For a second time this week, Australia was awarded the Fossil of the Day for their dismal performance at the UN climate change negotiations. This should come as no surprise given Australia’s infamous reputation as a climate change laggard.
To earn this prestigious honour, Australia suggested in an ADP session that loss and damage be included as part of adaptation within the Paris agreement to be negotiated in December 2015.
Adaptation is what countries are doing to implement strategies that deal with the effects of climate change; and loss and damage is a recently introduced negotiations term that refers to developing countries being able to seek compensation for climate change impacts.
Given the state of the ADP negotiations, maybe the suggestion was made in the spirit of conservation and Australia was trying to reduce the amount of paper needed for the negotiations text. However, this seems unlikely.
Second place was awarded today to the EU for their short-term mentality and plain lack of ambition. They are proposing 10 instead of five-year commitment periods for the deal to be made in Paris. NGOs have been pushing for five-year commitment periods in order to continually be reviewing and increasing ambition within the process.
Thursday’s ceremony also included a Filipino spoke about Typhoon Ruby, which is expected to cause vast damages in the coming hours. Her brief statements reminded onlookers of the serious implications poor environmental regulation can have on the weather and ultimately on human life.
Fossil of the Day is an award given out by the Climate Action Network to the country that has done the least to progress the negotiations.
This article was originally published on The Verb.
