CLIMATE change has in the last decade emerged as the single most important environmental issue facing not only the Caribbean, but also the world.

The truth of this was demonstrated at the latest conference of the parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the meeting of the parties (MOP) to the Kyoto Protocol, held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December.

That meeting attracted the participation of some 130 world leaders, including United States president Barack Obama.

The deliberations led to no legally binding commitments to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from developed countries, such as the US, which have historical responsibility for the emissions of such gases as carbon dioxide and methane that are fuelling human climate change. However, a few important things happened.

China, India and Brazil — the three major emerging economies — reiterated their willingness to rein in their emissions, China by as much as 45 per cent.

Developed countries committed to long-term funding to support developing countries, which stand to be worse affected by the changing climate. Such impacts include an increase in the incidence of diseases such as malaria and dengue, which is associated with another impact — increased global temperatures. Increases in sea level and sea surface temperatures, which could adversely affect species that grow shells; and fiercer and/or more frequent weather events, such as hurricanes and droughts are also numbered among the impacts.

The two-week conference also saw the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), including Jamaica, tabling an option for adoption by the parties. The proposal, in addition to making allowances for the survival of the Kyoto Protocol — the first commitment period of which ends in 2012 — took into account the four big-ticket issues that were under negotiation, notably adaptation, mitigation, financing and technology transfer.

The 26-page document called for a commitment to the long-term objective of temperatures “well below” 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and the stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to “well below” 350 parts per million. In addition, the AOSIS called for parties to agree that global emissions should peak by no later than 2015 and reduced by at least 85 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

In the end, parties agreed to, among other things, give consideration to “strengthening the long-term goal referencing various matters presented by the science, including in relation to temperature rises of 1.5 degrees Celsius”.

But perhaps the most important feature of the conference was the record turnout of more than 40,000 people to witness the event, both from within and outside of the halls of the Bella Centre where the talks took place.

An estimated 50 per cent or so of that number took part in the so-called ‘flood’ demonstrations — with leadership from such groups as 350.org and Avaaz.org — which was intended to lobby world leaders to come to a legally binding agreement that endorsed the limiting of GHG emissions to 1.5 degrees Celsius and GHG concentrations to 350 parts per million.

Amidst the negotiations on climate change — the first COP for which was held in 1995 — has been controversy. For one thing, the past decade has seen many trying to disprove that human climate change — the change in climate due to human action and more specifically the increased use of fossil fuels such as oil and coal to fuel economic development — is a fallacy.

More recently, there was the ‘climategate’ e-mail scandal, which according to media reports, implicate leading climate scientists in misconduct such as interfering with the peer review process of scientific papers. The scandal broke out after thousands of e-mails and other documents were released without permission following the hacking of a server used by the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.

Since then, there has been news that the leading climate change research body — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — was wrong about an important prediction on global warming.

The IPCC reported in 2007 that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 if melting continued at current rates. But on January 20, the Daily Mail reported that the panel’s chairman Rajendra Pachauri had admitted that the figure quoted “was wrong and would now be reviewed”, thus giving climate deniers more ammunition against the IPCC.

Still, the general consensus is that climate change — fuelled by human action — is occurring and warrants an effective response from all countries through adaptation and mitigation efforts by all and via technology transfer and increased financial flows to the developing world.

Over the next several months, negotiators will attempt to get one step closer to achieving that outcome as yet another round of discussions get underway, ahead of this year’s talks, scheduled to take place in Mexico.

Still, despite controversy and numerous challenges over the years, climate change has emerged as a most pressing environment and, increasingly, development issue facing the world. And more and more, people are taking it seriously. James Fahn and Dr Mike Shanahan, of Internews and the Institute for Environment and Sustainable Development IIED respectively, attest to this. For the past three years, both men have been involved in funding a group of 40 journalists from the developing world to cover the COP meetings in December.

“Over the last decade, we have seen climate change become a mainstream issue in the media and in global politics — a huge shift in awareness. This is a result of the increased scientific certainty that climate change is indeed occurring and being caused by humans,” noted Fahn, global director for Internews’ Earth Journalism Network. “Action to address climate change and its projected impacts has lagged, however, due to continued uncertainty over how severe these impacts will be, what to do about them, and who should do it, along with a general reluctance to give a high priority to what is seen as a long-term problem.”

Shanahan agreed.

“For me the biggest change in the past 10 years is the growth in public awareness of climate change. There is still a long way to go but now the issue is much more familiar to people around the world. The challenge now is to ensure that information reaches the most vulnerable people, in languages that they understand, as today most of the communication around the subject is still in English,” said the IIED press officer.

“Something else that has really become clear is that powerful vested interests are spending a lot of time, money and energy to discourage the action that is need to address climate change, because that action would harm their profits. That is why the political responses to the threat have so far been inadequate. On the plus side, the media is now far better equipped to tell this story, and show that it is a political, economic and human story, not just a science or environment issue,” he added.