Battle of the texts looms at UN climate talks

Richard Ingham And Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 10 Dec 09;

COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Blocs of countries pitched competing visions for a deal at the UN climate talks on Thursday as the early arrival of environment ministers stoked pressure for an outcome.

But more problems marred the marathon negotiations, as efforts to chisel out consensus was delayed by a request tabled by Pacific minnow Tuvalu that has split developing nations.

Outside Copenhagen, the Kremlin announced Russian President Dmitry Medevdev would join around 110 other heads of state and government for the grand climax on December 18, while France signalled it would push its European partners to deepen their carbon cuts.

Rival papers tabled by African countries, small island states, emerging giant economies and conference chair Denmark jockeyed for a place in a draft compromise.

They set down varying targets on curbing greenhouse gases that fuel global warming and funding for poor countries so that they can meet this potentially mortal threat.

The next step will be to hammer these texts into a workable blueprint for haggling next week.

"This is a three-layer cake: we started, then our ministers take over, then ours leaders take over," said Dessima Williams of Grenada, who also represents the Associations of Small Island States (AOSIS).

Emerging giants draft climate deal: Kyoto must stay

Reflecting divisions, a row dividing poorer nations rumbled on, badly delaying work in a key negotiation pools.

Tuvalu -- population 10,000 -- pressed a demand that the conference discuss its idea that emerging giant economies be tied to binding emissions cuts under a new round of pledges under the Kyoto Protocol.

The proposal drives at the heart of a nearly two-decade-old axiom that only rich nations, and not poor ones, should commit to legal curbs on fossil-fuel pollution.

Underpinning Tuvalu's demand is that island states, and other highly vulnerable nations, could be devasted by warming inflicted by uncontrolled emissions from China, India and Brazil.

Friction was also visible between China and the United States, respectively the world's No. 1 and No. 2 polluters, whose positions are central to any deal in Copenhagen.

China said countries like the US had a duty to pay out billions of dollars in compensation to poorer, developing countries.

But a US official said China would not be at the top of any US list of countries receiving support to cope with the effects of global warming, a US official said.

Related article: Plan B for climate

"The Chinese have enormous capacity," US negotiator Jonathan Pershing told AFP on Thursday.

"If you think about what will be prioritised in terms of the needs of the community for most of the countries, the poorest countries, the countries that are hardest hit -- I wouldn't start with China," he said.

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said, though, that the mood had improved since the start, rocked by finger-pointing over burden-sharing.

"I sense there is a real seriousness now to negotiate. Good progress is being made in a number of areas, perhaps especially in the area of technology, which has been of great importance to developing countries," he told reporters.

If all goes well, the deal will be endorsed by all 194 nations of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Those attending the Copenhagen summit include US President Barack Obama, Premier Wen Jiabao of China, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the heads of the European Union (EU).

Further talks will be needed next year to flesh out the details of what will in essence be a political accord.

Leaders of the 27-nation EU met in Brussels on Thursday for a two-day summit where they were expected to debate the option of deepening a unilateral cut of 20 percent to 30 percent if they found a similar effort among other industrialised countries.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will strive for an EU cut of 30 percent cut "as soon as possible", his environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, said in Paris on Thursday.

Kyoto Protocol seen extended in U.N. climate draft
Alister Doyle, Reuters 10 Dec 09;

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - An enhanced version of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol is set to be part of the fight against global warming until 2020, according to a draft text by Denmark which is hosting talks on a new climate agreement.

"Parties to the Kyoto Protocol ... decide that further commitments for developed countries should take the form of quantified (greenhouse gas) emission limitation and reduction objectives," according to the text, intended as the possible basis for an agreement at the Copenhagen talks, which Reuters obtained on Wednesday.

The Kyoto Protocol, agreed in 1997, obliges all industrialized nations except the United States to cut greenhouse gas emissions until 2012. In Copenhagen, 190 nations are puzzling over how to work out a wider deal involving all countries in combating global warming until 2020.

Many rich nations favor a single United Nations pact to succeed Kyoto. But poor nations, which say the rich want to "Kill Kyoto," prefer two tracks -- Kyoto with deep emissions cuts for the rich and a new, less binding accord for the poor.

