Climate pact needs flexible deadline: agency chief

Megan Rowling, Reuters 23 Mar 09;

LONDON (Reuters) - The deadline for a new global accord on climate change should be extended if Washington is not ready to make commitments on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by December, the head of a major environmental funding agency said on Monday.

More than 190 governments agreed in 2007 to forge a climate treaty by the end of 2009 at U.N. talks in Copenhagen, after scientists warned that rising emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, would bring more droughts, floods and rising seas.

Monique Barbut, chief executive officer of the Global Environment Facility, told Reuters the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama wanted to tackle global warming but might not have time to pass legislation on carbon trading in time to sign an international pact by December.

"I really think what is very important is not so much that we do it in Copenhagen, what is very important is that we get real good commitments," she said in an interview on the sidelines of an event on financing climate change.

"So if it needs six more months for the U.S. to be totally ready, I think it is much more important that we wait for those few months than that we take commitments that are going to anger many people."

President Bill Clinton agreed in 1997 to the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, aimed at cutting greenhouse gases in the period to 2012, but did not try to get a hostile Senate to ratify it.

In December, U.S. Senator John Kerry predicted the Senate would let Obama sign up to a U.N. pact to fight global warming in late 2009 even if U.S. climate laws were not yet in place.

Barbut noted other obstacles to reaching a deal in Copenhagen, including the European Union's reluctance to pledge billions of dollars in funding for poorer countries until it can see what other nations are prepared to put on the table.

"I do not honestly see European countries agreeing today to massively scale up their level of international solidarity to tackle climate change unless they get something in return," she told the event organized by the Overseas Development Institute.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said on Friday the bloc could move no further until other rich countries spelled out their targets for cutting emissions.

Success at Copenhagen will likely depend on whether agreement is reached on a fund worth tens of billions of dollars annually to help poor countries limit their emissions and cope with the impacts of global warming.

But Barbut, whose Washington-based agency is the financial arm for international conventions on environmental issues including climate change, said this would not happen unless a global deal on targets for reducing emissions was also reached.

"For me, and for plenty of reasons, this story is not a likely scenario, which means that in spite of the impressive and authoritative figures of funding needs that are floated around, the financial architecture will probably only change gradually, and its means will certainly not increase 10-fold overnight," she said.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling, editing by Tim Pearce)