UN Climate Change Summit - EU: Now is not the time to play poker

Jose Manuel Barroso, Straits Times 21 Sep 09;

THIS week, world leaders will gather for a United Nations summit to discuss the forthcoming climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. Much attention will be focused on the main players - China, India and the United States. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that all Asian countries have an important role to play in this process.

As a region, Asia probably faces the largest impact from climate change. Asian governments need to be part of a solution that allows them to mitigate and adapt to climate change while at the same time develop their economies. I believe this is possible. However, it will require a pragmatic approach.

Climate change is happening faster than we believed it would only two years ago. Continuing with business as usual almost certainly means dangerous, perhaps catastrophic, climate change during the course of this century.

I am now very concerned about the prospects for Copenhagen. The negotiations are dangerously close to deadlock at the moment - and such a deadlock may go far beyond a simple negotiating stand-off that we can fix next year. It risks being an acrimonious collapse, perhaps on the basis of a deep split between the developed and developing countries. The world cannot afford such a disastrous outcome.

So I hope that as world leaders peer over the edge of the abyss this week, we will collectively drive the negotiations forward. Now is not the time for poker playing. Now is the time for putting offers on the table, offers at the outer limits of our political constraints. That is exactly what Europe has done, and will continue to do.

Part of the answer lies in identifying the heart of the potential bargain that might yet bring us to a successful result.

The first part of the bargain is that all developed countries need to clarify their plans on mid-term emissions reductions, and show the necessary leadership, in line with our responsibilities for past emissions. If we want to achieve at least an 80 per cent reduction by 2050, developed countries must strive to achieve the necessary collective 25 per cent to 40 per cent cuts by 2020. The European Union is ready to go from 20 per cent to 30 per cent if others make similar efforts.

Second, developed countries must now explicitly recognise they have to play a significant part in helping to finance mitigation and adaptation action by developing countries. Our estimate is that by 2020, developing countries will need roughly an additional EU100 billion (S$208 billion) a year to tackle climate change. Part of it will be financed by economically advanced developing countries themselves. The biggest share should come from the carbon market, if we have the courage to set up an ambitious global scheme.

But some will need to come from inflows of public finance from developed to developing countries, perhaps EU22 billion to EU50 billion a year by 2020. Almost half of this amount will be required to support adaptation action, with priority given to the most vulnerable and poorest developing countries. Depending on the outcome of international burden-sharing discussions, the EU's share of that could be anything from 10 per cent to 30 per cent - that is, up to EU15 billion a year.

So we need to signal our readiness to talk finance this week. The counterpart is that developing countries, at least the economically advanced, have to be much clearer on what they are ready to do to mitigate carbon emissions as part of an international agreement. They are already putting in place domestic measures to limit carbon emissions but they clearly need to step up such efforts.

They understandably stress that the availability of carbon finance from the rich world is a prerequisite to mitigation action on their part. But the developed world will have nothing to finance if there is no commitment to action in the developing world.

We have less than 80 calendar days to go till Copenhagen. As of the Bonn meeting last month, the draft text contains some 250 pages: a feast of alternative options, a forest of square brackets. If we don't sort this out, the document risks becoming the longest and most global suicide note in history.

This week in New York and Pittsburgh promises to be a pivotal one. It will reveal how much global leaders are ready to invest in these climate negotiations, to push for a successful outcome.

Copenhagen is a critical occasion to shift, collectively, onto an emissions trajectory that keeps global warming below 2 deg C. The fight back has to begin this week.

The writer is President of the European Commission.