The worried commissioner

Stavros Dimas tells Jennifer Rankin that climate change will give rise to more conflicts round the world.

The bad news about climate change has mounted since Stavros Dimas, the European commissioner for the environment, attended the last UN conference on climate change in Nairobi last year. "Every day when we listen to what the scientific findings are, it is very worrisome," he says.

Dimas thinks the costs of dangerous climate change will be greater than the costs of world war. "I think the cost of exceeding 2°C - of going beyond what the IPCC [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] are telling us - will be more than a war. Some people have calculated that it will be much more than the world war, than the last two world wars together."

He cites Darfur, Burkina Faso and Somalia as conflicts that have all started over water. "This water scarcity and the droughts that we are going to face more frequently are going to increase the conflicts and we are going to have climate refugees and this will create social problems and economic problems," says Dimas.

The commissioner has also become increasingly concerned about the impact of climate change on biodiversity. "Perhaps the latest and most worrisome [news] is the biodiversity loss caused by climate change…The media emphasis has been given to climate change, but in my opinion biodiversity is equally important," he says.

Despite the bleak outlook, Dimas is optimistic that countries will agree at Bali on a mandate to start talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Although he says that the discussions "are not going to be easy". "It appears from all our discussions and the meetings that we had from the G8, the UN in September…that there is a growing agreement among world leaders for such an agreement, for starting negotiations."

Nor does Dimas think that the US will hold up a mandate. "The United States has stated that it is equally concerned about the climate change impacts, they have accepted the conclusions of the IPCC report, meaning that we should take immediate action to combat climate change…so we expect that they will also be interested and will also press for starting the negotiations at Bali." He hints, though, at disagreements down the line. "Perhaps they have different approaches to how they see a future regime to reduce carbon dioxide, to reduce greenhouse gases," he says.

The commissioner also insists that EU countries are united on climate change targets. "In the European Union there is a consensus that climate change is the number one threat for our planet. The European Union has shown the way by taking the decisions in March 2007, by undertaking to reduce our emissions unilaterally by 20%, and 30% if we have an international agreement."

In January, the European Commission will announce a package of proposals that would, in the event of an international agreement, prepare the Union to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30% by 2020. "Our legislation will be such that we can go immediately from 20-30%," says the commissioner.

When it comes to the politically combustible question of sharing the burden between member states of meeting targets to reduce greenhouse gases and moving to renewables, the commissioner rejects the idea that member states are having a row.

"How we are going to share our targets is something that we have to discuss. So countries - new member states, old member states - should express their concerns…but in international forums we have a common position supported by consensus," he says.

Stavros Dimas tells Jennifer Rankin that climate change will give rise to more conflicts round the world.