Cancún failure would make climate talks 'irrelevant', EU negotiator warns

Nations must substantially narrow their differences ahead of crunch summit in Mexico later this year, Artur Runge-Metzger tells delegates at China climate talks
Jonathan Watts guardian.co.uk 4 Oct 10;

International climate talks are at risk of becoming irrelevant if countries fail to substantially narrow their differences before the end of this year, a senior European diplomat warned today.

The grim prognosis by Artur Runge-Metzger, director of the climate policy division in the European commission, came at the opening of a six-day conference in China aimed at refining possible areas of agreement before crunch UN talks in Cancún in November-December.

"If Cancún does not produce a solid outcome that takes the fight against climate change forward, then I think it risks becoming irrelevant in the eyes of the world," Runge-Metzger told reporters. "We meet in these wonderful places, travel miles to come here. If this process is not effective, then people will say, 'If you can't come to agreement, then why should we bother supporting you?' "

His comments were echoed by other senior negotiators in the Chinese coastal city of Tianjin, where 3,100 negotiators, administrators, journalists and non-governmental climate activists are trying to restore credibility, trust and momentum lost after the disappointment of the Copenhagen climate change summit last year.

In the opening plenary, the UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres told participants they must "accelerate the search for common ground" so Cancún can make progress toward securing a global treaty to tackle global warming. "As governments, you can continue to stand still or move forward. Now is the time to make that choice."

The conference looks set to be a six-day reality check. Expectations among the delegates are considerably lower than they were last year. Nobody predicts a comprehensive, binding deal in Mexico, but some expressed hopes for progress on the protection of forests and the transfer of finance and technology to help developing countries adapt to climate change.

The top Chinese negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, said there was also a possibility of advances on the vexed issued of transparency – how to monitor, report and verify each nation's emissions to ensure they are honouring their pledges. This question of trust and accounting has been a key difference between the United States and China.

"I don't think this will be a major obstacle," said Xie, who said China was trying to move the process along by hosting its first UN climate talks. "We hope our efforts here will lay a sold foundation for the Cancún conference at the end of the year."

The opening day formalities saw none of the histrionics and posturing that marked much of the Copenhagen conference. It is a lower-level gathering, but observers said the mood music was positive.

"It was good, I was mildly surprised," said Kelly Dent of Oxfam. "At the risk of sounding like an optimist, what I saw today was a willingness to sit down and start working."

Climate activists warned, however, that the real test would come later in the week as participants try to trim down the 70-odd pages of the negotiating text and the 1,630 brackets that mark disputed terms and targets.

They are looking for substantive progress on financing. At Copenhagen, rich countries promised to provide $30bn (£19bn) over three years in climate funding to poor nations, increasing to a total of $100bn (£63bn) annually by 2020. But details about where this money will come from and how it will be allocated remain sketchy.

While progress will be limited – if it comes at all this week – Mexico wants to continue work in small groups all the way to Cancún – a proposal supported by China.

"It's very different from Copenhagen. That was a sobering experience that many people don't want to repeat," said Barbara Finamore, China programme director for the US-based Natural Resources Defence Council. "There is a real risk that we will lose momentum if we don't move forward. That is why people have come here to roll up their sleeves and get to work."

Delegates told to ID achievable goals on climate
Tini Tran, Associated Press Yahoo News 4 Oct 10;

TIANJIN, China – The U.N. climate chief urged countries Monday to search faster for common ground on battling climate change so that a year-end meeting in Mexico can produce results in that fight.

Christiana Figueres told 3,000 delegates in China — the last negotiations before Cancun — that countries must identify achievable goals ahead of December's conference so progress can be made toward a global climate treaty.

"As governments, you can continue to stand still or move forward. Now is the time to make that choice," she told delegates in the northern port of Tianjin.

"If you want a tangible outcome in December, now is the time to clarify what could constitute an achievable and politically balanced package for Cancun, and what could be subject to further work after Cancun," she said.

