Climate negotiators start work on "Kyoto II"

Ed Cropley, Reuters 29 Mar 08;

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Scientists and officials from across the world meet in Thailand this week for the first formal talks in the long process of drawing up a replacement for the Kyoto climate change pact by the end of 2009.

Around 190 nations agreed in Bali last year to start the two-year negotiations to replace Kyoto, which only binds 37 rich nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of five percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

U.N. climate experts want the new pact to impose curbs on all countries, although there is wide disagreement about how to share out the burden between rich nations led by the United States and developing countries such as China and India.

No major decisions are likely from the Bangkok talks, which are intended mainly to establish a timetable for more rounds of negotiations culminating in a United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen at the end of next year.

"The challenge is to design a future agreement that will significantly step up action on adaptation, successfully halt the increase in global emissions within the next 10-15 years and dramatically cut back emissions by 2050," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N.'s Climate Change Secretariat.

Although the negotiations are likely to be tough and tortuous, a series of U.N. climate change reports last year highlighted the need to curb emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that are driving global warming.

One report in particular said it was more than 90 percent certain that human actions -- mainly burning fossil fuels -- were to blame for changes to the weather system that will bring more heatwaves, droughts, storms and rising seas.

RAPID INDUSTRIALISATION

One major issue to be tackled is the reluctance of big developing nations such as India and China to agree to any measures that might curb their rapid industrialization.

Negotiators will also have to work out how to deal with the United States -- the only rich nation not to have signed up to Kyoto -- given that President George W. Bush will be leaving the White House after November's election.

Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, saying the pact would hurt the U.S. economy and was unfair since it excluded big developing nations from committing to emissions cuts.

The White House has since moderated its stance by saying the Bush administration would accept emissions targets if all other big emitters do as well based on their individual circumstances.

This has tempered the criticism of the Bush administration but green groups and many poorer nations say they don't expect much progress on a replacement climate pact until a new U.S. administration takes office in January 2009.

"I think the U.S. really has changed," de Boer told Reuters.

All three main presidential candidates are greener than Bush and back a cap-and-trade system to encourage business to curb carbon emissions.

The United Nations wants the new treaty to be in place by the end of 2009 to give companies and investors as much advance knowledge as possible of coming changes, and national parliaments time to ratify it before 2012, when Kyoto expires.

(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo; Editing by Michael Battye and David Fogarty)

Negotiators gather to push new UN climate treaty
Charlie McDonald-Gibson Yahoo News 30 Mar 08;

Negotiators from up to 180 countries began gathering here on Sunday for talks aimed at reaching the most ambitious treaty yet for sparing the Earth from the worst ravages of global warming.

The five-day talks, starting Monday, follow marathon negotiations in December on the Indonesian island of Bali where the world set a 2009 deadline for thrashing out a landmark pact to battle climate change.

The Bangkok meeting is the first step toward reaching that new agreement, which should take effect when commitments on cutting harmful greenhouse gas emissions under the existing Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.

Even the United States, which pulled out of the Kyoto deal, is taking part despite its reputation as a naysayer in efforts to cut emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which trap the sun's heat and warm the planet.

The talks "are critical in the sense that the conference in Bali last year formally agreed to launch negotiations, which have to be concluded at the end of 2009," said Yvo de Boer, head of the UN climate body tasked with hammering out the treaty.

"I don't expect many sticking points at this meeting. What this meeting has to do is agree a work programme and agree what is going to be discussed so that we know that we can meet the deadline in a year-and-a-half's time," de Boer told AFP.

He urged countries to stay focused on the task at hand, and not get bogged down in the kind of details that almost derailed the Bali talks.

"If you look at the amount of time available in Bangkok ... there is an awful amount of work to be done in very little time," he cautioned.

Talks in Bali almost fell apart as nations fought over who was historically responsible for climate change, who should foot the bill, and whether both rich and poor nations should have binding targets on cutting carbon emissions.

Europe and developing countries want rich nations to set a binding target for 2020, requiring them to slash greenhouse gas emissions to 25 to 40 percent below their levels in 1990.

Under US pressure the final Bali Roadmap did not include explicit goals. Frustration with the US stance grew so great in Bali that American delegates were booed during the conference's closing hours.

However, with the US presidential elections later this year, President George W. Bush's administration may not want to leave the White House with a legacy as holdouts against environmental progress, activists said.

"There is a kind of a legacy issue at play here for the Bush administration, I think they want to be viewed as constructive in its last year," said Angela Anderson, director of the global warming programme at the Washington-based Pew Environment Group.

