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CLIMATE
CHANGE:
Andean Community
Pushes for Urgent Action
Constanza
Vieira
LIMA, (IPS) - Bolivia, Colombia,
Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela are
at once vulnerable to climate
change and increasingly reliant
on their oil and natural gas
exports, while their
environmental management
policies depend on foreign aid
and funding from the industrial
powers.
The five members of the Andean
Community trade bloc have taken
a common position to the 11th
Conference of the 189 Parties to
the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change
(COP 11) and the first meeting
of the Parties to the Kyoto
Protocol, running Nov. 28-Dec. 9
in Montreal, Canada.
"Climate change is already here.
We can't expect to mitigate it,
only to take immediate action to
adapt to what is coming. And
(the Andean countries) want
money" from the funds
contributed by the industrial
powers to the Special Climate
Change Fund, Lupe Guinand,
director of the Andean
Community's programme for
Sustainable Development and the
Environment, told IPS.
The Andean nations are urging
that commitments be made at once
for the period following 2012,
when the provisions of the Kyoto
Protocol expire.
That treaty, which entered into
force in February of this year,
obliges the industrialised
signatories - all of the world's
industrialised nations with the
exception of Australia and the
United States - to reduce their
emissions of greenhouse gases by
2012, to volumes 5.2 percent
lower than those emitted in
1990.
After 2012, climate change
commitments are to encompass
developing countries as well,
especially emerging powers like
China, India and Brazil.
The scientific community agrees
that accumulation in the
atmosphere of greenhouse gases
such as those released by the
burning of oil, coal and gas is
linked to global warming and
climate change.
In the present negotiations, the
Andean Community nations are
also insisting that the increase
in frequency and impact of
climate-related disasters is
directly linked to global
climate change.
"We can't say what percentage of
a hurricane is directly related
to climate change, but we have
to start looking at it from that
angle," said Guinand.
A regional study by the Andean
Community based on the "national
communications" containing
emission inventories that all
parties to the climate change
convention must submit listed
the areas most affected in these
countries, which included food
security, availability of
drinking water, hydropower
generation, and tropical
diseases which are becoming more
and more widespread in
geographic terms as the average
temperature rises.
The study also mentions the
impact on strategic ecosystems
such as forests, biological
corridors, wetlands and
mountainous areas, and specific
damage to Amazonian rainforest,
glaciers, and river basins.
In addition, it points to the
increase in climate-related
disasters occurring in the
region.
The Lima newspaper El Comercio
published a report last Thursday
by the Peruvian Ministry of
Agriculture according to which
in the northern department
(province) of Ancash, 14,000
head of cattle have died in the
last two years, and 6,700
hectares of crops have been
lost, because of drought.
"Entire villages in the
(northern) mountains of Piura
don't even have water to slake
their thirst," the newspaper
reported, while the
meteorological service warned
about heavy rains this weekend
in another part of the country.
The "El Niño" climate phenomenon
(an ocean current that
periodically warms the surface
water in the central tropical
Pacific ocean) caused losses and
damages in 1998 equivalent to
4.5 percent of Peru's gross
domestic product (GDP),
according to the Andean
Development Corporation, the
financial arm of the Andean
Community.
"From a total of 250
catastrophes in 1995, we climbed
to 1,300 in 2003," of which 72
percent were attributable to the
climate, the National Council
for the Environment reported in
its turn.
The Andean Community nations all
encompass part of the Amazon
jungle. The trade bloc, which is
bordered by the Pacific ocean
and the Caribbean sea, is home
to one-quarter of the planet's
biodiversity, although it
occupies only three percent of
the world's land surface.
With the exception of Venezuela,
classified as "medium-high" in
regard to risk from climate
change, the other four countries
in the bloc are deemed to be at
high risk, according to Guinand.
The proportion of greenhouse
gases emitted by the Andean
nations is only 0.28 to 1.12
percent of the total produced by
industrialised countries, while
the bloc's "quota" is not
supposed to exceed 4.00 percent
of the industrialised countries'
emissions, or 2.5 percent of
global emissions.
The bloc thus has enormous
potential for projects aimed at
mitigating climate change, such
as planting and preserving
forests that absorb carbon
dioxide (the main greenhouse
gas).
At the same time, the region is
heavily dependent on the
exportation of oil and natural
gas, which are major sources of
carbon dioxide and pollutants.
Minerals and oil and gas
constitute 52 percent of the
five countries' total exports.
Hydrocarbons account for nearly
30 percent, "although mineral
extraction also consumes a great
deal of petroleum," Ricardo
Giesecke, an Andean Community
energy expert, told IPS.
On average the Andean nations
allocate three percent of the
official development aid they
receive from the Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) to the
environment, but the amount
available for tackling climate
change is small and shrinking.
Andean environmental management
depends on foreign aid, and is
not a priority for any of the
region's governments.
"The Andean Community's trade
ministers have refused for
decades to discuss environmental
issues (within the community),
because they believe that
looking after the environment is
an obstacle to trade," Guinand
said.
"Environmental institutions are
weak, and legislation, although
it has made progress in the last
10 years, is barely enforced,
(while) control and monitoring
measures are inadequate,"
according to another document
which analyses the environmental
chapter of the negotiations for
a free trade agreement between
the United States, Peru,
Colombia and Ecuador.
As a result of pressure from
civil society in the United
States, Washington can no longer
subordinate internal
environmental regulatory
functions to international trade
treaties, says the document.
"The U.S. negotiators have
responded to this pressure by
encouraging their trading
partners to strengthen their own
environmental legislation," it
adds.
Adapting national environmental
laws to the free trade agreement
has been rejected by civil
society groups in the Andean
countries, which see this as
subordinating sovereign
legislative functions to the
trade agenda of the United
States, a country that is not
even a party to the Kyoto
Protocol.
Negotiators from the three
Andean countries are sticking by
the Andean Community's binding
environmental rules and
regulations in the free trade
talks with the United States, in
the absence of strong national
environmental laws.
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