Daggers have been drawn as delegates from around the world begin making their way to Durban for the 17th annual UN climate change talks.

The 17th meeting of the Convention of the Parties, or COP17, will pit civil society, charities, developed and developing countries - all with different and often competing interests - against each other while they search for solutions.

Xolisa Ngwadla, climate change adviser to Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa, said more than 30000 people from 194 countries would take part in the talks at the Durban International Conference Centre from November 28 to December 9.

"This is the 17th meeting of parties that agreed to a global objective of fighting climate change. They committed [themselves to it] through an international law that [obliges them to] reduce greenhouse gases and address the unavoidable impacts of climate change," he said.

Some of the participating countries, Ngwadla said, were signatories to the Kyoto Protocol, which binds industrialised nations to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 5% of their 1990 level. The Kyoto agreement expires in December next year and negotiators in Durban will debate whether to extend it.

Though the delegates will argue about what should be done to deal with climate change, many represent groups with common interests and a joint agenda, according to Ngwadla. These include:

• BASIC, an influential grouping of developing nations consisting of China, Brazil, India and South Africa. All have a large carbon footprint;
• Smaller groupings such as the Alliance of Small Islands, and African and Latin American countries - less-developed countries particularly vulnerable to climate change; and
• The most-developed economies, such as the US, Germany, Japan, France and UK.

Participating countries are divided into annex 1 and annex 2 states. Annex 1 states are industrialised countries with economies in transition; they are obliged only to reduce emissions. Annex 2 countries are richer states obliged to reduce emissions and to give financial support to developing nations

The smaller lobby blocs want to voluntarily commit to reducing carbon emissions without legally binding agreements. The EU, on the other hand, wants everyone to commit to a legally binding agreement.

Said Ngwadla: "We don't want legally binding commitments, but we are deviating from business as usual. The extent to which we reduce emissions depends on the money that will come from annex 2 countries."

The deadlock is unlikely to be broken unless negotiators are willing to compromise. States such as Japan, Russia and Australia - which are not signatories to the Kyoto Protocol - are expected to make the negotiations tougher because they want both developed and developing states bound by the same emission-reduction rules.

COP17 will have to find ways of implementing decisions taken at COP16 in Mexico last year. This meeting, said Ngwadla, would most likely formalise the Green Climate Fund aimed at raising $100-billion by 2020.

WHY WE SHOULD CARE

IF NOTHING is done, climate change will devastate South Africa, causing coastal regions to warm up by between 1C and 2C by 2050, and by between 3C and 4C by 2100.

The interior will warm up by between 3C and 4C by about 2050, and by 6C to 7C by about 2100, resulting in significant changes in rainfall patterns and water availability.

Other devastating impacts include:

• Biodiversity will be severely affected, especially the grasslands, fynbos and succulents of the Karoo, where a high level of extinction is predicted;
• Maize production in summer rainfall areas, and fruit and cereal production in winter rainfall areas, might be badly affected;
• Alien invasive plants are likely to spread more rapidly and have an ever-increasing adverse affect on water resources;
• There will be an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. Damage due to flooding, fire, storms and drought has already been conservatively estimated at R1-billion a year between 2000 and 2009; and
• Commercial forestry will be increasingly vulnerable to wildfires. - Source: www.cop17-cmp7durban.com