No one expects a major breakthrough at the Bangkok talks, which are designed to allow countries to stake their starting positions in negotiations that will continue through next year.

"Every country comes at this now trying to figure out what's in their individual interests as well as the global interests," said Anderson.

But activists around the world have kept up the pressure by keeping the issue in the spotlight, sometimes by turning the spotlight off.

At least 26 cities across the globe joined an "Earth Hour" campaign on Saturday evening, dimming their lights for one hour to demonstrate how the planet can save energy.

The human risks of climate change were also highlighted Friday when the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution declaring the problem a human rights issue, noting that the poor are more vulnerable to the effects of global warming.

Global scientists last year delivered their starkest warning yet -- that without action, global warming could have an irreversible impact on the world, bringing hunger, floods, drought and the extinction of many plants and animals.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is holding the Bangkok talks, has 192 member nations.

World governments in Bangkok to start talks on climate change treaty
Business Times 31 Mar 08;

(BANGKOK) Governments from nearly 200 countries will begin discussions today on forging a global warming agreement, a process that is expected to be fraught with disagreements over how much to reduce greenhouse gases and which nations should adhere to binding targets.

The week-long, United Nations climate meeting in Bangkok comes on the heels of a historic agreement reached in December to draft a new accord on global warming by 2009.

Without a pact to rein in rising greenhouse gases in the next two decades, scientist say warming weather will lead to widespread drought, floods, higher sea levels and worsening storms.

'The challenge is to design a future agreement that will significantly step up action on adaptation, successfully halt the increase in global emissions within the next 10 to 15 years, dramatically cut back emissions by 2050, and do so in a way that is economically viable and politically equitable worldwide,' said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is hosting the meeting.

The European Union Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said that the Bangkok meeting would determine the willingness of all parties to act quickly.

In an e-mail interview, he stressed that the need for an aggressive, long-term agreement 'to prevent climate change from reaching dangerous levels that could put billions of people at risk later this century'.

All governments, including the United States, agree emissions need to be reduced to avert an environmental catastrophe. But the major polluters remain far apart over how best to achieve these goals.

Adding to the complexity of negotiations will be disputes over how best to help poor countries adapt to environmental changes by speeding up the transfer of technology and financial assistance from rich nations.

The EU has proposed that industrialised countries slash emissions by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. The US, which is one of the world's top polluters, has repeatedly rejected mandatory national reduction targets of the kind agreed to under the Kyoto Protocol a decade ago.

Japan, which is struggling to meet its emissions-cut obligations under the Kyoto pact, is looking for less stringent conditions this time around. It has talked of using 2005 rather than 1990 as the baseline for reductions and is campaigning for industry-based emission caps.

Under its plan, global industries such as steel or cement would set international guidelines for greenhouse gas emissions.

Proponents, including the US, say that would help set a level playing field for competitive industries.

Critics, however, worry sectoral caps could be used to favour industries in richer countries with access to more advanced technology, while those in less developed nations would suffer.

Another contentious issue will be which countries will be required to make cuts under the new pact and how best to determine the level of reductions.

While the EU says the West has to take the lead in reducing emissions, the US argued it should not have to make cuts that would hurt the US economy unless China and India agreed to the same.

'We're willing to take on international binding targets as long as other major economies - both developed and developing - do so,' said US negotiator Harlan Watson.

'The primary concern is the so-called leakage issue,' Mr Watson said. 'If you take commitments and you have energy intensive industries, they might want to move to other countries which don't have commitments.' China has argued that developed countries should be required to take the lead in reducing pollution because their unrestrained emissions over the past century contributed significantly to global warming.

Mr De Boer has said that requiring China and other developing countries like India and Brazil to take on binding targets 'is not realistic.'

'Developing countries see that as problematic,' he said. 'The problem of climate change as we see it today is a result of rich countries' emissions, not the result of poor countries' emissions\. \-- AP

FACTBOX: What are the U.N. Bangkok climate talks?
Reuters 31 Mar 08;

(Reuters) - Delegates from up to 190 nations will meet in Bangkok from March 31-April 4 for the first round of U.N. talks on a sweeping new pact to fight climate change.

The Bangkok meeting, totalling about 1,000 delegates led by senior government officials, will be the first formal U.N. negotiations on a U.N. climate treaty since the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated from 1995-97.

* WHY IS A NEW TREATY NEEDED?

-- The U.N. Climate Panel last year blamed human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, for a warming that it said would bring ever more droughts, heatwaves, floods and rising seas.

