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Playing for Our Lives |
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By Achim Steiner and Yvo de Boer*
Governments
of the world will gather in Kenya in November to discuss new ways
to help the South adapt to climate change.
NAIROBI, Oct 23 (Tierramérica) - Children on
one of southern Africa's mightiest rivers are playing the Limpopo
board game, literally for their lives. Piloted in places like Zimbabwe's
Matabeleland and Mozambique's Gaza Province, it uses the power of
play to teach ways of reducing vulnerability to flooding.
If a counter lands on a space showing a well designed flood-proof
village -- or one advising children to move themselves and livestock
to higher ground -- it moves forward several spaces. But if it alights
on one depicting a decimated forest, land degradation, or other
factors increasing vulnerability, it must go back six.
The game -- part of a larger project, funded by the Global Environment
Facility (GEF), launched after the devastating Limpopo floods six
years ago -- underlines in a simple but poignant way the challenges
developing countries face as they try to adapt to the extreme weather
events linked to climate change.
In early November, nations meet in Nairobi, Kenya, for the next
round of climate change talks under the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, established targets for reducing
greenhouse gas emissions in industrialized countries at five percent
below the level of 1990 in the period 2008-2012. It created a framework
of incentives for the transition to a low-carbon economy, directing
investment decisions of the business towards climate-friendly options.
The Protocol links to the developing world: the Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM), which allows developed countries to invest in sustainable
development projects in developing countries to earn emission credits
(for example forestry and renewable energy projects ), has burst
into life.
By 2012, certified emission reductions achieved through the CDM
are expected to reach at least 1.2 billion tons, more than the combined
emissions of Spain and the United Kingdom.
The industrialized countries as a group are still on track to meet
their Kyoto commitments, provided they make a more extensive effort
domestically, and make active use of the market mechanisms of the
Kyoto Protocol. It is clear, however, that in the long run deeper
emission cuts will be required.
But past pollution from industrialized countries has already guaranteed
us some climate change: carbon dioxide, after all, can persist in
the atmosphere for up to 200 years. So the global community must
help developing countries adapt.
Least Developed Countries have -- or are preparing -- National Adaptation
Programs of Action (NAPAs) under the UNFCCC. Take Malawi, where
almost every facet of life will need some measure of "climate proofing".
Droughts and floods have increased in intensity, frequency and magnitude
over the past few decades.
Floods destroyed fish ponds six years ago, while a drought in the
mid-1990s triggered a total loss of fish stocks in Lake Chilwa.
Malawi's NAPA calls for restocking, assistance in fish breeding,
and better understanding of how temperatures disrupt the reproduction
of key species.
Funding for adaptation is starting to accumulate as a result of
investments in the CDM and voluntary pledges to a special fund established
to finance the implementation of NAPA activities. However, these
resources must be augmented if they are to have measurable results
in the poorest countries of the world.
Scientists estimate that a 60- to 80-percent cut in greenhouse gases
will be needed to stabilize the atmosphere. We must keep our sights
set firmly on this target. Otherwise everyone, rich and poor alike,
will have more and more pressure to adapt and fewer places to adapt
to and from. They will end up playing their own versions of the
Limpopo River game -- and, like the children on its banks, playing
for their very lives.
* Steiner is Executive Director of the United
Nations Environment Program and De Boer is Executive Secretary of
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. |
