Chris Buckley, PlanetArk 22 Dec 09;
BEIJING - China will treat talks on a binding global climate change pact in 2010 as a struggle over the "right to develop," a Chinese official said, signaling more tough deal-making will follow the Copenhagen summit.
The rancorous meeting ended on Saturday with a bare-boned agreement that "noted" a broad accord struck at the last moment between the United States and the big developing countries -- China, India, Brazil and South Africa.
China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activities and its biggest developing economy, was at the heart of the talks, and bared some its growing assertiveness in grinding late-night sessions.
"It was a result that came from hard work on all sides, was accepted by all, didn't come easy and should be treasured," Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said, according to remarks posted on the Foreign Ministry's website on Monday.
Wen said China is willing to build on the Copenhagen agreement and push forward international cooperation on climate change.
Talks on a binding treaty are to extend throughout next year, and China is bracing for more strife over how to mesh its economic and emissions growth with a commitment to cut greenhouse gas levels.
"The diplomatic and political wrangling over climate change that is opening up will be focused on the right to develop and space to develop," a Foreign Ministry official, Yi Xianliang, said in comments cited by the official People's Daily on Monday.
The negotiations that culminated in Copenhagen showed "conflicts were increasingly sharp and the crux of disputes was steadily involving each country's core interests," said Yi.
Wealthy nations had failed to spell out their commitments to help poor countries cope with global warming, he said.
"With the international financial crisis and other factors getting mixed in, the developed countries retreated from their stances and positions, and then sought to shift the blame to developing countries, especially the big emerging powers," the People's Daily quoted Yi as saying.
"BETTER THAN TOTAL COLLAPSE"
The contention centers on how far to bring China's domestic vows to reduce emissions growth into an international pact, and what support from rich countries China will receive in return.
China has vowed to cut greenhouse gas emissions intensity -- the emissions pumped out to create each unit of economic worth -- by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels. But it has called that a voluntary domestic step.
With China's economy likely to grow strongly, its total emissions will also keep rising, although its average emissions per person remain far lower than rich nations'.
"The agreement reached was better than total collapse," said Wang Ke, a climate change policy expert at Renmin University in Beijing who was in Copenhagen to observe the talks.
"But China and other developing countries will feel the negotiations to come will be equally tough as we get into the details ... The funding commitments from the developed countries are still vague, and technology transfer issues were barely mentioned (in the Copenhagen accord)."
The accord held out the prospect of $100 billion in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations but did not specify where this money would come from. China has said it should have the formal right to such aid, even if the most vulnerable countries are first in line to receive it.
British Environment Minister Ed Miliband, in an article published on Monday, accused China and some other developing nations of frustrating agreement, including a goal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050.
Such goals will be empty unless rich countries vow to make steeper cuts in emissions and agree on how to parcel out the remaining share of the global emissions "budget," said Wang Yi, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
"The coming year of negotiations will be very demanding and nothing will be easy to solve," he said.
"We need to be clear about how the 50 percent would be shared out, otherwise it's an empty slogan, and now we need actions, not posturing."
Rich nations say China's efforts to slow greenhouse gas growth, such as closing dirty power plants, should be subject to international verification to assure wary voters and lawmakers that Beijing is keeping its word.
China has said such checks would violate its sovereignty and erode United Nations treaty rules saying developing countries do not shoulder the internationally binding emissions targets that developed countries must accept.
The broad language agreed in Copenhagen about "international consultations and analysis" for checking greenhouse gas emissions of developing nations leaves room for compromise, said Jiang Kejun, an expert on climate change policies at the state-run Energy Research Institute in Beijing.
(Editing by Ken Wills and Jerry Norton)
Britain blames China for climate talks' failure
Peter Griffiths, Reuters 21 Dec 09;
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain accused China and a handful of others on Monday of holding the world to ransom by blocking a legal treaty to fight global warming as countries traded blame for the deadlock in Copenhagen.
