Climate policy not even treading water

In PNG, extreme weather conditions have increased in frequency and ferocity in recent years. A massive flood in the Oro Province in November 2007 killed 70 people and destroyed 95 per cent of the road and bridge infrastructure. The cost of repairing this infrastructure is estimated to run into the billions of dollars.

The injustice of climate change is that its impacts are falling most heavily on the poor - those people who bear the least responsibility for causing the problem and have the least capacity to adapt. Whilst a country with a heavy carbon/greenhouse footprint such as Australia has the luxury to debate and research climate change, some of the low lying island nations are likely to disappear off the surface of the earth altogether.

As a country that has disproportionately contributed to creating the problem of global warming (on a per capita basis), Australia now has an obligation to not only lead by example in reducing its own emissions, but to also assist its poorer neighbours cope with its impacts and implement alternative development pathways.

Often lacking the infrastructure to even tackle day-to-day issues of social deprivation, health and hunger, the developing world has few resources left to actively respond to environmental circumstances in a way that might mitigate long-term impacts. Countries with poor democratic structures, weak borders and high incidence of corruption are most vulnerable to the potential for climate change triggering large-scale humanitarian crises.

Given that our current targets of 5 to 15 per cent emissions cuts by 2020 will, according to all available science, lead us on a course that will see increasing problems in the Asia Pacific region as a direct result of climate change, a $20 million pledge is very modest indeed.

The bigger question facing our political leaders is how Australia will contribute to the global effort to radically reduce carbon emissions in the short term, and play a positive role in ensuring a strong new global emission reduction treaty is signed off at Copenhagen later this year. To achieve this, we will need to set credible science based targets; we need 25 to 40 per cent cuts by 2020.

In a paper presented at the recent climate talks in Poznan the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) called on the world to reduce their GHG emissions by more than 40 per cent to 1990 levels by 2020, and more than 95 per cent by 2050. These AOSIS countries, which include many of our neighbouring Pacific Island nations, know very well that their very existence is at stake.

Responding to the new science from Copenhagen, Maldives President Mahamed Nasheed has pledged that his country will no longer be part of the “Faustian Pact” the world is currently playing with carbon by becoming the first country to go carbon neutral. "Today," he said, "the Maldives will opt out of that pact". But where will Australia stand?