"Climate Change Tourists" Go Home!

The Nairobi global warming conference grinds to an end

Ronald Bailey | November 17, 2006

NAIROBI—"Climate change tourists" is how Kenyan Maasai leader of environmental group Practical Action Sharon Looremeta dismissed the diplomats negotiating over what to do about global warming here in Nairobi. "You come here to look at some climate impacts and some poor people suffering, and then climb on your airplanes and head home," she bitterly added. She was expressing the widespread frustration of many African representatives who were hoping that the conference would result in "new mechanisms to help sustainable development in Africa" and "more funds for adaptation." In other words, they expected cash.

p> span class="c1">Nothing much—good or bad—was accomplished at the 12 ^th Conference of the Parties (COP-12) of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) chiefly because most other countries are waiting for the United States. Unless the US jumps on the global warming bandwagon, the Kyoto Protocol signatories will do nothing much more on the issue. In particular, the chief thing other nations are waiting for is the end of President Bush's Administration in January, 2009. o:p> /o:p> /span> /p> p> span class="c1">No substantive negotiations are taking place here in Nairobi for another reason too. At the insistence of the US at the last climate change meeting in Montreal in 2005, the delegates agreed to launch a "dialogue" on climate change that explicitly would not involve any negotiations. So for the last two days, environment ministers from around the globe have been listening to and discussing presentations from various experts on development and on applying markets to climate change. "The purpose of the dialogue is to take people out of the tensions and concerns of negotiations and allow them to rethink possibilities," said Howard Bamsey, the dialogue's co-facilitator at a UNFCCC secretariat press conference today. o:p> /o:p> /span> /p>