U.N. climate talks seek clearer ideas

Alister Doyle, Reuters 12 Jun 08;

BONN (Reuters) - A U.N. climate conference urged governments on Thursday to come up with clearer ideas for a new treaty to slow global warming after criticism from delegates that progress was too slow.

The June 2-13 talks are the second this year in a series meant to end in Copenhagen in December 2009 with a new climate treaty. Debate covered issues such as green technology, financing the fight against climate change and helping poor nations to adapt.

Hoping to speed work on the building blocks of a hugely complex treaty, the 170-nation talks agreed to "invite parties to submit ideas and proposals", especially in writing to sharpen focus. A next session will be held in Ghana in August.

"You are going to pin down people to say exactly what they want," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat. He told reporters the talks needed more details, for instance on how to raise funds to help developing nations.

Many nations said progress was too sluggish after the U.N. Climate Panel warned the world last year that rising temperatures are set to bring more droughts, higher sea levels, crop failures, melting glaciers and more heatwaves.

"This is going too slowly," the European Union said in a statement read by Thomas Becker of Denmark. "We could easily intensify the way we have been working."

"While the scientific evidence is universally recognized, we are yet to see the urgency in the response of the parties," Byron Blake of Antigua and Barbuda said on behalf of the group of 77 developing countries and China.

Environmentalists also said there was a lack of initiatives in Bonn with 536 days left before the Copenhagen conference.

FEEBLE

"Progress at the end of this second round in a series of U.N. Climate negotiations is feeble," the WWF environmental group said. "The EU has not shown any substantial initiative or move forward."

Still, some saw progress in the talks on a deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges 37 developed nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases up to 2012.

"This is the first time people are really getting down to serious business ... zooming in on technology, finance and adaptation," de Boer told reporters. "It's a negotiation, not just a friendly discussion any more."

The United States is largely on the sidelines -- President George W. Bush will leave office in January 2009 and has been at odds with his main allies by staying out of the Kyoto Protocol, rating it too costly and flawed for omitting developing nations.

The United States, roughly even with China as the top emitter of greenhouse gases, has agreed to join a new treaty.

The meeting also asked the U.N. climate experts to prepare technical papers about the agriculture sector, mechanisms such as insurance to offset climate risks, and more information about likely investments needed in financial flows.

Among proposals, favored by India and Canada, were to help developing nations to build nuclear power plants as part of a plan to expand a fast-growing U.N. scheme for curbing greenhouse gases.

Nuclear power is the most contentious option for widening a U.N. mechanism under which rich nations can invest abroad, for instance in an Indian wind farm or a hydropower dam in Peru, and get credit at home for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

"It's one of the issues that needs to be considered," de Boer said of nuclear power.

(Editing by Robert Woodward)

UN climate chief spurs talks on new global warming pact
Richard Ingham, Yahoo News 12 Jun 08;

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer called on industrialised countries on Thursday to start showing some of their cards in a slow-paced poker game whose prize is a new pact to tackle global warming.

De Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said talks unfolding among senior officials here marked "the first time that people are getting down to serious negotiations" for a historic deal in Copenhagen in December next year.

But, he warned, many positions had so far been "incredibly generic" and this problem of vagueness among industrialised countries was especially worrying.

The June 3-13 Bonn talks should issue "a very clear call on governments to start submitting their ideas on what should be the key elements of a Copenhagen outcome," said de Boer.

He warned: "Politically, if Copenhagen fails we would be in huge trouble. I think that people would then begin to question the utility of this process."

Last December, parties to the UNFCCC set down a "Bali Roadmap" of talks designed to climax in the most ambitious and complex environmental treaty ever attempted.

The post-2012 pact would succeed the current pledges made under the UNFCCC's cornerstone accord, the Kyoto Protocol.

It would commit countries to deeper curbs on the heat-trapping gases that are driving climate change.

And it would beef up the transfer of clean technology to poorer economies and strengthen financial support for those countries most at risk from water stress, rising sea levels and other damage.

The green group WWF cautioned on Thursday that "only" 536 days remained until Copenhagen.

"The ideas put on the table are only (being) translated into shopping lists rather than blueprints for negotiations," it said.

WWF urged Japan, as host of next month's summit in Hokkaido, gathering the Group of Eight (G8) and the five major economies of the developing world, to give the flagging process a boost.

Looking at specifics, de Boer said developing countries were still awaiting a signal from industrialised economies about what they intended to put on the table, especially "the critical ingredient" of money.

According to UNFCCC figures, 150 billion euros -- more than 200 billion dollars -- will have to be mustered each year by 2030.

One potential cash cow is the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), under which rich countries help environmentally-friendly projects in poor countries, in such fields as cleaner energy and waste handling.

The carbon pollution averted through the scheme is transformed into credits that can be sold or deducted from the rich country's emissions quota under Kyoto.

A levy of two percent is applied to the CDM to help mobilise resources for developing countries.

A total of 1,081 CDM projects worth 13 billion dollars have been registered in 49 countries, with the potential to avert 152 million tonnes of carbon pollution by 2012.

On present trends, the two-percent levy should provide between 10 and 50 million dollars a year in resources by 2012.

But this income could rise to "some 100 billion dollars annually" if, for the post-2012 period, industrialised countries agree to reduce their emissions by 60 to 80 percent by 2050, de Boer said.

He described this as a "back-of-an-envelope calculation" based on a price for carbon dioxide (CO2) that stays above 10 dollars per tonne. On Friday, CO2 was changing hands in the EU's emissions trading system at 27.5 euros (around 40 dollars) a tonne.

Scientists say time is running out for avoiding lasting damage to the climate system.

Under one scenario sketched last year by the UN's Nobel-winning expert group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), industrialised nations would have to slash their emissions by 25-40 percent by 2020 compared to the 1990 level to help peg warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).