Jerome Cartillier Yahoo News 12 Apr 10;
BONN (AFP) – Three days of talks aimed at putting a new gloss on UN climate talks ended here late Sunday after new textual trench warfare less than four months after a stormy summit in Copenhagen.
Countries wrangled for hours beyond the scheduled close over the work schedule under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and what blueprint to adopt for further negotiations.
"The negotiations were very tense. There is a lot of mistrust," said French chief negotiator Paul Watkinson.
"Some delegates don't seem to have taken onboard what happened in Copenhagen and the need to gain quick, concrete results."
As the 194-nation forum struggled with a sour mood, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer warned that the process would be dealt a crippling blow if it failed to deliver a breakthrough at a November 29-December 10 meeting in Cancun, Mexico.
Cancun had to yield a "functioning architecture" on big questions, including curbs on carbon emissions and aid for poor countries, de Boer said in an interview with AFP.
"We reached an agreement in Bali (in 2007) that we would conclude negotiations two years later in Copenhagen, and we didn't," he said.
"The finishing line has now been moved to Cancun, and I wouldn't be surprised if the final finishing line in terms of a legally binding treaty ends up being moved to South Africa," at the end of 2011.
"Copenhagen was the last get-out-of-jail-free card and we cannot afford another failure in Cancun," de Boer said. "(...) If we see another failure in Cancun, that will cause a serious loss of confidence in the ability of this process to deliver."
The Bonn talks exposed a rift between developed and developing countries over whether to pursue or quietly bury Copenhagen's main outcome.
This is the so-called Copenhagen Accord, brokered by a couple of dozen countries in frenzied late-night haggling as the summit faced collapse.
It sets a general goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), earmarks some 30 billion dollars in fast-track aid from 2010 to 2012 and sketches a target of mustering 100 billion dollars annually by 2020.
But the agreement came under fire from countries excluded from the small drafting group and failed to gain the endorsement of a 194-nation plenary. Around two-thirds of UNFCCC members have now signed up to it, though.
Some of the faultlines opened up again in Bonn.
The United States and the European Union (EU) said the Copenhagen Accord, despite its flaws, should be included in draft text for negotiations.
"We need a different paradigm and that's what emerges from Copenhagen," said top US delegate Jonathan Pershing to journalists.
Other countries were not keen about incorporating the Copenhagen Accord in the negotiating blueprint, reflecting concern about the document's purely voluntary emissions pledges and the way the deal was brokered.
Left-led nations in the Caribbean and Latin America attacked the Accord as undemocratic and a betrayal of UN principles. They called for negotiations to resume on the basis of a draft that was put on hold halfway through the Copenhagen meeting, delegates said.
After hours of debate, delegates agreed to give the chairwoman of the main working group, Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe, latitude to draw up a negotiating text.
The Copenhagen Accord was not specifically mentioned in this mandate, but Mukahanana-Sangarwe said orally it would be taken into account, along with other documents.
Two extra rounds of talks will take place before Cancun, the conference agreed.
Underpinning the UN talks is mounting evidence that manmade greenhouse gases -- mainly carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels -- are trapping solar heat in the atmosphere.
Within decades, changes to Earth's weather system could spell misery for many millions, hit by worsening drought, flood, rising sea levels and storms, say experts.
New climate talks set for 2010; no treaty seen yet
Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn, Reuters 11 Apr 10;
BONN, Germany (Reuters) - About 175 nations agreed a plan Sunday to salvage climate talks after the Copenhagen summit but the U.N.'s top climate official predicted a full new treaty was out of reach for 2010.
Delegates at the April 9-11 talks, marred by late-night wrangling between rich and poor nations on how to slow global warming, agreed to hold two extra meetings in the second half of 2010 after the December summit fell short of a binding deal.
The extra sessions, of at least a week long each, and a linked plan to prepare new draft U.N. climate texts would help pave the way to the next annual meeting of environment ministers in Cancun, Mexico, November 29-December 10.
"We had an outcome that was pretty positive. That is a good augury for what comes next," said Jonathan Pershing, head of the U.S. delegation. He said it was "a pain in the neck" that it took so long but noted U.N. climate talks were often sluggish.
"We have made substantial progress in the resuscitation of a positive spirit," said Dessima Williams of Grenada, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States. The disputes showed that "multilateralism is very slow and complicated."
Earlier, the U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, said governments should focus on practical steps in 2010, such as aid to poor nations to cope with the impacts of climate change, protection of tropical forests or new clean technologies.
"I don't think Cancun will provide the final outcome," de Boer told Reuters on the sidelines of the talks, the first since Copenhagen and intended to rebuild trust after the summit.
