Planet under pressure: Will China and the US sign up at Poznan?

This week, ministers and officials gather in Poznan at the start of a one-year countdown to the Copenhagen summit, at which experts say a deal must be reached if we are to have a chance of averting catastrophic warming. Today, in the first of a major series, we look at the crucial question: will China and the US sign up?

David Adam, Julian Borger, Jonathan Watts, Randeep Ramesh and Suzanne Goldenberg
The Guardian 8 Dec 08;

It had been a long, hot night in Bali, a few weeks before last Christmas, and talks on a new climate deal had dragged past the scheduled finish, through the small hours and well into the morning. The fate of the world remained in the balance. Faced with grim predictions from the world's scientists, environment ministers from 192 countries were trying to agree how to tackle global warming. The deadline to agree the so-called Bali roadmap had come and gone, and rumours were rife that saving the planet would have to be suspended to allow cleaners to ready the rooms for a pre-booked event later that day. Exhausted campaigners, officials and journalists waited for news like expectant fathers, while, with guilty looks and mumbled apologies, delegates began stumbling into taxis for flights home.

Then, inside the cavernous hotel auditorium hosting the negotiations, something extraordinary happened. Faced with angry accusations from the Chinese that he was allowing parallel discussions outside the room, Yvo de Boer, the UN's top climate official, broke down in tears and had to be helped from the platform. A ripple of supportive applause swelled to a standing ovation - a rare moment of unity that appeared to nudge the talks back on track. A few hours later, the world's politicians were able to agree and head home.

De Boer takes centre stage again this week as the UN climate talks resume in Poznan, Poland. The meeting is likely to provide fewer fireworks. The Bali talks launched negotiations on a new climate treaty, and aimed for them to be completed by this time next year, when the UN climate circus rolls into Copenhagen. Poznan, the halfway point of that process, will probably see countries tread water, with the real action likely to begin in the second half of next year.

"This is not an exciting meeting in the way Bali was," De Boer says. "But we really haven't got an awful lot of time left to agree what comes next. It is important that countries in Copenhagen reach a political agreement that is a response to what the science tells us needs to be done."

Big two

Some progress is still possible at Poznan - countries could agree on how to free hundreds of millions of pounds of funding to help poorer countries cope with the effects of climate change. There could also be movement on a scheme to pay tropical countries to protect forests.

The negotiation that will climax in Copenhagen is the first attempt to reach a meaningful international agreement on climate change since the Kyoto protocol in 1997, the first phase of which expires in 2012. Analysts say a new agreement is needed by the end of next year for it to enter into force in 2012, to give countries a couple of years to ratify the new treaty.

Anything other than a seamless succession from Kyoto could spell disaster for emerging carbon markets - seen as a crucial mechanism to cut future carbon emissions. The involvement of the US and China - the two biggest carbon emitters - is fundamental. As one European official put it: "The new climate agreement is a deal between the US and China. The rest of us are there for lubrication."

The American president-elect, Barack Obama, has said the US will "engage vigorously" in talks on a Copenhagen deal and "help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change".

The US signed Kyoto, but President Bill Clinton never submitted it for ratification to a hostile Senate, which made it clear it would oppose on economic grounds any deal that did not set binding targets for the developing world, code for China. President Bush distanced the US further from what he called a "flawed treaty".

But negotiators do not expect the Obama administration to signal its true intentions on climate change until spring at the earliest. Some Washington observers are more pessimistic, believing an Obama administration will be unlikely to focus on global climate change commitments before enacting domestic legislation. The incoming chairs of the Senate and House of Representatives, Barbara Boxer and Henry Waxman respectively, both have said they plan to introduce such legislation early in 2009, but it is unlikely to become law before Copenhagen.

John Kerry, the former presidential candidate who will lead the Senate delegation in Poznan, said last month that the US was now in a position to play a leading role in negotiations. But he also warned that the incoming administration would be constrained by the economic crisis in offering incentives to countries such as India and China to commit themselves to lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

The rest of the world expects more than engagement from Obama, however vigorous, and British officials will expect the US to take on the kind of binding targets it rejected a decade ago. For that to happen, it seems certain that the US will demand mandatory emissions commitments from large developing countries, principally China, India and Brazil.

China's position has not fundamentally changed since Bali: it will resist internationally binding goals for emissions reductions. "I don't think it is realistic or feasible to set a specific emissions target at a national level," said a member of the Chinese negotiating team. "Politically, I don't think it is possible to set targets."

