China, U.S. clash over 2010 U.N. climate talks

Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn, Reuters 8 Apr 10;

BONN, Germany (Reuters) - The United States and China clashed on Friday about how to revive climate talks in 2010, complicating the first U.N. session since the acrimonious Copenhagen summit fell short of agreeing a treaty.

Many delegates at the 175-nation talks in Bonn from April 9-11 urged efforts to restore trust between rich and poor countries but few held out hopes for a breakthrough deal to fight global warming at the next major talks in Cancun, Mexico, in late 2010.

In a split between the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases, Washington said it wanted talks in 2010 to build on a non-binding Copenhagen Accord for limiting global warming reached by more than 110 nations at the December summit.

Beijing insisted negotiations should be guided by other draft U.N. texts and said Premier Wen Jiabao had been "vexed" at one point in Copenhagen by the way the meetings were organized in small groups.

"We view Copenhagen as a significant milestone," U.S. negotiator Jonathan Pershing told delegates. "We believe that the accord should materially influence further negotiations. This was not a casual agreement."

The accord, backed by about 120 nations, sets a goal of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F), but does not say how. It also holds out the prospect of $100 billion in aid a year to developing nations.

BALI, CANCUN

Su We, China's negotiator, gave no praise to the Copenhagen Accord in a speech and said work in 2010 should be guided by U.N. texts worked out since a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007. Those texts are also marred by disagreements.

"Cancun has a very clear objective -- to ensure that the work set out in the Bali road map is carried out," he said.

"In the process of arriving at the agreement, openness and transparency were missing," Su said, saying Wen was "vexed" on December 17 when he was not informed of a meeting.

China is among 120 formal backers of the Copenhagen Accord, that is opposed by many developing nations.

Su and many developing nations criticized the practice of limiting talks to small groups of negotiators. Mexico has already held one such preparatory meeting limited to about 40 countries to try to get round the unwieldy U.N. process.

"We are aware that this process of negotiation requires adjustment and modernization," said Fernando Tudela, climate negotiator of Mexico.

Outside the conference center, environmentalists dumped about 4 tonnes of shattered glass on the ground alongside a sign marked "Copenhagen" and a banner reading: "Pick up the Pieces."

The U.N. talks are due to work out how many extra meetings to hold in the run-up to Cancun.

Most want two or three extra sessions, a lower pace than in 2009. Few spoke of a binding deal in Mexico with most pinning hopes on 2011 when talks will be in South Africa, or even at a meeting of world leaders in Rio de Janeiro due in 2012.

The long-running, U.N.-led process is meant to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.

"I don't think anyone expects a full legal deal (in 2010) the differences are just too deep," said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Delegates said the talks could make progress in 2010 on starting a flow of funds, helping safeguard carbon-storing forests or helping poor countries to adapt to changes in climate such as desertification, floods or rising sea levels.

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Climate 'more urgent than ever'
Richard Black, BBC News 9 Apr 10;

The need for a new global climate deal is "greater than ever", according to developing country delegates speaking at the opening of UN climate talks.

Blocs representing the poorest nations called for intensive talks during the year, leading to agreement on a legally binding treaty in December.

The EU backed the call, re-stating that the conclusion of December's Copenhagen summit had not met its ambitions.

But other industrialised countries do not appear so keen for a new treaty.

The three-day meeting here in Bonn is the first since the Copenhagen summit concluded without the global treaty that many countries had aimed for, instead producing a political declaration known as the Copenhagen Accord.

The US and other rich countries see it as a positive development, but others decry it as a figleaf that detracts attention from the real issues.

Describing Copenhagen as "a total failure", Venezuela's delegation chief Claudia Salerno said the accord would not reduce emissions enough to prevent significant climate impacts on poorer countries.

"My country raised its voice against the misnomer 'Copenhagen Accord' because... it contains proposals for voluntary reductions in carbon emissions that according to scientists would lead to increases in temperature of about 5C (9F)," she said.

"So nobody should be congratulating themselves on that. The urgency we face now is even greater than 2009."

Not all analyses of the Copenhagen Accord's pledges on curbing carbon emissions produce such high estimates for temperature rise, but many of those pledges are far from precise.

Lessons of history

The US - which did not speak during the opening session here - has been the accord's principal champion, saying it "achieves a number of landmark outcomes".

Its written submission to the UN climate convention (UNFCCC) backs "further formalisation of the accord" at this year's summit in Mexico, and says that "it will be difficult to find consensus around alternative proposals that depart from the accord understandings".

These statements have raised the hackles of developing countries, which interpret them as meaning that the US now sees the accord as the central global agreement and is not prepared to engage in anything that goes much beyond it.

