Africa, Europe 'seeking to harmonise climate-change demands'

Yahoo News 20 Nov 08;

ALGIERS (AFP) – Africa seeks a common position with the European Union going into climate-change negotiations next year, Algeria's environment minister said Thursday following pan-African agreement.

Environment ministers from almost all of Africa's 53 nations agreed a united front Wednesday to take into December 2009 talks in Copenhagen on replacing the Kyoto Protocol, covering efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

With the current and next holders of the EU's rotating presidency, France and the Czech Republic, in attendance at the Algiers meeting, hopes are rising that a summit in Ethiopia of foreign ministers from the African Union and the EU can agree a declaration by Monday.

The idea is to formulate a standard position covering effectively one third of the earth's populated landmass going into the next United Nations conference on climate change which gets under way in Poznan, Poland, in 11 days time.

"The ministers have decided to enlarge the African alliance to (include) the EU (position): that (united negotiating stance) could be put on the table in Poznan," between December 1 and 12, Cherif Rahmani said.

"It's about launching a win-win partnership under which each party must share equally the risks," he added. "Africa has accepted its responsibilities, the politics of the empty chair are finished."

A complication might be Rahmani's stated desire that any such partnership be signed under AU auspices as well as common negotiating frameworks sought by the Group of 77 developing nations, a coalition which has grown to number 130 countries at the UN, including China, a major investor in Africa.

French minister for sustainable development Jean-Louis Borloo and Czech counterpart Jan Duzik said they had been given an EU mandate on October 20 to advance discussions on a common EU-Africa position for Copenhagen.

The critical summit in just over 12 months' time is intended to bring about agreement across the international community on a new climate-change treaty to replace the one signed in Kyoto, Japan, whose commitments run out in 2012.

Potential deal-breakers for Africa include what to do about deforestation, which scientists say creates substantially more greenhouse gases globally than the world's entire aviation industry.

The AU will also seek special aid on dealing with the impact of existing climate change -- with World Bank representative Hocine Chalal pointing out that the continent is responsible for 7.5 percent of the planet's emissions (four percent when narrowed down to sub-Saharan Africa) yet is exposed to some of its most brutal side-effects, including drought, flooding and population migration.

The level of investment needed to bring electricity into every African home could also run to some 24 billion dollars (19 billion euros) every year for the next 10 to 20 years, Chalal added.

However, Borloo stressed that Africa has enormous potential to develop renewable energy from solar, wind, wave and its mammoth river sources.