With a binding global deal largely out of reach for this year, negotiators in Tianjin will focus on smaller initiatives that can lay the foundation for a legal framework that could be approved later, possibly in South Africa in 2011.

The scaled-down ambitions are largely due to the collapse of climate talks in Copenhagen last year, when political leaders failed to produce a global and legally binding treaty on curbing the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Instead, nations agreed to a nonbinding political declaration on fighting climate change.

Expectations still are small because countries remain deadlocked over the same issues. Distrust has only deepened between industrialized and developing countries over how to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

As the host, China will seek to reduce those differences, said State Counselor Dai Bingguo, the country's top foreign policy official, who urged countries to renew efforts in order to "hammer out a binding agreement at an early date."

Since a single climate package deal is unlikely, the focus has turned to finding areas of agreement on essential components, including financing and transfer of clean technology and ways of reducing deforestation.

Ultimately, if talks in Cancun fail to produce concrete results, the entire U.N. process could be in jeopardy, said Artur Runge-Metzger, a negotiator with the European Commission.

"If Cancun does not produce a solid outcome ... then I think it risks becoming irrelevant in the eyes of the rest of the world," he said. "Decision-making will go to some other forum."

Much of what needs to happen in Tianjin is the less tangible task of restoring trust and some momentum in order to "set the stage for what's realistically possible in Cancun," said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council.

Two of the key pieces will be financing and transparency, he said. At Copenhagen, rich countries had pledged to give $30 billion over three years in climate funding to poor nations, rising to a total of $100 billion dollars annually by 2020, but little money has materialized.

"It's critical that countries move on really delivering the 'prompt-start' funding and show those commitments are real. We have a long history of developed countries promising a lot of money and not committing, so it's a chance for developed countries to prove this time is different," he said.

With China playing host to the climate talks for the first time, it has the opportunity to highlight its own commitment to clean energy, said Deborah Seligsohn, a Beijing-based adviser with the World Resources Institute.

Last year, China pledged it would cut its carbon intensity — emissions per unit of GDP — by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from the 2005 level. Nationwide efforts have also been made to reach the goal of improving energy efficiency by 20 percent from 2005 to 2010.

"They're serious and they chose something that's not easy," she said. "China has redoubled domestic efforts since Copenhagen. I don't think anyone can doubt that. China wants people to look at what they're doing on the ground. They'll use this as an opportunity to do that."


Climate Chief Urges Nations To Show Deal Can Be Done
Chris Buckley PlanetArk 5 Oct 10;

The U.N. climate change chief urged governments on Monday to make real steps toward a new treaty to fight global warming or risk throwing negotiations into doubt.

Negotiators are meeting in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin to try reach agreement on what should follow the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key treaty on climate change, which expires in 2012.

The fraught U.N. talks have been hobbled by lack of trust between rich and poor nations over climate funds, demand for more transparency over emissions cut pledges and anger over the size of cuts offered by rich nations.

Delaying agreement would leave less time for the world to figure out how to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and would add to uncertainties weighing on companies unsure where climate policy and carbon markets are headed after 2012.

"Now is the time to accelerate the search for common ground," Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told hundreds of delegates from some 177 countries at the opening session of the Tianjin talks, which last until Saturday.

"A concrete outcome in Cancun is crucially needed to restore the faith and ability of parties to take the process forward, to prevent multilateralism from being perceived as a never-ending road," she said in an opening speech at the meeting.

The talks are the last major round before the year's main climate meeting in the Mexican resort of Cancun from November 29.

Negotiators from nearly 200 governments failed to agree last year on a new legally binding climate pact. A meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009 ended in bitter sniping between rich and developing countries, and produced a non-binding accord that left many key issues unsettled.

Governments are struggling to overcome lingering distrust and turn sprawling draft treaties dotted with caveats into a binding agreement, possibly by late 2011.

"This week is to some extent going to be an indicator of how far forward we can go," the U.S. negotiator at the Tianjin talks, Jonathan Pershing, told Reuters.

