INDONESIA:The urgency of the climate crisis was underlined by several speakers, writes Frank McDonald, in Bali
Any delay in dealing with the "desperately serious" threat posed by climate change "could push us past the tipping point where the human cost will increase dramatically", UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon warned here at the UN climate change conference yesterday.
Describing global warming as "the defining issue of our time", he called on countries represented at the UN Conference on Climate Change to take urgent action to address it.
The clear choice was between a comprehensive new agreement "or oblivion".
Addressing a large audience at the Bali conference centre, the UN chief said the poor and defenceless were the first victims.
"If we care about peace and security, demand development and are passionate about human rights, we must make climate change the highest priority," the UN secretary general said.
But he added that tackling global warming had a "silver lining" - the opportunity to reduce emissions while promoting economic growth, cleaner technologies, industries and jobs and advancing sustainable development through a "new type of industrial revolution".
Sir Nicholas Stern, author of the highly influential economic review of climate change for the British government, published in 2005, said EU countries would have to cut their annual emissions from 10-15 tonnes per capita to three tonnes per capita between now and 2050.
Such a reduction by them and by the US and other rich countries was "the absolute minimum that equity demands", he said, adding that the best way of achieving this would be to have a "strong trade in carbon" that would allow finance to flow to developing countries.
Dressed in a colourful Indonesian batik shirt, Sir Nicholas said the aim should be to assist them to move to a "low carbon-growing economy" by adopting cleaner technologies, with the assistance of richer countries.
"Technology is absolutely fundamental", he declared.
He also called for major reforms in the operation of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) saying that it would need to be generating $50 to $100 billion for financing projects in developing countries by 2050 if the challenge was to be met.
Referring to the estimate that deforestation is responsible for 20 per cent of carbon emissions worldwide, Sir Nicholas said this could be cut in half with funding of $10 to $15 billion a year, to encourage countries with tropical rain forests to maintain these "carbon sinks".
If the rich countries were all to achieve the UN target of 0.7 per cent of GDP in overseas development aid, this would generate an extra $150 to $200 billion a year.
But he warned that climate change would "eat up half of these resources" unless it was urgently addressed.
"We really know what to do, and the challenge is just to get on with it", he declared.
Kevin Watkins, lead author of a UN Development Programme report, Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World, said it was "scandalous" that an adaptation fund had raised only $26 million so far - "equivalent to three days' work on flood defences in the UK".
The poorest people in the world, who were least responsible for causing the problem of global warming, were being "left to sink or swim with their own children" - a situation he characterised as "the greatest political, ethical and moral failure in modern history."
The impact of climate change was "a reality that's unfolding in their lives every day in urban slums, flood-prone areas and areas prone to drought" and, unless this was addressed, it could "reverse the progress made in human health, education and nutrition".
Mr Watkins said tackling global warming needed courageous leadership to ensure that the outcome of negotiations in Bali was not a "fudged deal, leaving the glass half-empty".
Bold and ambitious targets were needed to keep temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Celsius.
Greenhouse gas emissions would have to be more than halved, which was a "very tall order", but it had to start with the rich countries "bending the curve downwards now" to achieve reductions of at least 30 per cent by 2020 and delivering clean technologies to the developing world.
Halima Tayo Alao, Nigeria's environment minister, said it was clear that Africa was the most vulnerable to climate change.
The transfer of clean, climate-friendly technology to African countries as well as helping them to adapt to the consequences was "absolutely essential," said Mr Alao.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said that if governments had "listened to the science" 20 years ago, instead of waiting to be "scared" by this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment, action could have been taken much earlier.