The panel said that world emissions of greenhouse gases -- now rising fast -- would have to peak by about 2015 and then fall sharply to limit a rise in global temperatures to no more than 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

Spurred by the panel's findings, governments agreed in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007 to work out a new climate treaty by the end of 2009 to succeed Kyoto. Bangkok will be the first stop on the "Bali roadmap".

* SO WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE KYOTO PROTOCOL?

-- Kyoto obliges 37 developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The Bangkok talks will be about widening action to all nations.

Every rich country except the United States has ratified Kyoto. President George W. Bush rejected the pact in 2001, saying it would cost U.S. jobs and unfairly omitted 2012 emissions targets for developing nations such as China and India.

The Bush administration has agreed to take part in talks on a long-term treaty even though many details will be agreed after Bush steps down in January 2009. The main U.S. presidential candidates say they are committed to stepping up U.S. action.

Developing nations say they are willing to do more to curb the growth of their emissions -- but reject Kyoto-style caps because they need to use more energy to reduce poverty.

* WHAT WILL BE ACHIEVED IN BANGKOK?

-- Bangkok's main task is to agree a work programme for the next two years -- the details may show how urgently governments want to tackle climate change. After Bangkok, negotiators will meet in Bonn in June, again in August in a city yet to be decided and environment ministers will meet in Poznan, Poland, in December. Bangkok is symbolically important as the first step on the road to a deal to be agreed in Copenhagen in late 2009.

* BUT KYOTO RUNS TO 2012: WHAT'S THE HURRY?

-- The United Nations says that a new treaty needs to be in place by the end of 2009 to give national parliaments time to ratify before Kyoto runs out. A big worry is that it took two years to negotiate Kyoto and then eight to get it ratified.

And investors need time -- a power company trying to decide whether to build a coal-fired plant or a wind farm wants to know the rules on greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.

* WHAT ARE THE STUMBLING BLOCKS TO A NEW TREATY?

-- A main issue will be how to ensure a fair share-out of the burden of curbs on greenhouse gases between rich and poor.

Developing nations want more green technologies, credits for slowing deforestation and far more aid to help them adapt to the impact of climate change such as droughts and rising seas.

(Writing by Alister Doyle; Editing by David Fogarty)

FACTBOX: What is the Kyoto Protocol?
Reuters 31 Mar 08;

(Reuters) - Delegates from up to 190 nations will meet in Bangkok from March 31-April 4 to start work on a new U.N. pact to fight climate change and succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

Here are some frequently asked questions about Kyoto:

* WHAT IS THE KYOTO PROTOCOL?

-- It is a pact agreed by governments at a 1997 U.N. conference in Kyoto, Japan, to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by developed countries to at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. More than 170 nations have ratified the pact.

* IS IT THE FIRST AGREEMENT OF ITS KIND?

-- Governments agreed to tackle climate change at an "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 with non-binding targets. Kyoto is the follow-up.

* SO IT IS LEGALLY BINDING?

-- Kyoto has legal force from February 16, 2005. The United States, long the world's biggest source of emissions but which is being surpassed by China, came out against the pact in 2001. President George W. Bush reckoned it would be too expensive and wrongly omits 2012 emissions targets for developing nations.

* HOW WILL IT BE ENFORCED?

-- Countries overshooting their targets in 2012 will have to make both the promised cuts and 30 percent more in a second period from 2013.

* DO ALL COUNTRIES HAVE TO CUT EMISSIONS BY 5 PERCENT?

-- No, only 37 relatively developed countries have agreed to targets for 2008-12 under a principle that richer countries are most to blame. They range from an 8 percent cut for the European Union from 1990 levels to a 10 percent rise for Iceland.

* WHAT ARE 'GREENHOUSE GASES'?

-- Greenhouse gases trap heat in the earth's atmosphere. The main culprit from human activities is carbon dioxide, produced largely from burning fossil fuels. The protocol also covers methane, much of which comes from agriculture, and nitrous oxide, mostly from fertilizer use. Three industrial gases are also included.

* HOW WILL COUNTRIES COMPLY?

-- The European Union set up a market in January 2005 under which about 12,000 factories and power stations are given carbon dioxide quotas. If they overshoot they can buy extra allowances in the market or pay a financial penalty; if they undershoot they can sell them.

* WHAT OTHER MECHANISMS ARE THERE?

-- Developed countries can earn credits to offset against their targets by funding clean technologies, such as solar power, in poorer countries. They can also have joint investments in former Soviet bloc nations.

-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: here

(Editing by David Fogarty)