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BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The international community in 2007 mobilized to fight the daunting challenge of global climate change, and has moved forward from awareness of the critical issue to negotiations and actions to face it.
AWARENESS RAISED
With the rapid development of industrialization, human beings are using more and more fossil energy, bringing not only wealth but also a huge amount of contamination and greenhouse gases.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a new report on the phenomenon earlier this year, warning that the world's average temperature, if left unchecked, could rise by as much as 2 to 4 degrees centigrade by 2080.
This could lead to a lack of drinking water for 1.1 to 3.2 billion people and famine for 200 to 600 million people besides endangering the lives of between 200 and 700 million with floods, the report said.
t stressed there is no ground for doubting the fact that the earth is getting warmer, adding that the rate of climate change would accelerate if no efforts are made to reduce emissions.
It also said human beings' activities are the major cause for climate change, which, if not controlled, will do serious harm to economies, societies and ecosystems worldwide.
This report has rung the alarm bells for the world, raised our awareness of the negative impacts of climate change and aroused a worldwide debate on the issue.
IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said leaders and citizens across the world must now pay unprecedented attention to the climate change problem.
NEGOTIATIONS LAUNCHED
Since the beginning of 2007, a series of high-level international conferences have made climate change one of their key topics to echo the sounding alarm.
Climate change was at the top of the agenda of the G-8 summit in Germany in June, a U.N. climate meeting in New York and the APEC meeting in Sydney, both in September, the East Asian Summit in Singapore and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda in November.
Through comprehensive exchanges and negotiations, many countries have reached a variety of consensus, agreeing that negotiations on climate change should be carried out under the U.N. framework, adaptation to climate change should not be neglected, and technological development and fund input are key factors to tackle climate change.
Although there are still many different views between developed and developing countries as well as among the developed countries themselves, the international community adopted the Bali Roadmap on December 15 after two weeks of exhausting bargaining and negotiations.
The roadmap, agreed on by over 180 countries meeting in Indonesia's resort island of Bali, includes a clear agenda for the key issues to be negotiated up to 2009, including action for adapting to the negative consequences of climate change, ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ways to deploy climate-friendly technologies and financing both adaptation and mitigation measures.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed his welcome of the outcome of the climate change conference in Bali, saying the Bali Agenda achieves three objectives: launching negotiations on a global climate change agreement, agreeing to an agenda for the negotiations, and agreeing to complete them by 2009.
He believes the Bali Roadmap is a pivotal first step toward an agreement that can address the threat of climate change.
ACTIONS WANTED
Although a roadmap has been made and consensus reached by the parties involved, there are many difficulties to be faced in implementing the roadmap and more actions are desperately needed.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said, "We now have a roadmap, we have an agenda and we have a deadline."
"But we also have a huge task ahead of us and time to reach agreement is extremely short, so we need to move quickly," he said.
It is 10 years since the Kyoto Protocol on climate change was signed. The protocol set up targets for developed countries in emission cuts, but some of the countries have turned back the clock by expressing their wish to change some contents of the protocol.
The UNFCCC clearly pointed out how developing countries effectively implementing their promises under the U.N. framework would depend on whether developed countries can keep their promises in transferring fund and technology to developing nations, but developed countries have shown a negative attitude toward the issue.
In 2007, China released a national blueprint for tackling climate change, established the Office of the National Leadership Group on Climate Change, and issued a variety of related laws and regulations. It is positively making its contribution in the global fight against climate change.
At the recent conference in Bali, Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of China's National Development and Reform Commission, called for sincere cooperation and joint efforts among all countries in combating climate change under the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities."
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