Sustainable Bristol

Failing to feel the heat in Durban

Posted on 16 December 2011

The UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa – where I’ve been for the last two weeks – seemed a long way away from Bristol’s real-world endeavours to green the way we live and work as a city.

Given the weaknesses of the deal agreed in Durban, this distance is perhaps a good thing. Politicians in Durban may have failed to agree on the kind of emissions cuts needed to keep global warming within the supposedly safe limit of 2 degrees, but we still need to shift to a low carbon economy – in Bristol and around the world.

Indeed the urgency for that shift is increasingly apparent, not least on the African continent where the UN talks took place.

Parts of Africa have seen severe drought, floods and famine in the last year alone. A Ghanaian delegate told me how parts of the village where he grew up are now under water as a result of sea level rise.

As the African Group spokesman Seyni Nafo told media at the start of the conference: “We have contributed the least to this problem and we are paying the greatest price.”

There is no doubt that Africa will be hit hard by climate change. Studies suggest that even a 1.5 degree rise in temperature will severely affect harvests in Africa. At the moment the world is on course for a rise of 4 degrees. The impacts for Africa are too horrifying to imagine.

“We cannot compromise on the lives of millions who are already threatened, who are already dying from climate change,” Mr Nafo urged. But in reality not compromising didn’t even seem to be on the agenda.

A protester outside the UN climate talks

The politics at play in Durban were never going to result in ambitious targets from all the players at the table – and indeed the deal agreed in the early hours of Sunday morning did not increase global ambition to cut emissions beyond what was agreed in Cancun last year. That means that the a gap between where we need to be and where we are likely to be in 2020 of 6-11 gigatonnes, according to UNEP.

While a global deal with more ambitious targets would have provided a clear sign to business as the need to change gear, there are some who argue that we are reaching a tipping point where green technology will lead the way where politicians have failed.

Have we got there yet? I am not sure. Some parts of industry in Europe have proved an effective block to more ambitious action. The economics of energy use still favour fossil fuels. But it is a challenge we need to meet.

There are other signs for hope. This week Forum for the Future highlighted efforts by business not just to change their own behaviour, but to change the behaviour of their customer base. This is the kind of thing is part of the solution – changing the way we live our everyday lives.

The Durban Platform did deliver the promise of future action, a loosely worded commitment to do a bigger better deal further down the line…

It might not sound like a lot, and it completely ignores the urgency of the situation we are in, but there were some watching the talks who feared that the whole process could collapse. And that would have truly spelt disaster – for the UN process, for multilateralism, for the poorest countries and our global future.