Day 5: Highlights from Poznan - Excuses, excuses...

As soon as The Wilderness Society and the other non-governmental delegations arrived in Poznan, governments were keen to hose down expectations of how much progress would be made in establishing a new agreement on reducing climate change, and setting tough emissions reductions targets.

In Poznan, The Wilderness Society delegation will be urging world leaders to take strong action to reduce logging and land clearing - as part of the global plan to tackle climate change.

We heard; "the United States is in caretaker mode until Obama takes office in January" and "the scale of the global economic crisis means we can't afford to cop the unemployment and further economic impact of agreeing to deep and fast emissions targets".

This is kind of curious given how fast the response to the economic crisis has been, and how hundreds of billions worth of bail out money has been sourced and handed out by the world's governments.

It's also sobering when you hear passionate pleas from pacific island countries like Tuvalu for urgent action before their countries are submerged under sea level rise caused by melting of the ice caps.

Reaching agreement by the end of 2009 is critical because it ensures there will be no gap between the end of the Kyoto Protocol and the beginning of the new agreement and targets.

Disappointingly Australia, along with Japan, Russia and Canada so far has been non-committal on the key issues - setting a deep and fast emissions reduction target, the base year this target is set against (it should be 1990 as it was for Kyoto) and the commitment period for the next round of targets should apply too - we believe five years is appropriate.

On a more promising front, the Australian and Indonesian governments announced a partnership on reducing emissions from deforestation, with particular focus on the Kalimantan Province.

Meanwhile the Wilderness Society team is pushing hard to make sure that real forest protection, and avoiding global deforestation and forest degradation (logging) are key pillars of a new agreement. More on that tomorrow.

There is also a massive youth presence at Poznan, and our representative Gemma Tillack, has been playing a key role with the international youth delegation.

Today the youth delegation is holding a media event/demonstration - urging governments to take immediate action on climate change and not leave the mess for future generations to clean up when it will be even harder and more urgent to fix. This scenario has massive consequences, especially for the many developing countries who will be most affected.

 
Check out our regular 'Postcards from Poznan' for updates and progress on the climate change negotiations.

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