Tearfund Rebukes UN for 'Staggering Complacency' of Climate Change Proposals

Proposals put forward at the UN Climate Change Conference in Nairobi, Kenya display "staggering complacency", UK Christian relief and development agency Tearfund has said.

|PIC1|As a Climate Change Bill features today in the Queen's speech, Tearfund has expressed its disappointment at the UN proposals that have emerged at the Nairobi conference, held to help reduce rich countries' emissions after 2012 when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends.

Tearfund explains that the proposals contain no plan to agree a global target and no adequate timetable to reach agreement on emissions cuts.

"The proposals being put forward to the arriving ministers and Heads of State to agree are shockingly weak," said Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director of Tearfund.

"Governments are setting off on a journey without stating the final destination. The uncompromising urgency of the Stern Review and other recent reports is completely absent. These proposals will run a high risk of not meeting the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change goal of avoiding 'dangerous' climate change."

Proposals from the working group of nations, charged with producing proposals for the ministerial discussions which take place over the next three days:

- include no plan to agree a global target for emissions reductions, based on scientific realities.
- set no concrete timetable, or date by which negotiations on post-2012 emissions cuts are completed,
- despite acknowledging that there must be no gap between current and new targets.

Bishop Paul Mususu, from the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia, a Tearfund partner, said: "I did not expect such weak action on African soil after all the promises about emissions cuts from rich countries. What have they come here for?

"Millions of people on this continent are among the most vulnerable people to the droughts, floods and erratic rains that come with a changing climate. We need urgent action from the ministers and Heads of State arriving at this conference to radically transform these proposals."

Atkins concluded, "We are limping along the road to adequate global CO2 emissions cuts when giant steps are needed. The emissions cuts agreed under the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol were what countries thought they could manage, not what the world needed. The same must not happen in the second phase."