Emerging nations pledge climate change unity in India

Rupam Jain Nair Yahoo News 24 Jan 10;

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China said on Sunday that talks in New Delhi had further cemented their alliance following the Copenhagen climate change summit.

The four emerging economies -- a key bloc within troubled negotiations on how to tackle global warming -- lobbied successfully at the Copenhagen meeting in December against binding emissions caps.

Speaking after Sunday's talks, Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh said the group -- known by the acronym BASIC -- had pledged to strengthen its unified stance but added it "seeks consensus with developed countries."

"We will deepen our co-operation," Ramesh said, praising the "crucial role" the four countries had played in creating the widely criticised Copenhagen Accord.

The accord was a non-binding document crafted by a small group of countries, including the BASIC nations, on the final day of the talks as the meeting faced collapse.

Sunday's meeting came ahead of a January 31 deadline for countries to say if they intended to be "associated" with the Copenhagen outcome or what sort of measures they envisaged taking.

As recriminations continue over December's summit, the United Nations' climate change forum is due to resume shortly with a ministerial-level meeting planned in Mexico at the end of the year.

The four ministers meeting in Delhi also issued a joint statement calling for rapid distribution of the ten billion dollars that wealthy countries pledged for tackling climate change in the developing world during 2010.

The money must be made available at once "as proof of their commitment to urgently address the global challenge of climate change," the ministers said.

The Copenhagen Accord set a broad goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) but did not specify the staging points for achieving this goal or a year by which greenhouse gas emissions should peak.

Instead, countries are being urged to identify what actions they intend to take, either as binding curbs on emissions or voluntary action. Twenty-eight billion dollars in aid have been pledged by rich countries for 2010-2012.

Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, the head of the UN's climate science panel, R.K. Pachauri, expressed hope that the BASIC nations would soon offer some chance of a binding pact in the future.

Many emerging nations say they will not allow emissions targets to be imposed at the cost of economic development.

China-led climate group ups pressure on donors
Reuters 24 Jan 10;

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Four nations led by China pledged on Sunday to meet an end-month deadline to submit action plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions and challenged rich countries to come up with funding to help fight global warming.

Environment ministers and envoys from Brazil, South Africa, India and China met in New Delhi in a show of unity by countries whose greenhouse gas emissions are among the fastest rising in the world.

The bloc was key to brokering a political agreement at the Copenhagen talks in December and its meeting in India was designed in part to put pressure on richer nations to make good on funding commitments.

"We have sent a very powerful symbol to the world of our intentions," the Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said at a joint press conference after seven hours of talks.

The group discussed setting up a climate fund to help nations most vulnerable to the impact of global warming, which it said would act as a wakeup call for wealthier countries to meet their pledges on financial assistance and give $10 billion in 2010.

Rich countries have pledged $30 billion in climate change funding for the 2010-12 period and set a goal of $100 billion by 2020, far less than what developing countries had wanted.

The group in New Delhi said releasing $10 billion this year would send a signal of the rich countries' commitment. The four said they were in talks to set up an independent fund for the same purpose, but gave no timeline or figure.

"When we say we will be reinforcing technical support as well as funds to the most vulnerable countries, we are giving a slap in the face to the rich countries," Brazil's Environment Minister Carlos Minc said through a translator.

The non-binding accord worked out at the Copenhagen climate summit was described by many as a failure because it fell short of the conference's original goal of a more ambitious commitment to prevent more heatwaves, droughts and crop failures.

China is the world's top CO2 emitter, while India is number four. China was blamed by many countries at Copenhagen for obstructing a tougher deal and has refused to submit to outside scrutiny of its plans to brake greenhouse gas emissions.

China has pledged to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of economic growth by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels. For India, that figure is up to 25 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels.

Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, said the world needed to take immediate action to fight climate change.

But in the wake of a controversial exaggeration by the U.N. climate panel on the threat of global warming to the Himalayan glaciers [ID:nSGE60M01C], he called for an "open attitude" to climate science.

"(There is a) point of view that the climate change or climate warming issue is caused by the cyclical element of the nature itself. I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research," he said through a translator.

"We want our views to be more scientific and more consistent."

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

Donors urged to pay climate cash
BBC News 24 Jan 10;

Brazil, China, India and South Africa have urged wealthy nations to hand over $10bn (£6bn) pledged to poor nations in 2010 to fight climate change.

The group - known as Basic - said the money must be available at once "as proof of their commitment" to address the global challenge.

The plea was issued after a meeting of the four nations in Delhi.

The funds were pledged in a non-binding deal agreed at last year's Copenhagen global climate conference.

The deal - the Copenhagen Accord - envisages that $30bn (£18.5bn) of aid will be delivered for developing nations over the next three years.

Basic members were instrumental in fashioning a political accord at the December climate summit.

The next round of negotiations is due to be held in December in Mexico.

'Soft' deadline

After the Delhi talks, environmental ministers from the four nations issued a joint statement calling for rapid distribution of $10bn that industrialised nations promised to the developing world to tackle climate change in 2010.

The first funds should go to the least developed countries, including small island states and African nations, China's top climate negotiator Xi Zhenhua said, the Associated Press reports.

The four nations also broadly endorsed the Copenhagen agreement, the BBC's Sanjoy Majumber in Delhi says.

And they said they would come up with some sort of action-plan on battling global warming, our correspondent adds.

This comes just a week ahead of a deadline for nations signing up to the accord to send figures on how much they will curb emissions.

But amid uncertainty over who is going to sign up, UN climate convention head Yvo de Boer said earlier this week the deadline was "soft".

He said the Copenhagen summit had not delivered the "agreement the world needs" to address climate change.