Verena Schmitt-roschmann, Associated Press Yahoo News 2 May 10;
KOENIGSWINTER, Germany – With the fight against global warming in serious trouble, Germany and Mexico are calling on world leaders to get international negotiations back on track and reach concrete results by the end of the year.
"We need to show the world how serious the threat is," Mexican President Felipe Calderon said as he opened an international climate change conference in Germany on Sunday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also spoke at the opening of the conference co-hosted by both countries and aimed at laying the groundwork for the next U.N. conference on climate change, asked nations around the world for more ambition in their efforts to cut greenhouse gases.
While scientists believe global temperatures must not rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times, the world is now headed for a 3 to 4 degree increase, Merkel said.
"We have to realize that we have quite a long way to go to reach the 2-degree-goal," Merkel said. "Therefore we have to ascertain how we can reach our goals nonetheless."
Mexico will host the next U.N. conference on climate change in Cancun in December, the first such high-level summit after the troubled U.N. conference in Copenhagen five months ago.
Germany has long presented itself as a driving force in the international efforts to curb global warming and came up with the idea of a "mid-term" meeting.
Both countries invited ministers and representatives from around 45 countries for informal talks on the Petersberg up above Koenigswinter.
The three-day conference called the Petersberg Dialogue hopes to make some progress on details, but most of all build trust between poor and rich nations, Calderon said.
He said the conference could produce a "clear message, this will be the signal whether it will be possible to reach a uniform agreement."
Nations around the world agreed in 2007 to negotiate a new international treaty to fight global warming which scientists say has already started to cause some alarming changes such as droughts, flooding or heavier storms.
A treaty was originally hoped for in Copenhagen, but that meeting produced less than expected.
President Barack Obama and a few dozen other major players drafted the so-called Copenhagen Accord, which includes the 2-degree-goal and an immediate $30 billion three-year aid package for poorer nations.
However, the accord failed to gain full support at the summit, as some smaller countries felt left out in the process and were unhappy with the results of closed-door negotiations.
German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said the Petersberg meeting is designed to work intensely on some sticking points and to build trust among those who eventually have to work with each other on the U.N. level.
To have something to show for even while the negotiating is going on, nations should agree on concrete projects to curb greenhouse gas emissions or to adapt to climate change, he said.
Calderon and Merkel said one of the areas that could see some progress in Cancun was the fight against deforestation.
Mexico's president stressed that saving forests could help fight poverty at the same time as it would give residents an income.
Since Copenhagen, momentum in the drive to control global warming has slowed in some countries. The U.S. has not tackled its domestic energy bill; and Australia — one of the world's biggest per capita polluters — put off for as long as two years legislation setting up carbon trading.
Roettgen has said his country and others have not given up on striking a deal at the U.N. climate summit in Cancun Nov. 29-Dec. 10.
'Trust' lacking in stalled climate talks: Merkel, Calderon
Marlowe Hood Sun Yahoo News 2 May 10;
BONN (AFP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel Sunday urged world environment ministers "to find a basis of trust" before the next UN meet in Cancun, recalling the near-collapse of the Copenhagen climate summit.
"One thing that did not work well in Copenhagen is that a small circle met and the regional groups felt left out of the debate," she said as delegates from some 45 countries convened to breathe life into stalled climate talks.
"A preparatory job before Cancun will be to find a basis of trust for all countries that will be present in Cancun so that no one feels left out," Merkel told the assembled ministers and negotiators.
Many of the 194 nations in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have not backed the Copenhagen Accord, complaining that it was hammered out at the last minute behind closed doors by a handful of powerful economies led by China and the United States.
The contested accord calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but does not share out responsibility for reaching that goal.
Merkel pointed out that voluntary pledges currently registered in the accord put Earth on track for a 3.5 C or even a 4.0 C jump by 2100, far above the widely held threshold for dangerous warming.
She also sought to allay fears that forums such as the so-called Petersberg Climate Dialogue -- unfolding over the next two days outside Bonn -- could clash with the UN talks.
"There is no alternative to the UN process ... In the end all of this has to go into one UN process," she said.
The two-and-a-half day meeting -- the highest-level climate gathering since the December fiasco -- was jointly launched by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who will host the UN conference in Cancun starting in late November.
Calderon likewise emphasised the need for building trust, especially in the issue of finance for poor countries bracing for the ravages of global warming.
The Copenhagen Accord called for 30 billion dollars up to the end of 2012, to be scaled up to 100 billion dollars annually by 2020.
"This atmosphere of trust is something we really need to make use of for the 'fast track' financing," he told the ministers Sunday evening. "2010 is the year when we need to take action."
Just how hard that may be was laid bare in Bonn only weeks ago at the first meeting since Copenhagen of the UNFCCC, the main vehicle for global talks.
The only thing that the negotiators seemed to agree on was that the session was tense and riven by suspicion.
Also on Sunday, German environment Norbert Roettgen said the European Union should unilaterally raise its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 20 to 30 percent by 2020.
"The EU has to push to 30 percent to create confidence -- it's one way to create credibility with the developed countries," said Switzerland's top climate negotiator, Jose Romero.
The Petersberg talks in Bonn appear designed to sidestep some of the biggest political landmines that derailed Copenhagen, focusing instead on narrower issues where some progress has been made such as technology cooperation, verification regimes and fighting deforestation.
"The politics of getting a full-blown treaty are still very divided," said Alden Meyer, a climate policy analyst at the Washington-based Union for Concerned Scientists.
Industrialised countries bound by the Kyoto Protocol to slash their carbon pollution say emerging giants such as China and India must take on binding, if lesser, commitments too.
Developing countries argue they are not historically responsible for climate change, and thus should be allowed to take purely voluntary steps to help fix it.
But Calderon called on rapidly developing nations -- already among the world's top emitters of CO2 -- to play a bigger role.
"Until now we spoke about different responsibilities," he said, alluding to a cardinal principle underlying the climate Convention. "Now we have to see that it is really a joint responsibility."
