COP15: African Disaster?

Many developing countries feel that the agreements made, were achieved without them and have announced that they object the draft and plan to block the road to a final consent. Sudan’s representative stirred up a storm when saying a despicable yet concerning remark: “solution is based on the same very values, in our opinion, that channeled six million people in Europe into furnaces”. Obama replied: “If we would have waited for a full obligatory consent we wouldn’t have made any progress at all”.

Even though, the document that Obama agreed upon with the primary leading countries is considered a turning point, it encountered strong and blunt criticism in the conference. It now looks like a true agreement is a bit farfetched. Half of the criticism is coming as mentioned above, from the poor and developing countries, who claim that the document isn’t ambitious enough and doesn’t include any specified rates to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Moreover, they claim the treaty isn’t legally binding and doesn’t provide any promise to assist them with dealing with the climate change, when all along they are the ones who will suffer first from it. They are saying that if the rich and developed countries don’t agree to significantly decrease the emissions, the agreement won’t help stop and prevent global warming at all. According to them, the draft’s suggested action- to lay under a 2 degrees rise in temperatures, is just not enough. They fear that goal is too low, and would condemn to death.

This sort of criticism was already made by Tuvalu, an archipelago country that might sink in the ocean when sea levels rise, but the Sudanese representative was the harshest. He, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-aping, claimed that COP15 agreement will bring a “holocaust” to Africa. He claimed that the results of this type of treaty will be fatal: more floods, more droughts, more avalanches and finally the rise of sea levels. He criticized Obama for choosing to form a discriminatory agreement and doing it “intimately”, instead of a wide forum that included more countries.

The different delegations are now holding marathon discussions concerning the draft. The question that now remains is whether to adopt the draft agreement or to reject it- which means to lock the conference with no agreement at all.

Omer Shachnai

The CEO Game.