Climate change is a serious challenge faced by the international community striving towards sustainable development. It has implications for not only health and well being of the earth’s ecosystem but also for the economic enterprises and social livelihoods. The current models predict a 0.3 degree Celsius increase per decade in global temperatures over the next century. This is attributed to the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere, which has risen by about 25 per cent in the last 150 years. As a global problem, climate change requires a global solution, which can be made possible by research, shared knowledge and engagement of people at all levels.

Within climate change, particular attention needs to be paid to the unique challenges facing developing countries. The South is likely to be significantly affected by climate change, yet it typically lacks in the resources needed to adapt to the economic, social and environmental changes expected to occur. Partnership between the North and South countries would give a good understanding of the implications of climate change for these countries and examine how approaches such as the Clean Development Mechanism may be used to meet developing countries’ sustainable development objectives.

The negative consequences of global warming are catastrophic. These include:

  • Increasing drought and desertification
  • Crop failures
  • Melting of the polar ice caps
  • Coastal flooding
  • Displacement of major vegetation regimes.
  • Coral mortality
  • Change in ocean behavior
  • Natural disasters
  • Infectious diseases
  • Ecosystems degradation
  • Food supply scarcity
  • Sea level rise
  • To address the detrimental effects, corrective measures with regard to the following need to be taken:
  • Cut down on carbon monoxide emissions
  • Adopt the ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ suggested under the Kyoto Protocol
  • Reduce green house effect
  • Use cleaner mining technologies that will reduce sulphur dioxide and participate pollution thereby lowering mining contamination of water and air.

Despite knowing the methods, that can stop climate change, differences in national policy hinder their applications. This is because while governments pursue one set of objectives through climate negotiations, their finance and trade arms ignore the global environmental implications of their activities. Another area that impedes action is the large amount the governments spend on subsidizing energy throughout the world. This subsidy exists for both the North and South countries and discourages economical consumption of energy. Eliminating these subsidies could result in significant reductions in greenhouse gas emission from energy generating and consuming systems.

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The framework on which global action on climate change may take place was defined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 and later in the Kyoto Protocol. In spite of being a step in the positive direction it has been made imperfect as some of the world’s largest polluters have stayed out of the convention and -some among those who have joined have demanded and received changes that have weakened the protocol considerably, resulting in a systematic marginalization of the core interests of the developing countries.

Concerns have been raised mainly by the Southern countries regarding the direction in which the global climate regime has evolved, these in general relate to four large categories of concern.

  • Principle of equity- both inter and intra generational
  • Focus of the regime has become skewed towards minimizing the burden of implementation on polluter industries and countries, instead of giving priority to the vulnerabilities of the communities and at greater risk and disadvantage
  • The regime has now distinctly become a system for managing the global carbon trade and has lost sight of its original mandate of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations
  • The most vulnerable communities and countries are those, which are already the poorest and least adapt to these changes
  • Addressing the concerns can be done by the following:
  • Creation of a predictable, implementable and equitable architecture of combating global climate change that can stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases within a specified period of time, while giving all nations a clear indication of their current and future obligations based on their current and future emission.
  • Enhancing the capabilities of communities and countries to combat and respond to global climate change, with particular attention to an adaptive capacity that enhances the resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable communities.

Most environmental issues require a long time arrangement. This is particularly true of climate change. The test of any climate regime is not simply what can be done or achieved in a short span of few years but what it is likely to achieve over the coming decades or even centuries. It is therefore very important that the policy architecture constructed is robust enough to stand the political as well as climate tests of time.