"It now looks like the differences are quite large, but there's some hope of achieving consensus on some issues," the chief Chinese climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, told reporters.

DROUGHTS AND FLOODS

Recent devastating floods in Pakistan and severe drought in Russia are the kind of severe weather that rising temperatures are likely to magnify if countries fail to make dramatic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, said Wendel Trio, the climate policy coordinator for Greenpeace.

Figueres told Reuters in a separate interview that she hoped the Tianjin talks could agree on important specifics of a future pact, including how to manage adaptation funds and green technology to help poorer countries, and a program to support carbon-absorbing forests in Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere.

"I think there's a pretty good chance that the governments will agree on the creation of the (climate) fund," she said.

Governments have said the fund could disperse up to $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with global warming. But negotiators have been wrestling over how to manage the money and the fund's design.

Developing countries want a more direct say, while the United States and other countries that would provide the funding want more vetting.

"When you're thinking about that scale of finance...we want to think about people who have expertise," said Pershing, the U.S. negotiator. "There's clearly a need to bring in guidance."

He said that could come from ensuring countries' finance ministries and other economic agencies help oversee spending.

Even if the negotiations make progress, the current pledges of governments to curb greenhouse gas emissions will not be enough to avoid pushing the world into dangerous global warming, roughly defined as a rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above average pre-industrial temperatures, said Figueres.

Governments should nonetheless focus on securing formal pledges of the emissions cuts already made, "fully realizing it is a first, necessary but insufficient step," she said.

(Editing by David Fogarty)

UN climate chief urges Chinese flexibility
Dan Martin Mon Yahoo News 4 Oct 10;

TIANJIN, China (AFP) – China should show more flexibility in global negotiations on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, the UN climate chief said on Monday, although she praised the Asian nation for helping lead the talks.

"It is absolutely indispensable that China show leadership, accompanied by all other countries, to be flexible in order to be able to reach the compromises that are necessary before Cancun," Christiana Figueres said.

The head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change spoke on the opening day of talks hosted by China that are aimed at paving the way for agreements at a UN climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, starting on November 29.

The six days of talks in the northern port city of Tianjin are part of long-running efforts through the United Nations to secure a post-2012 treaty to limit global warming and avoid potential environmental catastrophes.

China is now the world's largest source of greenhouse gases and its emissions continue to increase as its economy expands at near double-digit pace.

It pledged last year to slow the growth in those emissions by reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by 40-45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

That is essentially a vow of greater energy efficiency that would likely, however, see emissions continue to increase.

China's top climate change official Xie Zhenhua appeared to reject suggestions that Beijing be more flexible on key issues such as emissions cuts and allowing outside verification of Chinese progress toward its targets.

"We must note that it (verification)... must not interfere with a developing country's sovereignty," Xie said.

China has long opposed any outside verification of its green progress in the name of national sovereignty.

It has also resisted pressure to commit to emissions reduction targets through the UN, arguing that doing so would hurt its economic development.

Dai Bingguo, China's top foreign policy official, called for a spirit of cooperation but also indicated China would hold firm on some of the key disputes with the United States and other developed countries.

In a speech to the delegates, Dai reiterated China's stance that developed nations should take the lead in emission cuts and help developing countries deal with the impact of climate change.

Despite urging China to show more flexibility, Figueres called the country's efficiency goal an "impressive target" and praised Beijing for its "extraordinary leadership" in volunteering to host the Tianjin gathering.

"We are very appreciative of their efforts and we take it as a very symbolic act from China in support of the intergovernmental process," she said.

Little progress in the climate change negotiations has been made since world leaders failed to broker a binding deal in Copenhagen last year.

After being blamed by many in the developed world for derailing the Copenhagen talks, China insisted it wanted to foster a spirit of cooperation at this week's conference.

"As the host country, China is hoping that we can contribute positively to advancing the climate change negotiation process," Xie said.