Before taking that step, the source said, China would seek assistance to build up a system to measure, report and verify emissions. This is a challenge in such a large country but negotiators argue it is pointless to set a target if there is no accurate way to gauge compliance.

China has set non-binding domestic goals on energy efficiency, renewable energy use and the reduction of pollutants, including several greenhouse gases. Foreign diplomats praise the targets, but say implementation is patchy.

In Chinese academia, there is a growing debate on the issue, with one prominent government adviser, Hu Angang, urging China to score diplomatic points by fixing binding targets. But this is a minority position. The Chinese government stresses that the main responsibility lies with developed countries. Before setting binding targets, China wants its economy to catch up more with the west. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao recently called on rich countries to abandon their "unsustainable lifestyle", saying the financial crisis was no excuse for inaction on climate change.

China has said developed countries should contribute at least 0.7% of their GDP to help poorer countries acquire clean technology and cope with the floods, droughts and storms created by rising temperatures. Few wealthy countries stump up this much cash for their entire aid budgets. In negotiations, China and other developing countries are likely to seek a lower but still substantial sum of several tens of billions of pounds.

Ed Miliband, the UK environment secretary, said Europe needed to agree its own carbon targets at a meeting in Brussels this week to smooth the negotiations. Italy and Poland have complained about the cost of the proposals, which must be agreed by European leaders on Friday. Miliband said: "When I think about Poznan, the backdrop at present is a positive one because of what President-elect Obama has said, but it will be much more positive if we get agreement in Europe, and much more negative if we don't."

Henry Derwent, who stepped down as UK chief negotiator on climate change this year and is now president of the International Emissions Trading Association, said it was "too extreme" to view the US and China as the only major players in the negotiations. He said: "Those two will have to be satisfied, but China does not simply own India and cannot deliver India, nor the rest of the G77 [group of developing countries]."

Shyam Saran, India's special envoy on climate change and lead negotiator at the UN talks, told the Guardian that India is not a "major emitter" of greenhouse gases and will not volunteer to take on responsibilities that would see it accept legally binding limits. He said capping emissions would threaten its growth and prevent it from alleviating "energy poverty" which saw 500 million people live in darkness.

"In India, I need to give electricity for light bulbs to half a billion. In the west you want to drive your Mercedes as fast as you want. We have 'survival' emissions, you have lifestyle emissions. You cannot put them on the same basis. I am trying to give a minimal commercial energy service, whereas you are not prepared to give up any part of your affluent lifestyle or give up consumption patterns," he said.

The diplomat, who was appointed earlier this year after successfully negotiating a key nuclear deal with Washington, said India also had concerns that the global financial crisis would see climate change fall off the political agenda and expressed surprise at the ease at which money had been found to cope with the slowdown.

"What we are saying is that if in a compelling crisis governments are able to find the resources amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, then what about climate change?"

The Indian government has repeatedly pointed out that developed countries promised under the United Nations framework convention on climate change, adopted in 1992, that poor countries would get cash and knowhow to deal with climate change. Yet little has arrived.

Optimism

Derwent said the Chinese statement about rich countries paying 0.7% of GDP to poorer countries was "quite an optimistic sign compared to what India and others are saying". He said: "They are talking in negotiating language, even though their initial demand is outside the comfort zone of those on the other side of the table. It's a negotiating commonplace that once the other guy starts talking numbers or timetables, even if the numbers are ridiculous, you have passed a milestone."

In contrast, he said the early talk about mandatory reduction commitments for countries such as China from the Obama team were "absolutely miles away" from what developing countries might accept. Derwent said: "It's a hunch, but I think there is much, much more understanding that has to go on in the minds of the new presidential team that what they're asking for is simply not available."

He said the key issue in Copenhagen would be what countries were willing to sign up to in the short term, rather than ambitious pledges to act by 2050. "You've got to get people talking about a next commitment period, might be five years, eight years or 2020, against which that can be judged." One problem, Derwent said, was that countries would probably not put such numbers on the table until the last minute. "That's quite possible. And if you did get that then the chances [of an agreement] would be quite low." He added: "The problem with Copenhagen is that there is simply so much to do."

Bob Watson, chief scientist at the environment department, Defra, and a former White House adviser in the mid-1990s, said it could be possible to adjourn the Copenhagen meeting if agreement is not reached. "If there's major agreement but they can't get everyone to sign on the dotted line they might have to come back a few months later. I say let's really push for Copenhagen, but there may have to be what I call a Copenhagen plus one."