Describing the climate change summit as "at best flawed and at worst chaotic," Prime Minister Gordon Brown demanded urgent reform of the process to try to reach a legal treaty when the talks resume in Germany next June.
The summit ended with a underwhelming agreement on Saturday when delegates "noted" an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that fell far short of original goals.
"Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down these talks," said Brown, who tried to take a lead role in the talks.
"Never again should we let a global deal to move toward a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries."
The failure to reach a legal treaty sent European carbon prices to a six-month low on Monday.
The accord set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times -- seen as a threshold for dangerous changes such as more floods, droughts and rising seas. But it did not say how this would be achieved.
It held out the prospect of $100 billion in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations, but did not specify precisely where this money would come from. Decisions on core issues such as emissions cuts were pushed into the future.
U.S. President Barack Obama said the deal was an "important breakthrough," but only one step on the road toward the emissions cuts needed. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said it was "a success ... a significant step forward."
'RIGHT TO DEVELOP'
China said it would treat talks on a binding climate pact in 2010 as a struggle over the "right to develop," signaling more tough deal-making to come.
China, the world's biggest emitter of man-made greenhouse gases was at the heart of the talks, and demonstrated a growing assertiveness in grinding late-night talks.
Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said: "It was a result that came from hard work on all sides, was accepted by all, didn't come easy and should be treasured," adding that China was willing to build on the Copenhagen deal.
With governments, environmental groups and charities swapping blame for the failure in the Danish capital, Britain pointed the finger at China, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Sudan.
British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said China held the key to the world agreeing to a legal treaty, but it must first realize that a deal will not damage its economy.
"The most important thing for a country like China is to persuade them that they have nothing to fear from a legal treaty," Miliband said. "I can't see how you can have a legal treaty for the future without all countries being bound by it."
Negative reaction to the accord came to a boil in Germany, where environmental groups, churches, industrialists and economists slammed the compromise as a disaster.
"Governments around the world have failed their populations in the climate deal," said Dennis Snower, president of the Kiel-based Institute for World Economy (IfW).
The European Union, criticized for failing to raise its unilateral emissions cut offer to 30 percent from 20 percent, was ill-prepared for Copenhagen, said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Greens' co-president in the European Parliament.
"Diplomats aren't ready to negotiate over climate change, unlike disarmament or crises. They know how to handle immediate problems, not the long term," he told French paper Liberation.
(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley in Beijing; Brian Rohan in Berlin; Sophie Hardach in Paris; Patrick Worsnip in New York; William James and Michael Szabo in London; editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Europe feels left out in cold on climate deal
Seth Borenstein And Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press Yahoo News 22 Dec 09;
LONDON – It's a climate deal that has Europe feeling left out in the cold.
The continent that used to take the lead in advocating climate action is now taking the lead in climate complaining. And it's not just upset with the results, but the process itself.
Europe's goals were generally not met, and Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, host of the U.N.-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen, was shoved aside as president of the conference in favor of Philip Weech of the Bahamas.
When a deal was reached, those in the room were heads of state from Africa, North and South America and Asia — not Europe.
The unhappiness extends to Europe's business community, which worries that a failure to agree to international emissions cuts could put them at a competitive disadvantage.
Since Europe had already agreed to binding emission cuts, "they needed the United States and developing countries to agree to binding reductions, which they didn't because the United States couldn't without the United States Congress acting," said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund in the U.S. The developing countries didn't agree because the U.S. didn't, he added.
The Copenhagen Accord emerged principally from President Barack Obama's meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and the leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa. But the agreement was protested by several nations that demanded deeper emissions cuts by the industrialized world.
The U.S.-brokered compromise calls for reducing emissions to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
The agreement's key elements, with no legal obligation, were that richer nations will finance a $10 billion-a-year, three-year program to fund poorer nations' projects to deal with drought and other impacts of climate change, and to develop clean energy. A goal was also set to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 for the same adaptation and mitigation purposes.
The nations attending the U.N. conference agreed by consensus on a compromise to "take note" of the accord, instead of formally approving it.
