Coastalsurvey

Midway through the third day of climate talks in Copenhagen, tiny Tuvalu has derailed the Kyoto track of the talks by demanding more ambitious carbon limits set into a legally binding treaty.

“My prime minister and many other heads of state have the clear intention of coming to Copenhagen to sign on to a legally binding deal,”  Tuvalu’s negotiator Ian Fry said. “Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.”

The call was backed by other members of the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), including the Cook Islands, Barbados and Fiji, and by some poor African countries including Sierra Leone, Senegal and Cape Verde, the BBC reported this morning.

The AOSIS demand has caused a rift with other emerging countries, like China and India, which favor more lenient guidelines because they fear that strict carbon limits may retard economic growth. This is the same line, incidentally, that the Bush Administration used when refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocols.

Tuvalu and AOSIS had a lot of popular support at the conference, as can be seen in this video of protesters in Copenhagen. The chant of  “350″ is a reference to 350 parts per million (ppm) — the cap on greenhouse gasses favored by AOSIS –  rather than the 450ppm proposed by developed countries.

The AOSIS stand underlines the real and imminent danger faced by countries like Tuvalu and the Maldives, which will likely disappear if sea levels rise a few feet (see 100 Places to Remember Before they Disappear). Moreover, it highlights the inadequacy of talk when action is required.