Ban: Climate danger is real

2010-02-24 20:09

Bali - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged environment ministers on Wednesday to reject attempts by sceptics to undermine efforts to forge a climate change deal, stressing that global warming poses "a clear and present danger".

In a message read by a UN official, Ban referred to a still-burning controversy over several mistakes made in a 2007 report issued by the UN-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which drew widespread criticisms and sparked calls for the resignation of its chair, Rajendra Pachauri.

The report's conclusion that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was several hundred years off; data indicates the ice could melt by 2350. The error has bolstered arguments from climate sceptics that fears of global warming were overblown.

Despite the failure to forge a binding deal on curbing heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions at a UN conference in Copenhagen last December, Ban said the meeting made an important step forward by setting a target to keep global temperature from rising and establishing a programme of climate aid to poorer nations.

'Clear and present danger'

"To maintain the momentum, I urge you to reject last-ditch attempts by climate sceptics to derail your negotiations by exaggerating shortcomings in the... report," Ban said in the statement read at the start of an annual UN meeting of environmental officials from 130 countries on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.

"Tell the world that you unanimously agree that climate change is a clear and present danger," Ban said.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said time was running out but expressed confidence that a binding deal could be forged at the next climate change summit later this year in Cancun, Mexico.

"I'm convinced that we're still not too late," he said at the Bali conference.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said Indonesia will hold an informal meeting of all environmental ministers and officials on Friday to discuss ways of ensuring that a binding treaty on greenhouse gas cutbacks could be forged in Cancun.

"No sealed deal happened in Copenhagen, so it's now more urgent than ever for us to work diligently between now and Mexico," Natalegawa told The Associated Press in an interview. 

Long-term mitigation

Kiribati environmental official Kautoa Tonganibeia told the AP his tiny Pacific nation is discussing a long-term mitigation plan that includes the possibility of evacuating areas where a large part of the nation's 92 000 people live in case rising sea levels and other weather-related problems worsen due to global warming.

"The developed countries need to be more considerate of us," Tonganibeia said.

The huge amount of climate change aid to poor countries like Kiribati that was pledged in Copenhagen could not be disbursed in the absence of any binding agreement on greenhouse gas emission cuts, said Karl Falkenberg, the EU Commission's director-general of environment.

Countries set a target in Copenhagen of keeping the Earth's average temperature from rising more than 2ºC above the levels that existed before nations began industrialising in the late 18th century.

Scientists believe global emissions must be cut in half by mid-century to avoid the melting of glaciers and ice caps, the flooding of low-lying coastal cities and islands, and worsening droughts in Africa and elsewhere.

Pachauri will meet with the environmental ministers later in the week to discuss a number of issues, including the controversy over several mistakes made in the 2007 climate change report, Steiner said.

Some Republican lawmakers in the US have called for Pachauri to resign.

Despite the mistakes, Steiner argued that the science behind global warming is robust and that the report itself was helping countries combat it.

- AP