The four-page text, dated November 30, suggests that the Kyoto Protocol may survive the December 7-18 meeting in Copenhagen, alongside a new pact that would spell out obligations by developing nations and the United States, the only industrialized nation outside Kyoto.

The text said that international emissions trading and other mechanisms under Kyoto, including a scheme for promoting green technologies in developing nations, should be "enhanced."

2020 BLANK

Denmark says it is consulting many countries with a variety of texts but not making formal "proposals" yet before a summit of 110 world leaders on December 17-18 at the end of the talks.

The document leaves blank a list of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations by 2020 as part of the fight against global warming that may cause more extinctions of species, rising sea levels, wildfires and desertification.

Another document, also dated November 30, outlines actions by all nations to fight climate change including a goal of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The document is little changed from one dated November 27 reported by Reuters last week. Many developing nations oppose a goal of halving emissions, saying that rich nations must first do far more to cut their emissions by 2020.

"Denmark has not published any proposals. Whether we will do so depends on the coming days' negotiations," Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told Danish TV2 News on Wednesday in response to publication of the November 27 document on a website.

An extension of Kyoto would have to be without Washington.

"We're not going to become part of the Kyoto Protocol," U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern said on Wednesday in Copenhagen.

Former President George W. Bush said Kyoto was a straitjacket that unfairly omitted greenhouse gas curbs for developing nations led by China. President Barack Obama has no plans to rejoin even though he wants to step up U.S. actions to fight global warming.


Vulnerable nations at Copenhagen summit reject 2C target
Alliance of Small Island States say any deal that allows temperatures to rise by more than 1.5C is 'not negotiable'
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 10 Dec 09;

More than half the world's countries say they are determined not to sign up to any deal that allows temperatures to rise by more than 1.5C - as opposed to 2C, which the major economies would prefer.

But any agreement to reach that target would require massive and rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions combined with removal of CO2 in the atmosphere. An extra 0.5C drop in temperatures would require vastly deeper cuts in carbon dioxide and up to $10.5 trillion (£6.5tr) extra in energy-related investment by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency.

Holding temperatures to an increase of 1.5C compared to preindustrial levels would mean stabilising carbon concentrations in the atmosphere at roughly 350 parts per million (ppm), down from a present 387ppm. No technology currently exists to feasibly remove CO2 from the atmosphere on a large scale.

The temperature issue was starkly highlighted yesterday when Tuvalu, one of the world's most climate-threatened countries, formally proposed that countries sign up to a new, strengthened and legally binding agreement that would set more ambitious targets than what is presently being proposed. This divided G77 countries, some of whom led by China and India argued against it, fearing that it would replace the Kyoto protocol.

But they were supported by many of the vulnerable countries, from sub-Saharan Africa as well as the small island states, with passionate and powerful statements about the catastrophic impact of climate change on their people.

"Tuvalu has taken a strong stand to put the focus back on their bottom line. Nothing but a legally binding deal will deliver the strong commitments to urgent action that are needed to avoid catastrophe, especially to the most vulnerable countries and people," said the Oxfam spokesman Barry Coates.

Today the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), a grouping of 43 of the smallest and most vulnerable countries, including Tuvalu, said any rise of more than 1.5C was not negotiable at Copenhagen. They are backed by 48 of the least developed nations.

But the UN conference chief, Yvo de Boer, implied this morning that the proposal had little chance of being adopted. "It is theoretically possible that the conference will agree to hold temperatures to 1.5C but most industrialised countries have pinned their hopes on 2C," he said.

The 2C figure, which was included in the leaked draft negotiating text prepared by the summits host Denmark has emerged as the figure favoured by large economies and the likeliest to be adopted. But the poorest countries say that latest science implies that a 2C warming would lead to disastrous consequences – for example from sea level rise.

"We have two research stations, one in the Pacific and one in the Caribbean. They both suggest a rise of 2C is completely untenable for us," said Dessima Williams, a Grenadian diplomat speaking for Aosis.

"Our islands are disappearing, our coral reefs are bleaching, we are losing our fish supplies. We bring empirical evidence to Copenhagen of what climate change is doing now to our states," she said.