"As a well-known politician once said, the one thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history," said Tosi Mpanu Mpanu from the Democratic Republic of Congo, speaking for the Africa Group of nations.

"The Africa Group believes that if we are to avoid a repetition of Copenahgen and repair this damaged process, then we must learn from Copenhagen."

And one of the lessons to learn, he continued, was that breaking away from formal inclusive negotiations and instead focusing on "a secret text put together by a selected few fundamentally broke the trust that is necessary for any partnership that aspires to be succesful and enduring".

Fernando Tudela, the Mexican delegate whose government will host this year's summit, referred to the need for "an authentic process of multilateral negotiations", with many others echoing his call.

Time and money

How and when these negotiations can happen, though, is another matter.

Developing country blocs called for at least three extra meetings this year - and perhaps as many as five - in addition to the regular fortnight in Bonn scheduled for June.

Staging all the extra meetings between the 2007 Bali summit and Copenhagen cost more than $30m (£19.5m), according to the UNFCCC secretariat; and governments would have to provide the money needed to hold another series.

Among wealthy nations, the EU appears the bloc most likely to engage with developing country concerns.

"We all need to frankly assess and examine the lessons learned last time," said Spain's Alicia Montalvo Santamaria, speaking for the EU, as Spain currently holds the presidency.

"The EU recognises the positive outcomes of the Copenhagen conference that gave important political guidance from the highest levels.

"However, the outcome did not reflect the EU's ambitions, and... we remain fully commited to negotiations with all parties in order to conclude a comprehensive global legal framework that allows us to stay below a rise of 2C (3.6F) since pre-industrial times."

UN seeks way forward on climate at Bonn meeting
Richard Ingham Yahoo News 9 Apr 10;

PARIS (AFP) – Countries gather this week in the hope of erasing bitter memories of the Copenhagen summit and restoring faith in the battered UN process for combatting climate change.

Negotiators meet in Bonn from Friday to Sunday for the first official talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since the strife-torn confab.

Their first job will be stocktaking: to see what place climate change now has on the world political agenda.

Disappointment or disillusion swept many capitals when 120 heads of state and government returned from Copenhagen after coming within an inch of a fiasco.

Over the past three months, political interest in climate change has ebbed, says Sebastien Genest, vice president of a green group, France Nature Environment.

"The summit prompted a widespread sense of failure and a kind of gloom," says Genest.

Moving to fill the vacuum are climate skeptics and pragmatists -- those who call for priority to domestic interests and the economy rather than carbon emissions.

On the table in Bonn will be how to breathe life into the summit's one solid outcome: the Copenhagen Accord.

The slender document was hastily crafted by the heads of 28 countries as the December 7-19 marathon wobbled on the brink of collapse.

It sets the goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), gathering rich and poor countries in action against carbon pollution.

It also promises 30 billion dollars (22 billion euros) for climate-vulnerable poor countries up to to 2012, and as much as 100 billion dollars annually by 2020.

The deal falls way short of the post-2012 treaty that was supposed to emerge from the two-year haggle which climaxed in Copenhagen.

Its many critics say it has no deadline or roadmap for reaching the warming target and its pledges are only voluntary.

It was not even endorsed at a UNFCCC plenary, given the raucous reception it got from left-leaning countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. So far, less than two-thirds of the UNFCCC parties have signed up to it.

Yet the Accord also has powerful supporters.

While acknowledging its flaws, they note it is the first to include advanced and emerging economies in specified emissions curbs.

And, they argue, it could provide the key to resolving climate financing, one of the thorniest problems in a post-2012 pact.

A big question in Bonn will be how to dovetail the Copenhagen Accord with the UNFCCC, so that money can be disbursed.

But negotiators will be unable to duck what went wrong at Copenhagen -- the cripplingly slow textual debate, the entrenched defence of national interests and the deep suspicion of rich countries among the developing bloc.

"The meeting... is going to be very important to rebuild confidence in the process, to rebuild confidence that the way forward will be open and transparent on the one hand, and efficient on the other," UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer says.

Many voices, such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, are arguing for changes to the UNFCCC's labyrinthine, two-track negotiating process.

The final hours at Copenhagen showed how quickly things could move when handled by a small group, as opposed to gaining unanimity of all 194 parties in one go, they say.

The way forward could lie with a representative group which would advance on major issues and consult the full assembly, which would also vote on the outcome, according to this argument.

Some are looking closely at the G20, which accounts for rich and emerging economies that together account for some 80 percent of global emissions.

Lord Nicholas Stern, a top British economist, says the G20 has gained clout and credibility thanks to the financial crisis.

"We've essentially marginalised the G8 and replaced it with the G20," Stern said in an interview in Paris.