PGMA set to address Copenhagen Summit

Her Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo

Republic of the Philippines

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will address tomorrow afternoon (2 p.m. Denmark time, 9 p.m. Manila time) the plenary session of the climate change summit, which is being held at the Bella Center in this Danish capital.

In the brief period of time allotted to her, Mrs. Arroyo is expected to make her case for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change, sponsor of the conference, has required Mrs. Arroyo to provide the secretariat with a copy of her speech for its permanent record. Most important of all, the recommendations cited therein will be taken into account when the draft treaty is prepared by the technical working committee and debated by the top-level delegates.

The Conference of the Parties (COP) “reviews the national communications and emission inventories submitted by countries and the effects of the measures they have taken to achieve the ultimate objective of the convention.”

Billed as UNFCCC’s supreme body, the COP is composed of all countries that are parties to the convention.

If approved, the treaty will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which calls on 37 industrialized countries, called Annex I Countries to reduce by 5.2 percent their production of greenhouse gas emissions, notably carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, using the 1990 level as benchmark.

Mrs. Arroyo in various forums has called for at least a 30 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions below the 1990 level for the next seven years. She has also appealed to industrialized countries to establish a 2 percent global tax or levy on every ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.

Sixty percent of that amount will go to the country that burns the most fossil fuel, which causes the emissions. The remainder goes to a Multilateral Adaptation Fund.

According to estimates, $34 billion may be realized a year, an amount that may be used for the relief and rehabilitation of the countries affected by the global warming phenomenon.

The Kyoto Protocol has not lived up to the hopes reposed on it by the delegates. Although the United States is a signatory, the US Senate refused to ratify it.

A few months ago, President Barack Obama announced that the US is willing to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent using the 2005 level as basis.

It is much lower than what NGOs demand outside the convention hall. But the world can live with that, observers say, as long as the current US administration can persuade members of the Senate and their counterparts in the House of Representatives to drop their opposition to a deep emission cut, fearing It would hamstring American industry, which is already suffering from outside competition.

Apparently, President Obama can persuade the US Congress to go along, only if China, India, and Russia will commit to reduce their own emissions. (PIA- Pagadian City)

PHILIP JAMES MONGAYA TREMEDAL
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