Marlowe Hood Fri Yahoo News 9 Oct 09;
BANGKOK (AFP) – Two weeks of crucial UN climate talks concluded Friday after exposing huge rifts between rich and poor nations, just weeks ahead of the deadline for sealing a planet-saving global deal.
Only five negotiating days remain, in November, before 192 nations converge for a critical December showdown in Copenhagen, where they have pledged to conclude a treaty to tackle global warming.
Without rapid action, scientists say, the world faces catastrophe in the form of drought, flooding, famine and forced migration.
"My feeling is that the ball, immediately, is in the developed country court to make it clearer what they are looking for," said Malta's Michael Cutajar, co-chair of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks.
A few minutes later at a separate press conference, US negotiator Jonathan Pershing countered: "I think the ball is in the court of all countries."
He highlighted a key demand from rich countries that emerging giants such as China, India and Brazil commit to binding actions on climate.
"We are at a critical stage, with major issues unresolved," said Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre, a Geneva-based think-tank aligned with developing countries.
"If there is no improvement in the divisions, the prospects are certainly not bright for an outcome in Copenhagen that is ambitious environmentally, and equitable from a social point of view," he said.
The key stumbling blocks are how to share out the job of slashing the heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and how much money wealthy nations will stump up to help developing ones fight climate change and cope with its consequences.
"At the end of the day, if you don't have ambitious (emissions) targets from rich nations, and if you don't have significant finance on the table, the whole thing falls apart," said Yvo de Boer, the UN's top climate official.
But even as Bangkok inched from procedure to substance, negotiators on both sides of the issues agreed the experts' dialogue will remain blocked without strong input from world leaders between now and December.
"This is not the only game in town," said de Boer, referring to the UNFCCC, of which he is executive secretary.
Expectations are high for a second world leaders' summit on climate before Copenhagen, following a September gathering at the UN in New York, but no dates have been announced.
De Boer said he hoped the awarding of the Nobel Peace prize to US President Barack Obama would be "an encouragement for him to bring a strong commitment to Copenhagen".
The looming question of how the United States will fit into any new agreement has dominated the Bangkok meeting, with Pershing making clear that Washington will never join the Kyoto Protocol.
Kyoto legally obliges 37 industrialised countries to cut greenhouse gas output by a total of more than five percent before 2012 compared to 1990 levels.
This raises the issue of whether to scrap Kyoto and fold some of its provisions into a new accord, or to expand its provisions for another five or seven years while cutting a separate deal for the United States.
"A single instrument is more coherent, and for that reason is preferable," said Elliot Diringer, vice president of the Washington-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
But developing nations expressed deep alarm at what they saw as a shift away from Kyoto towards a US proposal for a "bottom-up" approach, in which countries submit national plans to outside verification.
"The train to Copenhagen is in imminent peril. Please don't destroy the Kyoto Protocol track," China's top climate negotiator Su Wei pleaded in the closing plenary session.
"The European Union, which was the most loyal to the protocol up to now, seems to be wavering. If they jump ship, Kyoto will be an empty shell," said Khor.
Green groups lamented the lack of progress in Bangkok, and called on rich-nation leaders not to wait until the eleventh hour to act.
"If the industrialized countries don't put their cards on the table regarding finance, there isn't going to be a card game in Copenhagen," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
UN climate talks split on treaty
Richard Black, BBC News 9 Oct 09;
The latest round of UN climate talks in Bangkok has ended with deep divisions over the shape of a new global treaty.
Developing countries want an extension of the Kyoto Protocol; but developed nations are arguing for a completely new agreement.
Poorer countries and environment groups accuse the west of lacking ambition.
There are now only five negotiating days left until the opening of the UN summit in Copenhagen in December that is supposed to finalise the new treaty.
"Just two months before Copenhagen, the Bangkok climate negotiations did little to move the ball forward," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a leading light in the international climate campaign tcktcktck.
"Bold steps are clearly needed from the world's leaders to break the deadlock in the negotiations, and time is running short."
The fortnight of talks in Bangkok began with negotiators looking at about 200 pages of text with 2,000 items that had yet to be agreed.
Progress has been made during the session, said delegates, but fundamental divisions remained.
"This session has shown that it can be done," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate convention (UNFCCC).
"All of the ingredients for success are on the table, and what we must do now is to hold back from self interest and let the common interest prevail."
Three-way split
The proposed new treaty's legal form has emerged as a significant issue.
Three options were on the table, said Mr de Boer: a completely new document, an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, or a "series of decisions" made at the Copenhagen talks.
This is much more than a technical issue.
Developing countries insist on the Kyoto Protocol route because of the obligations it already contains on developed nations - to cut emissions further than their existing pledges (which run to 2012, the end of the "first commitment period") and to provide finance for poorer countries.
"We have been dismayed by the lack of willingness by several of our developed country partners to move in this direction," said Shyam Saran, leader of India's delegation.
