The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Dhaka

Major emitters of greenhouse gases must not bypass the process led by the United Nations on the ground of cutting their emissions to lessen global warming in order to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change in the future.

The comment was made yesterday by Khushi Kabir, chair of Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (CSRL), a civil- society campaign in Bangladesh of around 70 national non-government organisations working on climate change, agriculture and trade policy issues.

She said, major emitters are going to meet in Hawaii on 30-31 January 2008 at "major economies' meeting' which is a parallel process to the UN climate change talks, set up by US President George Bush in June 2007 when the US was under growing pressure to contribute more to solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

The US invited India, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, European Union (to be represented by current EU chair Slovenia and the European Commission), France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Britain, and the United Nations in the Hawaii meeting.

"The UN has been invited at the major emitters' meeting, but this has not guaranteed that demands of most vulnerable countries due to climate change would be reflected and addressed in the meeting. To accord credibility to the revealed objectives of the meeting, most vulnerable countries and victims of climate change must also be included in the process of negotiations of this type of meeting. The UN process can effectively facilitate such process," Khushi said.

Reiterating the Campaign's position prior to the UN climate change conference in Bali, member secretary of the CSRL, Ziaul Hoque Mukta mentioned that major emitters especially the developed countries, must take the bigger responsibility to ensure significant reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Mukta said that the fast growing economies with large amount of emission should also take responsibility to curb emission path under the principle of "common but differentiated responsibility".