South Africa Likens Draft Climate Deal to Apartheid
South Africa on Monday criticized a draft United Nations accord on fighting climate change as a form of “apartheid” against developing nations.
A summit in Paris is supposed to agree a global accord for tackling climate change in December, but a last week of negotiations on the draft text, which began in Germany on Monday, got off to a stormy start with developing nations saying their demands had been omitted from the pared down 20-page draft.
“It is just like apartheid,” Nozipho Joyce Mxakato-Diseko, South Africa’s delegate who speaks on behalf of the main grouping of more than 130 developing nations and China, told the meeting.
“We find ourselves in a position where in essence we are disenfranchised,” she said, saying views of the poor had been ignored. South Africa’s apartheid system was overthrown in 1994 when Nelson Mandela became the nation’s first black president.
Developing countries said the draft, drawn up by two senior diplomats, favored rich nations and failed to stress that developed nations needed to take the lead in cutting greenhouse gas emissions and to provide far more aid and clean energy technology. (Read more from “South Africa Likens Draft Climate Deal to Apartheid” HERE)
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