MANY MORE MEETINGS
"I think that Cancun can agree an operational architecture but turning that into a treaty, if that is the decision, will take more time beyond Mexico," he said, predicting "many more rounds" of talks to reach an ultimate solution.
Elliot Diringer, of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said that a climate treaty should remain the ultimate objective but might be years off. "We shouldn't fool ourselves about getting there this year or next," he said.
Delegates asked the chair of the talks, Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe of Zimbabwe, to come up with a draft text by May 17 on ways to combat global warming to help push ahead with negotiations at a meeting scheduled for Bonn May 31-June 11. Two extra meetings are also planned but no venues have been fixed.
All countries could send her input over the next two weeks.
At the heart of the dispute between rich and poor was the role of the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, worked out at the summit and backed by about 120 nations led by the United States.
Mukahanana-Sangarwe said she reckoned she could draw on elements of the Accord in her work, even though it was not adopted by all in Copenhagen and faces bitter opposition from nations such as Sudan, Bolivia and Saudi Arabia.
The Accord aims to limit a rise in average world temperatures to below two degrees Celsius (3.6 F) from pre-industrial times. But it does not spell out how and some poor nations say it is too weak to avert dangerous impacts.
The Accord also pledges $30 billion from 2010-2012 to help developing nations cope with climate change, such as floods, droughts, mudslides and rising seas. Aid is meant to rise to $100 billion a year from 2020.
But almost all delegates say that the current pledges from developed nations for cutting greenhouse gases by 2020 will mean a temperature rise of more than 3 Celsius.
"We don't have a debate happening (about tougher goals) and that's not acceptable," said Kathrin Gutmann of the WWF conservation group.
(Editing by Louise Ireland)
Extra U.N. climate talks agreed after Copenhagen
Reuters 11 Apr 10;
BONN, Germany (Reuters) - About 175 nations agreed a plan on Sunday to revive climate talks after the Copenhagen summit but the U.N.'s top climate official predicted a full new treaty would be out of reach for 2010.
Delegates at the three-day talks, which were held up for hours by bitter splits between rich and poor nations, agreed to hold two extra meetings, each at least a week long, in the second half of 2010 after the Copenhagen summit last December failed to reach a binding deal.
The extra sessions, and a linked agreement to prepare new draft texts about fighting climate change, will help prepare the next annual meeting of environment ministers in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29 to December 10.
(Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Factbox: Climate talks in 2010 on road to Mexico
Reuters 11 Apr 10;
(Reuters) - A U.N. meeting in Bonn, Germany, agreed on Sunday to add two extra meetings this year to help revive talks on a new deal to slow global warming after December's Copenhagen summit fell short of a full treaty.
Following are details of major meetings on climate change due in 2010:
U.N.
BONN, April 9-11 - Session among senior officials from 175 nations to plan for 2010
-- A U.N. group on Climate Change Financing, led by Britain and Ethiopia, is due to issue "initial outputs" before the U.N. meeting in Bonn starting on May 31.
BONN, May 31-June 11 - Senior officials meet in Bonn to review texts compiling ideas for slowing global warming. A draft text will be issued on May 17.
-- Two extra U.N. negotiating sessions, each at least a week long, will be added in the second half of the year. The venues and dates of the talks are not yet known.
CANCUN, Mexico, November 29-December 10 - Annual talks among the world's environment ministers.
-- The pace of U.N. talks marks a slowdown from 2009, when there was also a U.N. climate summit in New York on September 22.
OTHER RELATED MEETINGS:
WASHINGTON, April 18-19 - The United States holds a first meeting in 2010 of the Major Economies Forum, grouping 17 emitters that account for 80 percent of world greenhouse gases.
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia, April 19-22 - Bolivian President Evo Morales hosts a meeting of 15,000 people, including 7-10 foreign leaders, called "World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth."
SOUTH AFRICA, April 25-26 - Ministers from China, India, South Africa and Brazil meet as part of a plan to hold quarterly talks among the so-called BASIC group.
BONN, Germany, May 2-4 - German Chancellor Angela Merkel plans talks among about 45 environment ministers in the so-called Petersburg Dialogue.
OSLO, May 27 - Norway leads a meeting of ministers about protecting tropical forests, which soak up carbon dioxide as they grow.
MUSKOKA, Canada, June 25-27 - The Group of Eight industrialized nations holds an annual summit likely to touch on climate change, also a summit of the Group of 20.
SEOUL, Nov 11-12 - South Korea to host summit of Group of 20.
