Developing world should get a break on climate: UN

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

• Discount UK Shopping

Related Articles

UN, ADB experts ask developing nations to adopt Su...Oz urged for climate change agreementBring down per capita emissions, India to West'Impacts of climate change would be serious'

: Emerging giants China and India should not be required to cut carbon emissions as quickly as rich countries, despite being among the world’s top greenhouse gas producers, the top UN environmental official said.

Achim Steiner, head of the Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme (UNEP), urged developed nations to “take the next big step” against climate change and negotiate tight new standards that may exempt their poorer neighbours.

Otherwise, he warned that rich-poor tensions could sour efforts to extend the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.

“If we don’t have significant political momentum this year, the negotiations on a new climate change convention are going to be increasingly jeopardised,” he said in an interview during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The US, which is not a signatory to Kyoto, emits a quarter of global industrial greenhouse gases that scientists say trap solar rays in the atmosphere, causing severe storms, floods, droughts and ecological ruin.

China’s blistering economy has rocketed it to the number two worldwide carbon emitter, with India in fourth place, according to World Resources Institute data. While pledging shifts toward renewables and more efficient energy, both developing powers have resisted calls to curb emissions that could endanger growth.

Steiner, a German who took over at UNEP last year after heading the World Conservation Union said it was “a matter of fairness” to give developing countries extra slack on new emission limits, given western powers built their modern industries burning fossil fuels.

It is “a litmus test” for international diplomacy whether countries can develop a new climate regime.