COP17: a guide for the perplexed

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Danette Breitenbach

The Mail and Guardian's Yolandi Groenewald offers a guide to The 17th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, popularly known as COP17. The convention will try, once again, to use multilateral negotiations in order to establish a legally binding agreement to combat climate change.

192 nations join this yearly event to discuss ways to cut greenhouse gasses to reduce climate change. This painstaking process has been going on for 17 years and the only legally binding agreement it successfully produced was the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The reason this process has been taking so long is financial - United States, Canada, the European nations, Japan, Australia and other developed nations grew their economies during the past 100 years by burning fossil fuels to power their economies. On the other hand, developing countries such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa need to grow their economies, as well, and many still use fossil fuels.

South Africa, especially its agriculture sector, must deal with climate change. The National Climate Change Response green paper acknowledges that the South African government "regards climate change as one of the greatest threats to sustainable development". But when a legally binding agreement is signed, South Africa - with an economy that is 90% driven by coal - will be expected to reduce its carbon footprint dramatically by investing in renewable energy resources.

Read the full article on http://mg.co.za.