Simon Sturdee Yahoo News 10 Dec 08;
POZNAN, Poland (AFP) – UN talks on crafting a new climate change treaty inched forward on Wednesday, with delegates hoping the EU would spur the process by approving its own pact at a crunch summit.
The conference in the Polish city of Poznan, gathering more than 11,600 participants from around the world, reaches a climax on Thursday with the start of two days of ministerial-level talks.
Some 150 environment ministers and top government officials were expected, as well as UN head Ban Ki-moon and US senators John Kerry and Amy Klobuchar -- two figures seen as the eyes and ears of president-elect Barack Obama.
Negotiations among the 192-members UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are mid-way through a two-year "roadmap" set down on the Indonesian island of Bali last year.
They are aiming for a deal in Copenhagen in December 2009 for a far-reaching pact that would roll back the peril of global warming.
It would take effect from 2012, when provisions expire under the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol.
This is proving a tall order, with the complex discussions in Poznan centered on how to share out the commitments and costs of cutting the carbon pollution that stokes global warming.
Rich countries acknowledge their historic role in pushing up global temperatures but they say emerging powers like China and India must also take action.
Developing and poorer nations hit back with the argument that the industrialised world should lead by example, and foot the bill for clean-energy technology and coping with the impact of global warming.
"It is going slow. But at this stage, there is some progress." South Africa's minister of environment and tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, told AFP.
Negotiators agreed that by next June they would whittle down a 100-page document, stuffed with hundreds of sometimes conflicting proposals, into a workable blueprint for action beyond 2012, said a UN source.
"It's quite significant," the source said.
Pressure group Greenpeace complained that the talks were becoming bogged down and, in a large banner hung above the entrance to Poznan train station, urged ministers to "get serious."
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said activists wearing eyeball costumes would greet ministers as they arrived, demonstrating the world is "eagerly observing the negotiations and expects constructive conclusions."
France's climate ambassador Brice Lalonde said hopes of a breakthrough at Poznan had always been misplaced.
"Poznan was never going to be a conference where a spectacular outcome was to be expected," Lalonde told reporters. "We hope for a spectacular outcome in Copenhagen next year."
But delegates also wondered how the Bali "roadmap" will look after an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday that will aim to hammer out an accord over Europe's climate plan.
The EU, credited with salvaging the Kyoto Protocol after the United States refused to ratify it in 2001, has championed demands for a tough post-2012 pact.
Its programme sets down the most ambitious goals of any advanced economy, including 20 percent less greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, increased use of renewable energy sources and overall energy savings.
But a major sticking point is the plan to require industry to start buying its polluting rights via auction, raising objections from economic powerhouse Germany and coal-heavy eastern Europe countries like Poland.
"You can see the US and China moving (on climate change). We will destroy or undermine that movement if we go flaky in Europe now," leading economist Nicholas Stern, author of a landmark 2006 report on climate change, said in Poznan on Tuesday.
German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters on Wednesday that the EU risked losing its vanguard role and giving the impression it was "no longer serious" on climate change if no deal was struck in Brussels.
EU failure could torpedo UN climate talks, warns climate guru
Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 10 Dec 08;
POZNAN, Poland (AFP) – Failure by Europe's leaders to back a climate action plan at their summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday could badly damage negotiations for a global deal, top economist Nicholas Stern said at the UN talks here.
Stern also warned that the peril from global warming and the price tag for fighting it were higher than he had estimated in his benchmark 2006 report, known as the Stern Review.
"It would be absolute madness now for Europe to be divided, to lose the cohesion that it has got," Stern said on the sidelines of the December 1-12 talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
"That's why it is important at the end of this week that Europe gets behind its action plan to deliver at least 20 percent cuts (in its emissions) by 2020," he said at a dinner for business and environmental leaders.
France and other richer EU members are pushing for the adoption of an ambitious energy package at a summit meeting of the European Union's 27 member states in Brussels.
But the bloc's newest members, led by Poland, have threatened to back out unless concessions are made to ease their transition to less carbon intensive economies.
A botched deal, Stern said, would torpedo a fragile consensus that is building within and beyond the UN process.
"You can see that the US and China are moving," he said, pointing to Obama's aim to reduce US emissions by 80 percent by 2050, and a new recognition in Beijing on the need to build a low-carbon economy.
"We will destroy or undermine that movement if we go flaky in Europe now -- it would just be intolerable."
Stern also cautioned that the cost of bringing down atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations enough to prevent catastrophic climate change was almost certainly higher than he originally estimated.
"The situation in terms of risk looks worse than we thought a couple of years ago -- emissions are increasing faster, the capacity of the Earth to absorb is less," he said.
The Stern Review had suggested a safe target would be to limit CO2 levels to between 450 and 550 parts per million (ppm).
The cost of reaching this would be about one percent of GDP for keeping CO2 levels below 550 ppm, based on a doubling of the world's economy over the next 40 years.
On Tuesday, though, Stern said it was safer to lower this upper ceiling from 550 ppm to 500 ppm.
Achieving this would cost about 50 trillion dollars or about two percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
"An insurance policy of two percent that buys us enormous reductions in risks -- plus a safer, quieter, more energy secure world -- is still a very good deal," he said.
Some 150 environment ministers meet in Poznan on Thursday and Friday to push the UN talks forward, even as European heads of state gather in Brussels.
