DURBAN 2011: THE CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE COMES TO AFRICA

Every year the UN climate change ‘conference of the parties’ moves around the world with a circus of followers numbering into the thousands.  The intention of the conference is deadly serious, to try and negotiate a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol that will limit and if possible reduce the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. 

Every year the stakes get a little higher as the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, currently by just over two parts per million each year. Every year environmentalists call for a binding treaty and every year it fails to happen despite the usual diplomatic round of late night talks, positioning, posturing and last minute breakthroughs or last minute disappointments.  It all makes good television but does it achieve anything? 

It is easy to be sceptical and to a certain extent scepticism protects us from the repeated failure of conferences to achieve a binding agreement.  Perhaps we should not be surprised at this because of the scale of the challenge.  What is needed is a huge change, a paradigm shift from the carbon economy that has fuelled the growth of the past century to a global economy that can promote genuine wellbeing without causing such environmental and human damage.  

Such a change requires a mind shift of equal measure.  Continued economic growth heedless of the consequences is no longer viable but we have not yet been able to extricate ourselves from this vision and the current recession has just reinforced the mindset that economic growth must come first.  Change may come only slowly; consider for example how long it took for attitudes to the health risks of smoking to be translated into action.   

Yet we have no alternative. As the stories from Tuvalu and elsewhere make clear the impact of climate change and rising sea levels on vulnerable areas remains devastating.  Congregations have to face up to this challenge in their own buildings homes, and lives in the community.  The alternative of runaway carbon emissions is unthinkable.

Adrian Shaw

28 November 2011

For information on the World Council of Churches demands at Durban see: www.oikoumene.org/en/news/news-management/eng/a/article/1634/wcc-calls-durban-a-las.html

http://www.oikoumene.org/en/news/news-management/eng/a/article/1634/religious-voices-advocate.html