Реферат: Climate change
Реферат: Climate change
Report on The State Department Climate
Action: Introduction and Overview
International Activities
No single country can resolve the problem of global
climate change. Recognizing this, the United States is engaged in many
activities to facilitate closer international cooperation. To this end, the
U.S. government has actively participated in international research and
assessment efforts (e.g., through the IPCC), in efforts to develop and
implement a global climate change strategy (through the FCCC Conference of the
Parties and its varied subsidiary bodies and through the Climate Technology
Initiative), and by providing financial and technical assistance to developing
countries to facilitate development of mitigation and sequestration strategies
(e.g., through the Global Environment Facility (GEF)). Bilateral and
multilateral opportunities are currently being implemented, with some designed
to capitalize on the technological capabilities of the private sector, and
others to work on a government-to-government basis.
In the existing Convention framework, the United
States has seconded technical experts to the FCCC secretariat to help implement
methodological, technical, and technological activities. U.S. experts review
national communications of other Parties and are helping to advance the
development of methodologies for inventorying national emissions.
The United States has been active in promoting next
steps under the Convention. It has encouraged all countries to take appropriate
analyses of their own circumstances before taking action--and then act on these
analyses. It has suggested--and, where possible, has demonstrated--flexible and
robust institutional systems through which actions can be taken, such as
programs to implement emission-reduction activities jointly between Parties,
and emission-trading programs. The United States has also sought to use its
best diplomatic efforts to prod those in the international community reluctant
to act, seeking to provide assurances that the issue is critical and warrants
global attention. Through these efforts, the ongoing negotiations are expected
to successfully conclude in late 1997. The successful implementation of the
Convention and a new legal instrument will ensure that the potential hazards of
climate change will never be realized.
As a major donor to the GEF, the United States has
contributed approximately $190 million to help developing countries meet the
incremental costs of protecting the global environment. Although the United
States is behind in the voluntary payment schedule agreed upon during the GEF
replenishment adopted in 1994, plans have been made to pay off these arrears.
The principles of the U.S. development assistance
strategy lie at the heart of U.S. bilateral mitigation projects. These principles
include the concepts of conservation and cultural respect, as well as
empowerment of local citizenry. The U.S. government works primarily through the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In fact, mitigation of
global climate change is one of USAID's two global environmental priorities.
Other agencies working in the climate change field, including the Environmental
Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the
Departments of Agriculture and Energy, are also active internationally.
Projects fit into various general categories, such as increasing the efficiency
of power operation and use, adopting renewable-energy technologies, reducing
air pollution, improving agricultural and livestock practices, and decreasing
deforestation and improving land use.
Perhaps
none of the U.S. programs is as well known as the U.S. Country Studies Program.
The program is currently assisting fifty-five developing countries and
countries with economies in transition to market economies with climate change
studies intended to build human and institutional capacity to address climate
change. Through its Support for National Action Plans, the program is
supporting the preparation of national climate action plans for eighteen
developing countries, which will lay the foundation for their national
communication, as required by the FCCC. More than twenty-five additional
countries have requested similar assistance from the Country Studies Program.
The United States is also committed to facilitating the
commercial transfer of energy-efficient and renewable-energy technologies that
can help developing countries achieve sustainable development. Under the
auspices of the Climate Technology Initiative, the U.S. has taken a lead role
in a task force on Energy Technology Networking and Capacity Building, the
efforts of which focus on increasing the availability of reliable climate
change technologies, developing options for improving access to data in
developing countries, and supporting experts in the field around the world. The
United States is also engaged in various other projects intended to help
countries with mitigation and adaptation issues. The International Activities
chapter focuses on the most important of these U.S. efforts.
Introduction and Overview
Since the historic gathering of representatives from
172 countries at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, issues of
environmental protection have remained high on national and international
priorities. Climate change is one of the most visible of these issues--and one
in which some of the most significant progress has been made since the 1992
session. Perhaps the crowning achievement in Rio was the adoption of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). This Convention
represented a shared commitment by nations around the world to reduce the
potential risks of a major global environmental problem. Its ultimate objective
is to:
Achieve ¼ stabilization of greenhouse gas
concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous
anthropogenic human interference with the climate system. Such a level should
be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt
naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened,
and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.
However, since the 1992 Earth Summit, the global
community has found that actions to mitigate climate change will need to be
more aggressive than anticipated. At the same time, the rationale for action
has proven more compelling. Few "Annex I" countries (the Climate
Convention's term for developed countries, including Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries and countries with economies
in transition to market economies) have demonstrated an ability to meet the
laudable, albeit nonbinding, goal of the Convention--"to return emissions
of greenhouse gases to their 1990 levels by the end of the decade." While
voluntary programs have demonstrated that substantial reductions are achievable
at economic savings or low costs, the success of these programs has been
overshadowed by lower-than-expected energy prices as well as
higher-than-expected economic growth and electricity demand, among other factors.
