• Home
• /
• Opinion

The Peru deadlock

From Kyoto to Copenhagen, and from Brisbane to Lima, all that the world has seen is an inherent discord wherein states try to protect their domestic business interests and try to push over the responsibility of limiting emission to others. That trend was once again reflected in Lima where officials were seen locked down in intricate talks and groping in the dark on how best to draft a consensus for the forthcoming Paris Summit next year.

US President Barack Obama has reportedly persuaded his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Apec summit recently in Beijing to move ahead with consensus on global warning. If that is so, then at least the world’s two major emitters are on the same page, forcing others too to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions and help the world become a better place to live in.

What Peru’s two weeks of talks, however, witnessed was a gridlock between the rich and the poor states — inevitably delaying the much-needed consensus on production, infrastructure and climate orientation. The major obstacle that Lima talks saw was who should take precedence in cutting emissions and the game of finger pointing continued among 195 countries. This push and pull between the haves and have-nots, now more prominently known as the developing G77, is in need of a political accord in order to put to rest the concerns of struggling economies while reshaping their industrial and production trends. The argument gap should be bridged through leadership and save the planet of seven billion inhabitants for generations to come.