UN talks flounder as climate impacts mount, say delegates

Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 6 Aug 10;

PARIS (AFP) – UN climate talks tasked with curbing the threat of global warming are backsliding, delegates from both rich and developing nations said Friday at the close of a week-long session in Bonn.

Even as evidence mounts that deadly impacts are upon us, negotiators said, chances for a compromise deal under the 194-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) are slipping away amid furious finger pointing.

"These negotiations have if anything gone backwards," said the EU's climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard.

"This imbalance is not helpful and could seriously endanger the prospects of securing the successful outcome the world needs from the Cancun climate conference next December" in Mexico.

"At this pace the world will simply collectively miss the train," she warned.

Record global temperatures, forest fires in Russia, lethal floods in Pakistan "are all consistent with the kind of changes we could expect from climate change, and they will get worse if we don't act quickly," said US negotiator Jonathan Pershing.

"Unfortunately, what we have seen over and over this week is that some countries are walking back from the progress made in Copenhagen," he told journalists, referring to the 11th-hour accord hammered out at the climate summit in December.

The Copenhagen Accord enshrined the goal of capping the increase of global temperatures at 2.0 degree Celsius (3.6 degree Fahrenheit), but did not muster the commitments needed to attain it.

It also pledged long-term financing to the tune of 100 billion dollars a year to help poor countries green their economies and cope with climate change impacts, but without specifying where the money would come from.

Dessima Williams of Grenada, speaking for the 43-nation Association of Small Island States, said she was "greatly concerned" by the slow pace of the talks.

"The situation on the ground for all our countries is worsening," she said at a press conference.

But even in areas where agreement had been reached, such as technology transfer and forest management, "there seems to be some backsliding. This is very lamentable and very unhealthy," she said.

The likely failure of the US Congress to pass climate legislation this year has also cast a pall over the negotiations, many delegates said.

"I've heard a lot of people say it is not encouraging for the process," Wittoeck said.

Major emerging nations such as China and India have resisted legally binding requirements to cut emissions, saying that rich countries historically responsible for global warming must take the lead.

Efforts to hammer out a draft negotiating text ahead of the next major climate summit at the end of the year in Cancun also suffered a blow, with many countries throwing in last-minute additions.

Only one more negotiating session -- from October 4-9 in Tianjin -- remains before Cancun, which is expected, at best, to finalise some of the building blocks for a future, legally-binding deal.

The first six months of 2010 registered the warmest combined global land and ocean surface temperatures since 1880, when reliable temperature readings began, according the US government scientists.

Arctic ice cover -- another critical yardstick of global warming -- had also retreated more than ever before by July 1, putting it on track to shrink beyond its smallest area to date.

Without steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, the global thermometer could rise by 6.0 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels, making large swathes of the planet unlivable, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned.

Voluntary national pledges made in Copenhagen would likely cap that increase at 3.5 C to 4.0 C (6.3 F to 7.2 F), still fall far short of the 2.0 C (3.6 C) limit that most scientists agree is the threshold for dangerous warming.

U.N. climate deal retreats as Bonn talks end
* Countries mull new text, seen larger than needs to be
* Backtracking, insertions, U.S. blamed for slow progress
* Lot of work left to do in China, then Mexico
Nina Chestney Reuters AlertNet 6 Aug 10;

BONN, Aug 6 (Reuters) - U.N. climate talks have moved backward rather than forward toward a hoped-for deal later this year as nations make slow progress on pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions and add more proposals to the working document.

As talks in Bonn on a new climate treaty draw to an end on Friday, there is still a lot of work to be done at remaining meetings in Tianjin, China and Mexico at the end of the year.

"I came to Bonn hopeful of a deal in Cancun, but at this point I am very concerned as I have seen some countries walking back from progress made in Copenhagen," said Jonathan Pershing, the U.S. deputy special climate envoy.

A new climate text under discussion has increased to 34 pages from 17 as new proposals are added or old ones reinserted.

The blueprint contains a set of draft decisions for final U.N. talks in Cancun, Mexico in November, including the impact of agriculture on emissions, carbon market mechanisms and the mechanics and impact of moving to a low-emissions future.

The European Union's co-lead negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, accused some countries of adding text in a "tit for tat" way and said, "It is important in Tianjin to turn that spirit around."

U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres said the text would not be allowed to grow further and that some progress had been made towards deciding on the shape of a future deal.

"If you see the bigger picture, we have progress here in Bonn. It is hard to cook a meal without a pot, and governments are much closer to actually making the pot," she said.

But the Climate Action Network, a coalition of about 500 non-profit organisations, said heads of state need to give their representatives clearer direction to concentrate on areas where they can find convergence to make real progress in Cancun.

SLOW PACE

The pace of negotiations has slowed as some countries have gone back on issues agreed last year in Copenhagen such as monitoring and measuring greenhouse gas emissions and ways of cutting emissions from rich nations and developing countries.

"The mitigation discussion even went backwards and became more polarized," said Gordon Shepherd at campaign group WWF.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) was also reopened over the definition of what it covered.

The Alliance of Small Island States complained rich nations' pledges to cut emissions fell short of what was needed.

