G8 Discusses Link Between Climate Change And Food Crisis
The U.N. climate chief told world leaders Friday that food shortages and climate changes are undeniably connected, and urged the world’s richest countries to reduce carbon emissions in the next dozen years.
G-8 host, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, set the global warming theme. However, experts believe food security and sky rocketing oil prices will overtake climate change as the priorities.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change said food and global warming are interconnected. He said, "They are not competing with each other on the international agenda."
"It is absolutely right that the food issue is receiving a lot of attention. That is a human crisis that’s out there right now," De Boer said in a telephone interview with Associated Press from his office in Bonn, Germany.
However, he warned in the long term, climate change will bring still higher food prices, worsening water problems and more drought. Ignoring the issue "will get you into deeper trouble down the road," he said.
De Boer said he did not know if industrialized countries would meet the goal adopted a year ago to "consider seriously" halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. He said it was important to discuss more immediate goals, like what the worlds biggest economies intend to do by 2020.Â
"If you look at the signs of investment direction that the private sector is crying out for, that is the issue that is most critical," he said. He acknowledged, however, he expected no conclusions on emissions goals for 2020.
A Nobel prize-winning panel of U.N. scientists has said carbon emissions must drop off within the next 10-15 years and then begin to dramatically decline to avoid an increase in temperatures that could have catastrophic consequences.
De Boer said soaring oil prices are already affecting climate issues. Oil prices have doubled to surpass $140 a barrel, since the last G-8 meeting in Germany.
He said, for the first time the International Energy Agency lowered its forecast for oil demand. Which means people are driving less, and renewable energy is winning more attention. At the same time, "very poor people who spend the bulk of their income on survival are not happy to see energy prices go up," he said.
De Boer welcomed a move by the World Bank on Tuesday to formally launch two special investment funds for climate change expected to rise up to US$10 billion. In the past, environmentalists have criticized the funds because they don’t trust the bank’s environmental record and contend the money should go to the U.N.
"The Bank’s new climate funds will undermine U.N. climate talks, increase debt and pay polluters," said the Friends of the Earth in a statement Friday.
De Boer said the bank’s climate change funds had a clause that will phase them out when a different financial structure is adopted in a climate change treaty. He estimated that accord should be negotiated by the end of next year.
He said, an annual sum of more than $200 billion would be needed by 2030 to bring the world’s emissions down to 1990 levels. De Boer said even more would be needed to reduce that by half over the next 20 years.
"We will have to mobilize every possible financial channel to meet that challenge," he said.
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