Climate: The long and winding road after Copenhagen

Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 29 Jan 10;

PARIS (AFP) – After the near-train wreck of last month's Copenhagen climate summit, what lies ahead for efforts to beat back global warming?

Next week may yield the first clues.

Countries are being asked to say by Sunday whether they will endorse an 11th-hour deal, the "Copenhagen Accord," which saved the marathon meeting from collapse but sparked accusations of failure and betrayal.

By week's end, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will have a picture of the response, its officials say.

What emerges will be a litmus test of the Accord's credibility and whether a comprehensive and binding climate pact can be reached by year's end.

And, from there, flow more complex questions. Can the United Nations be revived as the forum for a climate treaty? Or will it play second fiddle to a smaller group of nations led by major carbon polluters?

The Copenhagen Accord calls for limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the threshold set by many climate scientists.

The agreement also commits rich countries to paying out around 30 billion dollars in total over the next three years, and 100 billion dollars annually by 2020, to help poor nations fight climate change and cope with its consequences.

The 194 UNFCCC signatories have the option of specifying what actions -- voluntary or otherwise -- they envisage for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Most of the world's major polluters, part of a group of around two dozen nations that pushed through the accord, have already reaffirmed goals announced ahead of the Copenhagen talks.

The document will be scrutinised for any missing names, dilution of pledges or backtracking that will sap legitimacy.

The next step will be to put flesh on this skeletal agreement, negotiators agree.

"We have an accord that is lumbering down the runway, and we need it to gather enough speed to take off," chief US delegate Todd Stern told investors at the UN Foundation in New York this month.

An internal assessment by the European Commission makes the same point: "The European Union should play a pro-active role in strengthening and expanding support for the Accord ... 'to give it a life'," it said.

One big task in the coming months will be turn the accord's fuzzy provisions for a Green Climate Fund and a Technology Mechanism into genuine tools for helping poor countries.

Another is to spell out exactly how the emissions pledges of emerging giants, especially China, India and Brazil, should be verified.

Both are highly sensitive policy areas that have stymied the UNFCCC negotiations. A consensus requirement and the tendency to get bogged down in procedural and textual battles make it easy for a nation, or group of nations, to block approval.

Given such problems, movement is growing in favour of a vanguard of countries that would do the negotiation spadework.

Which countries would be in this core, who would organise the meetings, and how they would intersect with the UNFCCC remain unclear.

Suspicions among poor countries in Africa and Latin America of a hijacking of the UN process are what prevented the Accord from securing approval by all UNFCCC members in Copenhagen.

Proponents of a parallel forum are treading cautiously.

"The discussions for an overall legal treaty will also carry forward," Stern said. "We need to set up a smaller group of countries, as well as operating in the full multilateral arena."

He also left open the possibility that the United States would continue the Major Economies Forum, a grouping of the world's top carbon polluters first brought together by George Bush and continued by Barack Obama.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for monthly meetings of the so-called "group of 28", a reference to the ministers and heads of state that hammered out a draft of the Copenhagen Accord during the desperate final day of the summit.

Environment ministers from the quartet of China, India, Brazil and South Africa, meanwhile, have already met and vowed to "deepen" the cooperation among them that so clearly emerged in Denmark.

Few people involved in climate diplomacy are optimistic that a binding treaty -- supposed to have been reached in Copenhagen -- can be reached in Mexico by year's end, and the mood has been further dampened by Obama's domestic political problems.

"Generally people want to reach a conclusion on the negotiating texts in Mexico, and then they will be in a position to decide how they want to package that outcome legally," UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said last week.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN climate science panel whose report underpins the negotiations, was gloomy.

"At this point in time, things don't look very good at all. They look very bleak -- I'm being very completely candid," Pachauri told AFP, referring to the climate talks.

World may not do climate deal this year
Gerard Wynn Reuters 29 Jan 10;

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Global climate talks may have to continue into 2011 after failing last month to agree on a Kyoto successor, the U.N.'s climate chief and Denmark's new climate minister told Reuters on Friday.

Green Business | COP15 | Davos

The world failed to commit in Copenhagen last month to succeed or extend the existing Kyoto Protocol from 2013. The U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, could not guarantee a deal in Mexico, the next scheduled ministerial meeting.

A lack of trust and the economic crisis complicated prospects for a deal in Mexico in December, added President Felipe Calderon, the prospective host of those talks.

"Whether we can achieve that in Mexico or need a bit more time remains to be seen and will become clearer in the course of the year," de Boer said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where executives said they would invest in low-carbon technologies regardless of a global climate deal.

"It's very difficult to pin down. One of the lessons from Copenhagen was don't rush it, take the time you need to get full engagement of all countries and make sure people are confident about what is being agreed."

India's top climate envoy Shyam Saran said on Thursday that that the world would "probably not" agree an ambitious deal this year unless the global economy improved.

Deadlock last month centered on how far big emerging economies should follow the industrialized world and enforce binding actions to fight climate change.

Denmark holds the presidency of the U.N. process until the Cancun meeting. Its new climate minister, Lykke Friis, agreed it was too soon to be sure of success in Mexico.

"The ultimate goal is to reach a legally binding deal but it's too early to say if it will be done in Mexico. No-one has the complete game plan to get to Cancun, that's what we're trying to find out now."

Denmark still did not know how much each industrialized country would contribute of about $30 billion to help developing nations fight climate change from 2010-2012, as agreed in the final "Copenhagen Accord," she added.

Mexico would do their best, said Calderon.

"My perception is that the lack of consensus is related to the economic problems in each nation, because there are economic costs associated with the task to tackle climate change.

"We want in Cancun a robust, comprehensive and substantial agreement," by all 193 signatories of the U.N.'s climate convention, he said.

"We need to try to learn from our mistakes ... we need to return trust and confidence between the parties."

The U.N.'s de Boer said countries must arrange additional meetings this year, in addition to the two already timetabled in Bonn in June, and then in Mexico if they wanted agreement.

De Boer said he was "very happy" to receive confirmation yesterday from the United States that it had beaten a January 31 deadline to submit formally its planned carbon cuts, to be written into the non-binding Copenhagen Accord.

For a factbox of all pledges submitted so far to the United Nations, double-click here -- [ID:nLDE60S0UY]

(Reporting by Gerard Wynn, Editing by Mike Peacock)