BASICally ready to reduce greenhouse gases

International relations

BASICally ready to reduce greenhouse gases

SANews.gov.za

Developing countries have showed their commitment to the global fi against climate change and have presented actions that will be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to the ministers dealing with climate change from the BASIC group of countries – Brazil, South Africa, India and China – developing countries are ready to help fight climate change, but developed countries must take the lead.

The ministers met in Sandton, Johannesburg recently for the 11th BASIC Ministerial Meeting on Climate Change, where they implemented the agreement reached at the 10th Ministerial Coordination meeting held in New Delhi, India in March this year.

“The change we are experiencing is the result of emissions that occurred a long time ago and is the responsibility of the industrial countries,” said Ambassador Luiz Figueiredo Machado, under-Secretary for Environment, Energy, Science and Technology of the Ministry of External Relations in Brazil. “We are not responsible for what is going on, but we are ready to help fight the problem.”

The BASIC countries have been playing an increasingly important role in international environmental governance. South Africa has hosted COP17-CMP7, Brazil hosted the Rio+20 Conference, India is expected to host COP10 of the Convention on Biological Diversity in the coming months and China hosted the UNFCCC inter-sessional meeting in Tianjin in 2010 in the run-up to COP16-CMP6 in Cancun.

The ministers called for the adoption of a 2nd Commitment Period under the Kyoto Protocol* and its immediate implementation at the beginning of 2013.

South African Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa noted that Africa was part of the whole world and that there were measures to move on to transition to a green economy.

“We’ve begun implementing alternate energy resources, we’ve committed and are ready going forward.”

* The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which sets binding targets for 37 industrialised countries and the European community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005.