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Efforts to revive the campaign to tackle Earth’s accelerating climate-change crisis go into top gear here on Monday.
World leaders will gather ahead of the 62nd session of the General Assembly for an unprecedented summit, followed later in the week by ministerial-level talks in Washington among 16 countries together accounting for 90 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions.
With luck, these two meetings will blow away some of the thick political fog which has begun to obscure a crucial climate conference taking place in Bali, Indonesia, in December.
“We cannot go on this way for long,” says UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. “We cannot continue with business as usual. The time has come for decisive action on a global scale.”
More than 70 heads of state and government will attend Monday’s UN event, making it the largest meeting ever of world leaders on climate change.
It takes place against an ever-higher, always-grimmer pile of evidence that fossil-fuel gases are warming the planet, causing glacier shrinkage, melting Arctic sea ice and retreating permafrost.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), gathering the world’s top climate scientists, forecast this year that by 2100, drought, floods and powerful storms will become a greater risk, driving up the probabilities of mass hunger, homelessness and waterborne disease.
Despite this shock, political action has been hamstrung.
Progress remains bedevilled by worries about the cost of reducing emissions, the clout of powerful lobby groups and accusations that some countries are making sacrifices while others are getting a free ride.
With time running out, hopes are pinned on the December 3-14 Bali meeting of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Its task will be to agree a two-year roadmap for deciding emissions cuts and other action after 2012, when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol runs out. “It’s important that (the New York meeting) serves to send a very clear signal at the highest political level that the negotiations need to begin in Bali,” UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer told AFP.
The Washington meeting, on September 27 and 28, will dig boldly into some of the biggest problems in the climate-change debate.
Proposed by US President George W. Bush — under pressure on climate change at home and abroad — the meeting is sketched as the start of a 15-month process among the world’s major economies, including four European countries, as well as China and India.
It could coax national commitments for tackling emissions, as well as initiatives to reduce pollution from specific sectors, such as transportation, steel, carmaking and cement.
And it will put the spotlight on innovative technologies to ease emissions, including carbon sequestration, which green groups warn could worsen global warming if it fails.
Other countries eye the Washington talks warily.
Some diplomats say they fear — despite US assertions to the contrary — a covert attempt to stitch up an unambitious, voluntary deal within a small club, rather than within the global forum.
Bush opposes core principles of the current Kyoto process, attacking its binding caps for industrialised countries as too costly for the US economy and saying it is unfair that Asia’s giants, like other developing countries, do not have similar commitments.
Opposition by the US, the world’s No. 1 emitter, nearly scuppered Kyoto and crippled the effectiveness of its first commitment period.
So the Bali roadmap for negotiations on post-2012 commitments will have to find a way of somehow incorporating the United States into a global strategy and also help the emerging giants brake their own huge rise in emissions.
These nations remain hostile to demands to sign up to targeted commitments, pointing out that rich countries are to blame for 70 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere today.
“India’s position is, ‘you reduce your emissions and help us reduce ours as well’,” said a senior environment ministry official in Delhi.
“India’s emissions are just four percent of that of the US. Our economic growth is nine percent, while our energy consumption is 3.6 percent… We have the challenge to stamp out poverty, and this can only be done by sustained economic growth.”
Source: AFP
September 25th, 2007
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Lindsay Davenport won her first singles title after almost a year’s absence from the tour, defeating Daniela Hantuchova 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 Sunday to capture the Bali Open.
Davenport was playing her first singles tournament since having a baby in June. And the 31-year-old Californian eliminated some strong opponents en route to this title: second-seeded Hantuchova, top-seeded Jelena Jankovic and fifth-seeded Eleni Daniilidou.
“I’m a little bit in shock,” said Davenport, who won this event in 2005. “It’s just overwhelming and exciting. I swear this is probably the first tournament I’ve played in four years where I didn’t have anything wrong with my lower extremities.”
Davenport, ranked No. 1 in 1998, has won three Grand Slams in addition to a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics. Her previous title came in Zurich, Switzerland, nearly two years ago.
She had not competed on the WTA Tour since reaching the Beijing quarterfinals in September 2006, when she lost to Amelie Mauresmo. She gave birth to her first child — a son, Jagger — with husband and former tennis player Jon Leach.
Davenport had the first break for 2-1, but her opponent evened the score the following game. Hantuchova later held a break point for a possible 5-3 lead, but the Slovak made a forehand error. Davenport responded by breaking in the next game.
The second set was settled by a break for 3-1. The final set turned one-sided from 2-1 when Davenport took the next three games at love.
