of the HOK Group. "The heart of sustainability is conserving and not wasting, and this idea of getting clients to think about projects that are actually less expensive rather than more expensive and still sustainable these days gets a lot of good traction," he continued. Others see benefits in lower greenhouse gas emissions. "It's a cruel thing to say... but if we are looking at a slowdown in the economy, there will be less fossil fuels burning, so for the climate it could be an advantage," observed Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany.

"The battle for life on earth will be won or lost in cities," warned Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, interviewed by Reuters at the annual congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Barcelona, Spain. He would like to see more cities adopt the Curitiba Declaration on Cities and Biodiversity developed in Brazil, whereby 34 mayors agreed to protect biodiversity by, for example, setting aside more land for parks, planting trees, shifting to renewable fuels and improving recycling.

"Forests have a unique ability to simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions, capture carbon and lessen the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to climate change," according to a statement from the Forests Dialogue alliance put before the congress. The alliance said forest carbon storage projects should not be a substitute for deep cuts in industrial emissions of greenhouse gases and must aim to curb poverty, strengthen land rights, safeguard indigenous peoples and improve forest management. The statement on forests and climate change aims to guide the climate treaty negotiators in the inclusion of forest protection.

Brazil has released for consultation a national plan to address climate change and its impacts. "Brazil has done its part in the mitigation of climate change and is determined and committed to doing more, using its full national capacity as part of an overall effort to combat climate change," the plan states. "This initiative is important because it helps to incorporate climate issues into all government programmes and projects," commented Suzana Kahn Ribeiro, secretary of climate change and environment quality of the Ministry of Environment.

The National Plan on Climate Change covers mitigation, vulnerability, impacts and adaptation, research and development and empowerment and public awareness. It sets sectoral targets to be met by promoting sustainable development in the industrial and agricultural sectors, maintaining a high proportion of renewable energy in electricity production, encouraging the use of biofuels in the transportation sector and reducing deforestation. A moratorium on the selling of soybeans from deforested areas of the Brazilian Amazon is proposed.