"I think we are going a bit slowly here in Poznan. What we should be thinking about is a shared understanding of at least 50 percent global (emissions) cuts by 2050, and at least 80 percent cuts by rich countries," Stern said.
The European climate-energy plan, covering the period 2013-2020, would replace its current system of trading carbon pollution quotas, and could become a model for a global scheme.
Ex-Soviet bloc countries in EU have said they need a substantially longer transition period before switching entirely to the auction system.
Call for no delay on climate deal
Richard Black, BBC News 10 Dec 08;
As ministers begin two days of talks on climate change, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world's financial woes must not block climate progress.
Ministers from 189 nations aim to finalise agreements drawn up here at the annual UN climate conference.
As they talk, EU heads of state will be meeting in Brussels to agree energy and climate reforms including promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
EU leadership is widely seen as crucial in reaching a new global climate deal.
The Poznan talks mark the half-way point in a two-year process initiated at the UN talks in Bali last year. Over the last year, governments have submitted ideas on what they would like to see in a new global pact, which is supposed to be finalised by next year's meeting in Copenhagen.
'Unprecedented crises'
However, environmental groups are concerned that as governments in the EU and elsewhere reach for ways to tackle the global financial crisis, they will put climate change to one side.
Mr Ban said that must not happen.
"We are going through unprecedented multiple crises starting from global financial crisis, food crisis and also climate change crisis," he told BBC News.
"If we take action today it may not be too late. But if we take action tomorrow, we may have to regret it for not only us, but for coming generations and even for planet Earth."
The Poznan talks must set the stage for an agreement next December that includes "ratifiable, balanced and ambitious" targets for reducing the emissions of developed nations, he added.
UK energy and climate secretary Ed Miliband agreed.
"While these are challenging economic times, the world must not turn its back on climate change; indeed we must step up the pace," he said.
"So all of us at Poznan have a duty to come here and show the path to a deep and comprehensive deal."
Protection fund
Many of the documents under discussion for the last two weeks have been agreed with little demur.
However, there have been serious wrangles over some issues which could not be resolved before the ministerial segment.
One concerns the UN Adaptation Fund, a pot of money that is designed to help developing countries protect their societies and economies against potential impacts of climate change.
Current proposals see the World Bank as a major player in managing the money.
Developing countries are unhappy with this, and want a separate body set up that would, as they see it, be more responsive to their needs.
"There needs to be more equity in the process," said Harjeet Singh, a campaigner with Action Aid in India.
"The most vulnerable countries should be able to get more from the fund, and it must be responsive to the national adaptation plans that governments have drawn up."
The sting in the tail for developing countries is that the wrangle could delay the first payments from the fund.
No Obama role
Many observers here feel there are two issues that have reduced the impetus for progress here.
One is the fact that the EU has yet to agree its climate and energy package, under which the bloc is set to pledge emissions cuts of 20% from 1990 levels by 2020, or by 30% if there is a global deal.
"The EU is to be blamed here," said Mr Singh. "If the EU had concluded its agreement by now, others would have followed suit."
The other issue is that the US delegation here represents the outgoing administration of George Bush, with the incoming one of Barack Obama playing no visible role, despite the proposals he has floated on reducing US emissions.
The EU package could yet unravel - though few believe it will - or it could be weakened by concessions to countries such as Poland which believe it will incur unpalatable costs.
In addition, the bloc has not yet published proposals on giving financial assistance for developing countries that could help them restrain the growth in their carbon emissions.
This will be a key ingredient of any agreement in Copenhagen, and developing nations will need to study it - as they will Mr Obama's eventual policies - before deciding how far they are prepared to go in a package.
It may mean, some observers say, that the timescale is too tight to reach a Copenhagen deal that includes the "ratifiable, balanced and ambitious" targets that Mr Ban considers necessary.
EU lead on climate change under threat
The European Union's global leadership on climate change is under threat as Germany heads a rebellion to protect industry from the extra cost of tough environmental targets.
Bruno Waterfield, The Telegraph 10 Dec 08;
Europe's leaders are gathering in Brussels for a battle over how to enforce an EU target to reduce CO2 emissions 20 per cent by 2020 – a decision that was taken before the economic slump.
Diplomats and officials fear that environmental pledges made in rosier economic times will be an early casualty of the global downturn damaging the EU's role on the world stage as broker of global climate change talks to be held in Copenhagen next year.
Nicolas Sarkozy, who currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, has written to heads of state and government warning that "key questions still remain open" over "decisions with highly significant implications".
"I am determined to ensure that the European Council lives up to its responsibility and to citizens' expectations," he wrote.
"I am sure that each one of us will be able to show the vision and spirit of compromise necessary for success."
President Sarkozy has also told EU leaders that unless they agree on climate change by Friday night he will summon them to an emergency Brussels summit during the holiday period between Christmas and the New Year.
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, is deeply concerned that plans to charge European industry for permits to produce CO2 will drive manufacturing companies outside Europe where costs are lower.
Chancellor Merkel has told Mr Sarkozy that Berlin will block success at the EU summit unless Germany, Europe's largest economy, is given concessions to protect key manufacturing industries, such as steel, aluminium, cement or automobiles.
"It must not take decisions that would endanger jobs or investments in Germany," she told Germany's top-selling Bild newspaper earlier this week. "I will make sure of that."
One German study has shown that the EU CO2 targets could see 300,000 jobs lost by 2020 as key industrial sectors shift production to more competitive countries outside Europe, a process known as "carbon leakage".