"It is a matter of regret that several (developed) countries are unlikely to meet their emission reduction obligations for the first commitment period.
"And [it is] a matter of even deeper concern than there has been no progress on achieving the key objective of our negotiations - the announcement of second commitment period targets which must be of a scale equal to the challenge we face of global climate change."
Insistence on putting a new agreement inside the Kyoto Protocol framework could, though, prevent any chance of US involvement.
The US Senate did not ratify the Kyoto treaty and would be unlikely to ratify a new agreement built on its principles.
'Foot dragging'
Environment groups, too, had hoped that developed countries would come forward with stronger commitments on reducing emissions and on providing money to help poorer nations adapt to climate impacts.
Norway pledged to reduce its emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2020 - the strongest pledge by any country so far.
But campaigners accused others, notably the EU, of using the absence of a firm US commitment as an excuse for dragging their own feet.
Legislation mandating emission cuts has yet to pass through the US Senate, and may not go through before the Copenhagen talks.
"Other countries are using the US's position as an opportunity to try and avoid stringent legally binding emissions cuts which they should implement at home," said Meena Raman from Friends of the Earth Malaysia.
"So far it looks like the Copenhagen talks could deliver a toothless agreement based on vague pledges that cannot deliver the deep greenhouse cuts that science and justice demand of rich nations."
Delegates convene again in Barcelona at the beginning of November for a further week of negotiations - the final round before the Copenhagen summit.
Mr de Boer noted that at the UN special session on climate change held in New York last month, heads of government had given a "clear mandate" to reach a firm climate deal this year.
But, he said, this needed to be translated into stronger ambitions within the detailed negotiations.
Bangkok climate talks end in recrimination
Bitter delegates say no agreement on money or emissions cuts means a deal at Copenhagen will be weak at best
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 9 Oct 09;
Global climate change talks came to an end in Bangkok today in an atmosphere of distrust and recrimination, with the rift between rich and poor countries seemingly wider than ever. After two weeks of negotiations there have been no breakthroughs on big issues such as money or emissions cuts.
With just five days of negotiating time now left before the concluding talks in Copenhagen in December, delegates said it appeared a weak deal was the most likely outcome, and no deal at all was a possibility.
However, President Obama's expected visit to Oslo to receive the Nobel peace prize in the middle of the climate talks raised hopes that he would make the short journey to Copenhagen to galvanise governments.
"World leadership is now vital if the talks are not to fail completely. It is inconceivable that Obama could now ignore the climate change talks," said one diplomat.
The citation for the prize specifically mentions the president "now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting".
However, China, India, Brazil and other major developing countries lined up with environment and development groups to condemn both the US and EU for demanding a brand-new climate agreement.
This would bring the US aboard an agreement but in the eyes of most countries would mean the effective end of the Kyoto protocol and possibly allow countries to set their own targets and timetables for cuts.
"It's irresponsible to even contemplate the idea of discarding the Kyoto protocol. It's the lifeblood of any future agreement. It is the only legally binding agreement that gives the certainty of moving rapidly to addressing the climate concerns of billions of people," said said Di-Aping Lumumba, Sudanese chair of the G77, a group of 130 developing countries.
"Developed countries have a massive leadership deficit. It's now up to their leaders to intervene and give a direction to the negotiations rather than waste everyone's time," he said.
Shyam Saran, Indian special envoy on climate change, said: "The EU must change its position. There have been inadmissible attempts to abandon the Kyoto protocol. This would mean rewriting the key principles. This is not what we agreed by consensus."
But the EU and UN brushed off concerns. "We are not killing Kyoto," said Anders Turesson, chair of the EU working group in the negotiations. "We want to preserve the contents [of the protocol]. The only way to do that is to find a new home for it in a new single legal instrument."
"This is trying to build something bigger and better than Kyoto. The fear is that there would be a race to the bottom. It is the opposite," he said.
Yvo de Boer, executive director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted there were now "serious" problems. "The spirit remains constructive and we have seen advances in Bangkok, but there is a strong fear that there is an attempt to kill the Kyoto protocol. That is causing great dissatisfaction," he said.
Environment and development groups accused the EU and US of holding poor countries to ransom. "The rift between rich and poor has intensified because rich countries have not put serious money on the table to help poor countries adapt to escalating impacts of climate change," said Oxfam senior climate adviser Antonio Hill. "The US has been silent on the scale of finance it will commit to."
"Both the US and the EU have tried to shift the burden on to developing countries, arguing that they should even pay towards the costs of adapting to climate change despite their minimal contribution to the problem," said Tom Sharman, ActionAid's head of climate change. The only bright spot in the negotiations was Norway's decision to increase its emissions reduction target to 40% on 1990 levels by 2020, he said.
"The EU has only increased developing country mistrust and the US is trying to impose its own domestic limitations on the world. It's time for President Obama to be the climate leader he says he is," said Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace International climate policy adviser.
