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Vincent Gono, Features Editor
JUST when countries in the world thought they were singing from the same hymn book and stanza on the climate change issue after a hard won Paris Agreement of 2015, political developments that ushered in a new dispensation in the United States are likely going to see a major discord in the spirited global fight against climate change especially in developing countries.
While significant strides have been made by countries around the globe to try and minimise the grim effects of the climate change phenomena with more than two decades of negotiating and finding strategies to limit greenhouse gas emissions all that is likely to take a new dimension following the signing last Tuesday by US President Donald Trump of the Energy Independence decree that seeks to undo a slew of former President Barack Obama’s era of climate policies.
Developing countries are at the receiving end of the decree as they have little financial muscle to independently tackle adaptation and mitigation measures and relied on the rich West for resources. The signing by Trump of the decree therefore flew in the face of other nations who thought the world was now in the fast lane of trying to make the environment a lot better for future generations.
Director Climate Change in the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate Mr Washington Zhakata told the Sunday News that the signing by Trump of the decree to undo US climate change policies meant that the US was not going to support developing countries with funds to deal with climate change mitigation and adaptation measures.
“The American Government was expected to be leading in terms of supporting developing countries that have no financial muscle to adopt clean energy mechanisms. So its pulling out means we can no longer bank on them for financial support despite the irony that US is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases. They can’t be relied on.
“The opening of the closed coal mine fields means they are not taking climate change seriously and it is going to impact negatively on those countries that are yet to sign the Paris Agreement that reiterates the need for the globe to work together and ensure temperatures are lowered by two degrees Celsius,” said Mr Zhakata.
He added that the decree by Trump was an affront to the global efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change and was going to impact on financing for adaptation — the Green Climate Fund that the Obama administration had pledged.
He also echoed former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres who helped broker the Paris accord that the decree by Trump was rewinding the climate change clock to the pre- Paris Agreement.
“Trying to make fossil fuels remain competitive in the face of a booming clean renewable power sector, with the clean air and plentiful jobs it continues to generate, is going against the flow of economics,” said Figueres in a statement.
The order directs the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to start a formal process to undo the Clean Power Plan, which was introduced by Obama in 2014. The Clean Power Plan required states to collectively cut carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Mr Zhakata further stated that the aid cut by America under the Trump administration means that those countries in the developing world that were living off the aid were going to suffer the consequences of climate change more with little relief from a giant that was reneging on making permanent commitments.
The hobnobbing by the Trump administration on the climate change issue is worrying the world especially given that the US is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases. The decree seeks among other things to undo Obama’s Clean Power Plan requiring states to slash carbon emissions from power plants — a critical element in helping the United States meet its commitments to a global climate change accord agreed by nearly 200 countries in Paris in December 2015.
It also rescinds a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, reverse rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production and reduce the weight of climate change in federal agencies assessments of new regulations.
Carbon dioxide and methane are two of the main greenhouse gases blamed by scientists for heating the earth.
This however, was not surprising since even before the presidential campaign last year, Mr Trump had made statements consistent with climate change denial, including claiming climate change a hoax created by China. He has also threatened to formally withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. According to Mr Trump the regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions signed by Mr Obama were job killing especially in the energy sector.
Environment Africa country director Mr Barnabas Mawire said in an interview that the order signed recently by Mr Trump sought to reverse all the gains of the climate change talks at global level.
He said under Article Two of the Paris Agreement the parties agreed to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1,5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.
Mr Mawire said the likelihood was now high that the parties were going to miss the 2 degrees Celsius threshold adding that the American attitude was going to see other countries having an attitude towards the whole thing.
“The parties agreed to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, including by increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions in a manner that does not threaten food production.
“With the attitude adopted by Trump, we are going to miss the targets. Ironically America is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases and what it means is that the reopening of coal mine fields is going to exacerbate the ill-effects of the gases in the atmosphere, causing more harm to it,” said Mr Mawire.
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