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Responses to attendance of BiH delegation at the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen

Date: December 28^th 2009 Author: Mirsad Bajtarević, Sarajevo Category: Articles
Topic: CO2 emissions , Ecology

The fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina contributed less than 0.1 per cent to the global climate changes alone implied that the country had no crucial influence in the negotiations regarding cutting CO2 emissions, Advisor to the Minister of the Environment and Tourism of Federation BiH, Tomislav Lukic told to Energetika.NET, adding that BiH was not a developed (G7) country but a country of the so-called Balkan group. Lukic further pointed out the Balkan group had always had its representative i.e. a person that represented the interests of the entire Balkan Peninsula. Within the respective group, individuals were able to safeguard their own interests and the right to a development, said Lukic who had attended the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen as part of a delegation of eight people from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to Lukic, climate change issue was hardly discussed between the leaders of the countries that attended the conference. He said that the issues that were discussed more were the right to development, and the money to mitigate climate change, while the least discussed issue was the actual impact of climate changes on the living systems, standards and changes occurring in those communities that are contingent on the global temperature increase.

PHOTO: Alenka Žumbar

He also said that they were entangled in a complicated yet – within climate change systems –favourable situation, the reason being that BiH had reduced their production of CO₂ – or the GHG equivalent – by 35 per cent compared to 1990 as reference year. Back then, the emissions totalled 34 million tons of CO₂ equivalent. Yet the reduced emissions were not a result of the country’s endeavours but were brought about by the war and a series of social changes which had caused a number of companies to deteriorate. Apart from that, the country is not using as much as 50 per cent of its hydro potential which they should start exploiting. In addition, they have not yet started harnessing wind power, despite the immense possibilities of the country, in particular those in the western Herzegovina. This part of the country also represents a certain potential in light of exploiting solar power. Over a half of the country is covered in woods which is yet another source, proving that BiH is in fact a Mecca as regards clean technologies and generating power from renewable energies, Lukic claims.

In this respect, the delegation had also met with the representatives of UNDP in light of formation of an office which would engage in clean process technologies and collect funds for this purpose from different global sources, said Lukic, adding that the problem was in that BiH had still not adopted the Environmental Protection Act on national level. This had been agreed eight months ago at Vlasic yet nothing definite had yet been done since then.

Bosnian and Herzegovinian delegation in Copenhagen was headed by Mladen Zirojevic, Bosnian Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations and Nevenko Herceg PhD, Federal Minister of the Environment and Tourism.

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