“She threw in a couple of errors … that really gave me a lot of confidence and momentum,” Davenport said. “That relaxed me a little bit more in my service games, and I was able to make some more first serves.”
Hantuchova needed treatment for a blister on right heel but refused to blame the injury for her defeat.
“It was just a blister, nothing serious,” Hantuchova said. “I was trying to do the right things … but all credit to the way she was playing. She was serving great.”
Davenport teamed with Hantuchova in doubles but withdrew from the doubles semifinal Friday because of a strained left forearm. The Chinese duo of Ji Chunmei and Sun Shengnan won the doubles title, defeating Jill Craybas of the U.S. and Natalie Grandin of South Africa 6-3, 6-2.
Copyright © 2007, The Associated Press
September 17th, 2007
A 20-nation meeting in Berlin has helped lay the foundation for negotiations in Bali in December about a new climate change treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, a UN official said Tuesday.
“We have laid the foundation for formal talks,” the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Yvo de Boer, said in Berlin.
He said the two-day meeting of ministers of the Group of Eight plus 12 other major energy consumers that ended in Berlin on Tuesday had helped forge greater understanding between the haves and the have-nots on combating global warming.
“I have heard here in Berlin that all nations want to make progress in Bali, and that they want the conference there to establish clear goals and greater involvement on the part of developing countries,” de Boer added.
“Everybody already has a climate change policy and everybody is ready to go further.”
The UNFCCC hopes that its conference in Bali, Indonesia will deliver a roadmap for negotiating cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that will be implemented after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol runs out.
But deeply conflicting views between countries about how to act to stop the Earth from overheating means that the UN officials will have their work cut out to prevent it all ending in deadlock.
One problem is configuring a treaty encouraging cuts by the United States, which opposes the cap on emissions set down under Kyoto and is pushing for a voluntary, technology-driven approach.
Another problem is what kind of commitments large developing countries should make under post-2012 Kyoto.
German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said there were encouraging signs that a global consensus was slowly emerging to avert a looming disaster.
This, and hardening public opinion, will “make it very difficult for nations to opt out of the process,” Gabriel said.
“Recalcitrant governments are facing more and more pressure,” he said, referring to the United States, the world’s number one greenhouse gas emitter, which walked away from Kyoto in 2001.
Little detail was known about positions taken at the Berlin meeting — the third and penultimate in the G8’s so-called Gleneagles Process on climate change, clean energy and sustainable development.
Veterans of climate negotiations expect some of the major players in this process to declare their hand only at a time closer to the Bali conference or possibly at Bali itself.
That conference will be preceded by two major meetings in the United States.
On September 24, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will host a 30-nation meeting in New York.
Three days later US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will chair a meeting of 16 countries that together account for some 90 percent of global emissions in Washington.
Source: AFP
September 12th, 2007
NUSA DUA, Indonesia - In a warm-up for her first singles match in nearly a year, Lindsay Davenport earned a straight-set doubles victory at the Bali Open on Monday.
She joined Daniela Hantuchova to defeat Sophie Lefevre and Ipek Senoglu 6-3, 6-1.
Davenport will face fifth-seed Eleni Daniilidou on Tuesday for the first singles match of her comeback.
The 31-year-old Davenport played doubles at the Pilot Pen tournament last month after giving birth to her son, Jagger, in June.
“It’s not an easy first match,” she said. “But it’s not really about who I play and winning matches. It’s hard to put expectations on myself after everything that’s happened in the last year.”
Davenport plans to play next week in Beijing, and train for the Australian Open.
In other first-round singles play, Youlia Fedossova blanked Hsieh Su-Wei 6-0, 6-0, and Romanian Edina Gallovits routed Jarmilla Gajdosova 6-1, 6-0.
Source: AOL Sports
September 11th, 2007
New mom Lindsay Davenport is set to return to the singles scene. The former World No. 1 will play her first singles tournament since last September when she competes in the Tier III Wismilak International in Bali, Sept. 10-16.
“I’ve enjoyed the tournament in the past and feel it’s the perfect place to begin playing singles again,” said the 31-year-old Davenport, who won the Bali title in 2005.
Davenport, who gave birth to son Jagger by Caesarian section on June 10, will play doubles with Lisa Raymond at the Pilot Pen in New Haven, Conn., Aug. 19-25. New Haven will mark Davenport’s first WTA Tour tournament appearance since she lost to then top-ranked Amélie Mauresmo in the quarterfinals of the Tier II Beijing tournament last September.
Jelena Jankovic, Patty Schnyder and Daniela Hantuchova have also committed to playing Bali.
Source: Tennis Week
August 21st, 2007
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