Fiji will continue to push for a second commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol when negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) get underway in the Arabian city of Doha on Tuesday November 27.
Members of the Fiji delegation have arrived in the capital city of Qatar to attend pre-negotiations meetings with fellow members of the Alliance of Small Islands States (AOSIS) and the Group of 77 (G77) in the lead up to the two weeks of negotiations.
The Kyoto Protocol entered into force in 2005 and commits industrialised countries to stabilising greenhouse gas emissions. The first commitment period of the Protocol expires at the end of this year.
Together with its developing country partners, Fiji is insisting in Doha that all amendments to the Protocol be effective from 1 January 2013 for a five year period, and that industrialised countries honour their commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 45 percent during the second commitment period, and by at least 95 percent by 2020 as compared to 1990 levels.
However, not all countries are parties to the Protocol, and Fiji will continue to call on those countries to make emission reduction commitments comparable to those made by Parties. If hard decisions to cut emissions are not made now, developing countries will be forced to confront issues of adaptation on a previously unimaginable scale.
The adverse impacts of climate change within the country continue to follow an extreme path and include flash floods, cyclones, rising sea-levels, storm surges, water shortage and droughts.
Fiji’s position at the Doha climate change negotiation reflects a communiqué by AOSIS Leaders adopted in September in New York calling on Parties to agree to a five-year second commitment period of the Protocol to run from 1 January, 2013.
Meanwhile, head of the Fiji delegation to Doha and Foreign Affairs Minister, Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, will deliver the country statement during the high level segment in the first week of December.
