Much hope rides on Lima summit

THE COP-20 summit in Lima is supposed to furnish a draft agreement on meaningful climate actions, which in turn would serve as a stepping stone for a full-fledged agreement in Paris next year. Yet, to reach agreement on a 3-degree Celsius rise in global temperature, much debate and wrangling is underway between developed countries on who will foot the bill for limiting carbon emissions. The UN Chief Ban Ki Moon has stressed on the need to reach an agreement, but key sticking points revolve around whether the agreement should be limited only to mitigation or on adaptation and finance.

Although the US-China commitment announced just prior to the Lima summit brought much hope, the mood has to transcend national political bottlenecks and commit to a proposed review of mitigation commitments. This is the principal bottleneck in negotiations between the developed countries and the emerging economies. What has become imperative is to agree upon setting a limit on greenhouse gas emissions. Without a consensus in this summit, it is widely perceived that the Paris summit that is supposed to ink a deal will not be forthcoming.

For countries like Bangladesh which is part of 20 countries that have been identified as the 'climate vulnerable group', a firm commitment by advanced economies to the US$10billion mitigation fund is not a matter of luxury but one of necessity. It is hoped that the Lima summit will come out with an agreement that will breathe hope into next year's summit for we are literally out of time on saving the environment we all live in.