"We cannot anticipate any major shift from what we had in Copenhagen, which was a 12 to 18 percent reduction when the IPCC called for 25 percent. We are far from that in the aggregate figures," said the group's chair, Dessima Williams.

The U.S. said the talks focused too much on putting the onus only on rich nations to deliver cuts, rather than all countries.

Climate finance is also an area of disagreement. The Copenhagen Accord last December set a long-term goal of raising $100 billion a year by 2020 to avert the effects of climate change and a short-term goal of $10 billion a year by 2012.

The architecture of that finance is far from defined and Pershing said some countries were seeking "staggering sums out of line with reality."

Another setback to the talks arose from the lack of legislation to curb emissions in the United States.

The U.S. Senate dropped efforts to put emissions curbs in an energy bill that is now focused narrowly on reforming offshore drilling, but the country has said it will stick by its 2020 target for reducing emissions.

"It has been taken as a signal by some that the process should be slowed or we should wait for the U.S.," Williams said. (Editing by Jane Baird)

Climate talks appear to slip backward
Arthur Max, Associated Press Yahoo News 6 Aug 10;

BONN, Germany – Global climate talks appeared to have slipped backward after five days of negotiations in Bonn, with rich and poor countries exchanging charges of reneging on agreements they made last year to contain greenhouse gases.

Delegates complained that reversals in the talks put negotiations back by a year, even before minimal gains were scored at the Copenhagen summit last December.

"It's a little bit like a broken record," said European Union negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger. "It's like a flashback," agreed Raman Mehta, of the Action Aid environment group. "The discourse is the same level" as before Copenhagen.

The sharp divide between rich and poor nations over how best to fight climate change — a clash that crippled the Copenhagen summit — remains, and bodes ill for any deal at the next climate convention in Cancun, Mexico, which begins in November.

"At this point, I am very concerned," said chief U.S. delegate Jonathan Pershing. "Unfortunately, what we have seen over and over this week is that some countries are walking back from progress made in Copenhagen, and what was agreed there."

Dessima Williams of Granada, who speaks for island states, charged that rich countries were "backsliding" on pledges of help to the poorest countries. Devastating floods in Pakistan, deadly fires and drought in Russia, a food crisis in West Africa — and reports that the first decade of this century was the hottest on record — provided a stark backdrop to the talks.

"The situation in all of our countries is worsening," Williams said.

In Bonn, negotiating text doubled in length over the last week as countries put forward claims that had been deleted last year and delegations jockeyed for last-minute advantage before heading into the final stage of negotiations before Cancun.

Christiana Figueres, the top U.N. climate official, said the Bonn meeting was the last chance for countries to put forward maximum national demands, but they must "radically narrow down their choices" at the next meeting. One more round of talks is scheduled for October in China.

Expectations for Cancun already have been deflated to avoid the sense of fiasco that followed Copenhagen, which had been invested with high hopes of a comprehensive deal and with the efforts of 120 world leaders who attended, including President Barack Obama.

Copenhagen ended with a three-page political statement pledging to limit the rise of the Earth's average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius (3.8 F) above levels recorded before industries began pumping carbon dioxide into the air 200 years ago. It promised rich nations would help developing countries slow the growth of their emissions, while reducing their own.

Figueres said the objective of Cancun was a set of operational decisions that could later be turned into an international treaty. They include the transfer of billions of dollars a year and cutting-edge energy technology from industrial to developing countries and giving them the skills to adapt to changing weather patterns, she said.

She challenged the view that the Bonn talks were a step backward. Delegates may feel let down if their issues of interest had not advanced, "but if you see the bigger picture, we have progress."

Some of the problems occurred when countries tried to translate the intentions of the Copenhagen Accord into legal documents. Runge-Metzger, the EU delegate, said China objected to U.S. suggestions on monitoring Chinese actions to contain emissions, saying they went too far in infringing on Chinese sovereignty.

Pershing declined to give details of disputes raised in closed-door negotiations, but he said major developing countries were backing away from commitments to slow the growth of their greenhouse gas emissions, and now say emission controls should apply only to industrial countries.

China, India, Brazil and South Africa were among the major developing nations at the Copenhagen summit. Since then, China has become the world's largest consumer of energy, to add to its earlier position of being the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter.

Another point of contention, Pershing said, was an agreement in Copenhagen for wealthy countries to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries adapt to climate change. Now poor nations say that is not enough.

Williams, the Granada delegate, confirmed the $100 billion figure was likely to be challenged.

"It sounds very large," she said. "For the donor countries it is a lot to ask taxpayers to pay. But you must weigh that against the need" of countries that may be devastated by the effects of global warming.

Williams said one of the reasons for the setback in the talks was the recent failure of the U.S. Congress to pass a climate bill.

Some countries argued for a slowdown in the talks because the lack of legislation cast doubt on Washington's international commitment.

"That has been taken as a signal by some that nothing can occur," Williams said.

Pershing assured the negotiators, in public and in private talks, that Obama remained committed to reducing U.S. carbon emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and he had not given up on passing a sweeping climate and energy bill.

In the meantime, "we have multiple tools at our disposal. We will use all of those tools," he told reporters.