Recognizing that even the most draconian measures
would likely be insufficient to reverse the growth in greenhouse gases and
return U.S. emissions to their 1990 levels by the year 2000, new U.S. efforts
are focusing most intensively on the post-2000 period. Thus, while some new
voluntary actions have already been proposed (and are included in this report),
an effort to develop a comprehensive program to address rising U.S. greenhouse
gas emissions is being developed in the context of the ongoing treaty negotiations
and will be reported in the next U.S. communication.
In spite of difficulties in meeting a domestic goal to
return emissions to their 1990 levels, the U.S. commitment to addressing the
climate change problem remains a high priority. President Clinton, in remarks
made in November 1996, both underlined U.S. concerns and exhorted the nations
of the world to act:
“We must
work to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. These gases released by cars
and power plants and burning forests affect our health and our climate. They
are literally warming our planet. If they continue unabated, the consequences
will be nothing short of devastating ¼. We must stand together against
the threat of global warming. A greenhouse may be a good place to raise plants;
it is no place to nurture our children. And we can avoid dangerous global
warming if we begin today and if we begin together.”
Difficulties in meeting the "aim" of the
Climate Convention prompted the international community, gathered at the first
meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the FCCC (held in Berlin, Germany,
in March 1995), to agree on a new approach to addressing the climate change
problem. At their first session, the Parties decided to negotiate a new legal
instrument containing appropriate next steps under the Convention. At the
Second Conference of the Parties (COP-2), the United States expressed its view
that the new agreement should include three main elements:
·
a realistic and achievable binding
target (instead of the hortatory goals and nonbinding aims of the existing
Convention),
·
flexibility in implementation, and
·
the participation of developing
countries.
Each of these elements was included in a Ministerial
Declaration agreed to at COP-2, and the United States expects that a legal
instrument containing these elements will be one of the outcomes from the Third
Conference of the Parties, to be held in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997.
As international negotiations continue on a new legal
commitment, the United States is assessing options for a domestic program. The
results of this analytical effort are being used to inform the U.S. negotiating
positions, and will subsequently be used to develop compliance strategies to
meet any commitments established under the new regime.
While the Parties involved in the negotiations are
determining next steps for collective action, all countries are still actively
pursuing the programs adopted earlier in the decade to control emissions. This
document describes the current U.S. program. It represents the second formal
U.S. communication under the FCCC, as required under Articles 4.2 and 12. As
with the Climate Action Report published by the United States in 1994, it is a
"freeze frame"--a look at the current moment in time in the U.S. program.
This report does not predict additional future activities. Nor is it intended
to be a substitute for existing or future decision-making processes--whether
administrative or legislative--or for additional measures developed by or with
the private sector.
This document has been developed using the
methodologies and format agreed to at the first meeting of the Conference of
the Parties to the FCCC, and modified by the second meeting of the Conference
of the Parties and by sessions of the Convention's Subsidiary Body on
Scientific and Technological Advice and the Subsidiary Body on Implementation.
The United States assumes that this communication, like those of other
countries--and like the preceding U.S. communication--will be subject to a
thorough review, and discussed in the evaluation process for the Parties of the
Convention. Even though the measures listed in this report are not expected to
reduce U.S. emissions below 1990 levels by the year 2000, the United States
believes that many of the climate change actions being implemented have been
successful at reducing emissions, send valuable signals to the private sector,
and may be appropriate models for other countries. The U.S. experience should
also ensure that future efforts are more effective in reversing the rising
trend of emissions and returning U.S. emissions to more environmentally
sustainable levels.
The Science
The 1992 Convention effort was
largely predicated on the scientific and technical information produced by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 1990 report. The IPCC
consists of more than two thousand of the world's best scientists with
expertise in the physical, social, and economic sciences relevant to the
climate issue. The United States stands firmly behind the IPCC's conclusions.
As the actions being taken by the United States ultimately depend on the
nation's understanding of the science, it is important to at least briefly
review this information here.
The Earth absorbs energy from the sun in the form of
solar radiation. About one-third is reflected, and the rest is absorbed by
different components of the climate system, including the atmosphere, the
oceans, the land surface, and the biota. The incoming energy is balanced over
the long term by outgoing radiation from the Earth-atmosphere system, with
outgoing radiation taking the form of long-wave, invisible infrared energy. The
magnitude of this outgoing radiation is affected in part by the temperature of
the Earth-atmosphere system.
Several human and natural activities can change the
balance between the energy absorbed by the Earth and that emitted in the form
of long-wave infrared radiation. On the natural side, these include changes in
solar radiation (the sun's energy varies by small amounts--approximately 0.1 percent
over an eleven-year cycle--and variations over longer periods also occur). They
also include volcanic eruptions, injecting huge clouds of sulfur-containing
gases, which tend to cool the Earth's surface and atmosphere over a few years.
On the human-induced side, the balance can be changed by emissions from
land-use changes and industrial practices that add or remove
"heat-trapping" or "greenhouse" gases, thus changing
atmospheric absorption of radiation.