Robert Orr, the U.N. policy coordination chief, said a document will shortly be opened for signatures from all countries, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged all to sign and work toward a legally binding treaty in 2010.
Politicians are blaming China and other developing countries for cutting the heart of out of the climate deal, with Britain accusing Beijing of vetoing a deal for mandatory emission cuts and an EU official complaining that some Latin American countries had held the entire conference hostage.
"Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down those talks," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday. "Never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries."
British climate change minister Ed Miliband wrote in The Guardian newspaper that most countries — developed and developing — supported binding cuts in emissions, but that "some leading developing countries currently refuse to countenance this." He singled out Beijing as the culprit behind the talks' near-collapse.
"We did not get an agreement on 50 percent reductions in global emissions by 2050 or on 80 percent reductions by developed countries. Both were vetoed by China, despite the support of a coalition of developed and the vast majority of developing countries," Miliband wrote.
China saw it differently.
"China has played an important and constructive role in pushing the Copenhagen climate talks to earn the current results, and demonstrated its utmost sincerity and made its best effort," Wen told the official Xinhua news agency.
"These are hard-won results made through joint efforts of all parties, which are widely recognized and should be cherished," he said.
EU officials returned from Copenhagen disappointed by the meager outcome of the conference and angry that countries such as Nicaragua, Bolivia, Sudan and Venezuela kept the rest from signing a more ambitious global pact.
The EU claimed a climate leadership role for Europe by promising in March 2007 to cut its emissions by 20 percent by 2020, compared with 1990, and by 30 percent if others, notably the United States, followed suit. While that has not happened, the EU sticks by its emissions cuts of 20 percent and 30 percent.
But Europe's role is not what it could have been or used to be, said Jorgen Delman, a China studies professor at Copenhagen University.
"They didn't play the role they could have played," Delman said. "But I think it was clear that the U.S. and China would be dominant. The European Union as a bloc was not in a position to be a dominant player."
Europe's problem was that it offered too much, too soon in negotiations, and was essentially taken for granted, experts said. In addition, when it comes to emissions of greenhouse gases, all of Europe combined isn't as a big a player as the U.S. or China. The biggest emitter in Europe is Germany, and it is behind India, Russia and Japan.
"Europe could shut down and it really wouldn't matter" in terms of the types of significant emission cuts, said John Christensen, head of the U.N. Environment Program's center for energy, climate and sustainable development, based in Denmark.
Another problem was that Denmark's leaders made "various mistakes" early in the bureaucratic process that slowed things down and annoyed some African nations, Christensen said. That led to Rasmussen stepping down.
Not all in Europe were critical. German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended the summit's outcome as a first step that paves the way for action. She added that "anyone who just badmouths Copenhagen now is engaging in the business of those who are applying the brakes rather than moving forward."
European companies said they were "disappointed by the limited outcome" of the climate talks that did nothing to demand that other regions match rules that punish polluters in Europe — which they fear will force heavy energy users such as steel and chemicals to quit the 27-nation bloc.
"The Copenhagen Accord has not brightened the prospect for a global level-playing field in the future," said a press release from BusinessEurope, which represents some 20 million companies.
"On the contrary, European companies have to pay for their emissions under the EU Emission Trading Scheme and are as exposed to carbon leakage as they were before Copenhagen," it said.
The companies also say they "strongly regret" that the U.S., China and others "only repeated their limited mitigation commitments."
They called for them to swiftly move toward a legally binding agreement "because companies need predictability to develop the new green solutions on which a future low-carbon economy will depend."
Europe's steel industry federation Eurofer said that in the name of remaining competitive, the EU should avoid increasing its target to reduce emissions to 30 percent by 2020 until industries in other parts of the world make similar cuts.
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Associated Press writers Robert Wielaard and Aiofe White in Brussels, Jennifer Quinn in London, Edith M. Lederer at the U.N., and Tini Tran in Beijing contributed to this report.
