CAIRO: An Egyptian Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation, Mohamed El-Ashry, gave a presentation to the Arab League Wednesday on the recently released 2007/2008 UN Human Development Report on climate change.
The report focuses on the human impact on climate change, how human beings can adapt to it, and how further climactic changes can be prevented.
El-Ashry’s presentation gave the representatives of the Arab states as well as the Arab League’s Secretary-General Amr Moussa an overview of the report, highlighting some of the key facts and figures contained within it.
In the last century, El-Ashry said, the world has heated by 0.7 degrees centigrade, and in order to prevent global catastrophe that temperature increase must be kept below 2 degrees.
In order to avoid this outcome the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050, with 80 percent of cuts coming from rich nations – who are the highest emitters – and 20 percent from the developing world.
“It is the poor who will shoulder the burden of our failure to meet these targets, El-Ashry said, referring to the increased likelihood of droughts and flooding in developing countries.
El-Ashry elaborated on this point when speaking to Daily News Egypt after the presentation.
“The poor are suffering the most – in Egypt, the Arab world, all over the world, he said.
“Social safety nets in all areas of development – like healthcare, education and nutrition – need to be introduced. Expenditure on such projects is very low in the Arab world.
El-Ashry said that it was urgent that mitigation actions like reducing carbon dioxide emissions be taken now.
According to the report, large parts of Egypt face potential disaster. Should the sea level rise by a meter, it is predicted that as many as six million people in Upper Egypt could be left homeless due to flooding, while flooding in the Nile Delta could drastically affect agriculture. In both areas water-born diseases like Malaria could claim many lives.
“To avoid (this) we need to reduce emissions now, so that the rise would only be a foot or 10 cm, which would be more manageable
“But you cannot build walls across the delta to prevent the sea flooding it. We’ve got to be more active in preventing that situation from happening.
El-Ashry criticized Egypt for its lack of action so far and urged it to take a “leadership role in getting together a comprehensive climate change agreement for the Arab world.
He reserved his strongest criticism, however, for the Opec countries who, he said, “fought constantly against international agreements on negotiations on climate change.
“Some of them are concerned that if you reduce emissions . that would cut down on the use of oil, which of course is utter nonsense. Oil will always be important, it will always be used – it is a very defensive approach on their part.
The United States – the world’s greatest emitter of greenhouse gases – had finally “lifted its head out of the sand, El-Ashry said, though he pointed out that no new agreement on climate change would be introduced within the next year, allowing the Bush administration to walk away “without looking like the bad guy.
He did say, however, that despite the US federal government’s inaction of tackling climate change, some states like California – “which is bigger than many countries – had committed themselves to the 80 percent cut by 2050.
Another country that had made progress was Australia, though that had been the result of people pressure, rather than government initiative.
El-Ashry explained that countries – especially in the developing world – would need “adaptation strategies to cope with the irreversible temperature increase the world has experienced already.
“Adaptation needs to become part of development thinking, he said. “Every country needs a national plan to be prepared for the worst.
“But the Arab world is not taking the necessary action.