Greenhouse gases of policy significance include carbon
dioxide (CO2); methane (CH4); nitrous oxide (N2O);
the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and their substitutes, including
hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs); the long-lived fully fluorinated hydrocarbons, such
as perfluorocarbons (PFCs); and ozone (O3). Although most of these
gases occur naturally (the exceptions are the CFCs, their substitutes, and the
long-lived PFCs), the concentrations of all of these gases are changing as a
result of human activities.
For example, the atmospheric concentration of carbon
dioxide has risen about 30 percent since the 1700s--an increase responsible for
more than half of the enhancement of the trapping of the infrared radiation due
to human activities. In addition to their steady rise, many of these greenhouse
gases have long atmospheric residence times (several decades to centuries),
which means that atmospheric levels of these gases will return to preindustrial
levels only if emissions are sharply reduced, and even then only after a long
time. Internationally accepted science indicates that increasing concentrations
of greenhouse gases will raise atmospheric and oceanic temperatures and could
alter associated weather and circulation patterns.
In a report synthesizing its second assessment and
focusing on the relevance of its scientific analyses to the ultimate objective
of the Convention, the IPCC concluded:
·
Human activities--including the
burning of fossil fuels, land use, and agriculture--are changing the
atmospheric composition. Taken together, they are projected to lead to changes
in global and regional climate and climate-related parameters, such as
temperature, precipitation, and soil moisture.
·
Some human
communities--particularly those with limited access to mitigating
technologies--are becoming more vulnerable to natural hazards and can be
expected to suffer significantly from the impacts of climate-related changes,
such as high-temperature events, floods, and droughts, potentially resulting in
fires, pest outbreaks, ecosystem loss, and an overall reduction in the level of
primary productivity.
The IPCC also concluded that, given the
current trends in emissions, global concentrations of greenhouse gases are
likely to grow significantly through the next century and beyond, and the
adverse impacts from these changes will become greater. The remainder of this
report seeks to elucidate the programs, policies, and measures being taken in
the United States to begin moving away from this trend of increasing emissions,
and to help move the world away from the trend of globally increasing
concentrations of greenhouse gases.
Principal Conclusions of the
IPCC's Second Assessment Report
While the basic facts about the science of climate
have been understood and broadly accepted for years, new information is
steadily emerging--and influencing the policy process. In 1995, the IPCC
released its Second Assessment Report, which not only validated most of the
IPCC's earlier findings, but because of the considerable new work that had
been undertaken during the five years since its previous full-scale
assessment, broke new ground. The report is divided into three sections:
physical sciences related to climate impacts; adaptation and mitigation
responses; and cross-cutting issues, including economics and social sciences.
The Climate Science
·
Human activities are changing
the atmospheric concentrations and distributions of greenhouse gases and
aerosols.
·
Global average temperatures have
increased about 0.3-0.6°C (about 0.5-1.0°F) over the last century.
·
The ability of climate models to
simulate observed trends has improved--although there is still considerable
regional uncertainty with regard to changes.
·
The balance of evidence suggests
there is a discernible human influence on global climate.
·
Aerosol sulfates (a component of
acid rain) offset some of the warming by greenhouse gases.
·
The IPCC mid-range scenario
projects an increase of 2.0°C (3.7°F) by 2100 (with a range of 1.0-3.5°C
(about 1.8-6.3°F).
·
The average global warming
projected in the IPCC mid-range scenario is greater than any seen in the last
ten thousand years.
·
Sea level is projected to rise
(due to thermal expansion of the oceans, and melting of glaciers and ice
sheets) by about 50 centimeters (20 inches) by 2100, with a range of 15-95
centimeters (about 6-38 inches).
·
Even after a stabilization of
greenhouse gas concentrations, temperatures would continue to increase for
several decades, and sea level would continue to rise for centuries.
Vulnerability, Likely Impacts, and
Possible Responses
·
Climate change is likely to have
wide-ranging and mostly adverse effects on human health. Direct and indirect
effects can be expected to lead to increased mortality.
·
Coastal infrastructure is likely
to be extremely vulnerable. A 50-centimeter (20-inch) rise in sea level would
place approximately 120 million people at risk.
·
Natural and managed ecosystems
are also at risk: forests, agricultural areas, and aquatic and marine life
are all susceptible.
·
However, adaptation and
mitigation options are numerous. Significant reductions in net greenhouse gas
emissions are technically possible and can be economically feasible, using an
extensive array of technologies and policy measures that accelerate
technology development, diffusion, and transfer.
Socioeconomic Issues
·
Early mitigation may increase
flexibility in moving toward a stabilization of atmospheric concentrations of
greenhouse gases. Economic risks of rapid abatement must be balanced against
risks of delay.
·
Significant "no
regrets" opportunities are available in most countries. Next steps must
recognize equity considerations.
·
Costs of stabilization of
emissions at 1990 levels in OECD countries could range considerably (from a
gain of $60 billion to a loss of about $240 billion) over the next several
decades.
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