Climate talks struggle as China, U.S. face off

* U.S. wants China, India to accept firmer emissions goals
* China says current treaty stays
* U.S. negotiator says climate talks need to show they work
* Rich and emerging nations differ over emissions checks
Chris Buckley Reuters AlertNet 6 Oct 10;

TIANJIN, China, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The United States and EU said on Wednesday that U.N. climate talks were making less progress than hoped due to rifts over rising economies' emission goals, while China pushed back and put the onus on rich nations.

Negotiators from 177 governments are meeting this week in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, trying to agree on the shape of the successor to the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key U.N. treaty on fighting global warming, which expires in 2012.

Midway through the talks, however, initial hopes that they can deliver progress on trust-building goals have become snared in procedural skirmishing that boils down to feuding over how far rich and emerging nations should curb their greenhouse gas emissions and how they should check on each other's efforts.

Negotiators said the contention could damage prospects for negotiations late this year in Cancun, Mexico, which are intended to lay the foundations for a new, legally-binding climate pact.

"There is less agreement than one might have hoped to find at this stage," said Jonathan Pershing, the United States' lead U.S. negotiator in Tianjin.

"It's going to require a lot of work to get to some significant outcome by the end of this week, which then leads us into a significant outcome in Cancun," he told reporters.

Fraught climate negotiations last year failed to agree on a binding treaty and climaxed in a bitter meeting in Copenhagen, which produced a vague and non-binding accord that later recorded the emissions pledges of participant countries.

Fearing deadlock in efforts to reach a binding pact by late next year, governments have been pushing in Tianjin for broad agreement on less contentious objectives: a fund for climate action, a scheme to protect carbon-absorbing rainforests, and policies to share clean energy technology with poorer nations.

Pershing said he still hoped that the makings of a deal can come together at Cancun, and warned that failure in Mexico could damage the whole U.N. climate negotiations.

Big developing nations -- such as China, India and Brazil -- should take on firmer emissions reduction obligations as part of a new treaty that would abandon a simple division between rich and developing countries, said Pershing.

The current Kyoto Protocol only commits nearly 40 industrialised nations to meet binding targets.

A European Union official at the Tianjin talks said they had made headway on some issues, but also voiced worry for Cancun.

"We are very concerned with the procedural blockages and we find it simply inexplicable that they keep on popping up on the issues that are of vital importance for the final deal," Jurgen Lefevere of the European Commission climate action office told reporters. "There is still hope," he added later.

CHINA PUSHES BACK

China is the world's top greenhouse gas emitter from human activity, with the United States second.

China and India have pledged emissions reduction steps under the Copenhagen accord, but want Kyoto to be extended to lock in commitments by rich countries and to ensure their own emissions are not subject to binding international caps.

China's greenhouse gas emissions will keep rising for years yet, but its top climate change negotiator Xie Zhenhua said it was unfair to press the country on when its emissions would peak while rich nations failed to slash theirs.

He also told reporters at the talks that his government would not budge from demanding the Kyoto Protocol be the basis of any new climate deal. The United States is not a party to the Protocol and would have to come under a separate deal.

"When the world's emissions peak depends on developed countries leading with dramatic cuts in their emissions, making space for developing countries," said Xie.

China and other emerging nations will accept international "consultation and analysis" of their emissions, but not anything equal to the standards expected of rich economies, said Xie. (Editing by Sugita Katyal)

China says unreasonable to set CO2 peak yet
Reuters AlertNet 6 Oct 10;

TIANJIN, China, Oct 6 (Reuters) - China's top climate negotiator on Wednesday said it was unreasonable to expect his country to set a peak for its greenhouse gas emissions while rich economies fail cut theirs.

Xie Zhenhua also said China would not budge from its commitment to making the Kyoto Protocol -- the current climate change pact that does not set mandatory caps on poorer countries' emissions -- the basis of any new climate deal.

"A rise in greenhouse gases is necessary and, it should be said, reasonable," he said of China and other developing countries. "The key is that we must adopt effective measures to control the rate of growth, so it won't be unfettered," he told reporters at climate talks in the north Chinese city of Tianjin.

China's greenhouse gas emissions are the largest of any nation. Burning fossil fuels and deforestation are blamed for heating up the planet. (Editing by David Fogarty)

U.S. says climate talks fail to make headway
* U.S. envoy voices fears over direction of climate talks
* Says Kyoto pact's rich-poor divide "historical artefact"
* Other delegates express frustration over direction of talks
Chris Buckley Reuters AlertNet 6 Oct 10;

TIANJIN, China, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The United States said on Wednesday U.N. climate talks were making less progress than hoped because of a rift over poorer nations' emission goals, and that other avenues might be needed to tackle climate change.

Negotiators from 177 governments are meeting this week in the north Chinese city of Tianjin trying to agree on the shape of the successor to the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key U.N. treaty on fighting global warming, which expires in 2012.

"There is less agreement than one might have hoped to find at this stage," said Jonathan Pershing, the United States Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change and lead U.S. negotiator in Tianjin.

"It's going to require a lot of work to get to some significant outcome by the end of this week, which then leads us into a significant outcome in Cancun," he told reporters, referring to the main round of talks at the end of the year in Mexico.

Fraught climate negotiations last year failed to agree on a binding treaty and climaxed in a bitter meeting in Copenhagen, which produced a non-binding accord that later recorded the emissions pledges of participant countries.

More than 110 nations that backed the accord also agreed to limit warming to below two degrees Celsius but the United Nations says the pledges aren't tough enough to meet this goal.

Developing nations say wealthy countries need to do more because they've emitted the bulk of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Fearing deadlock, the United Nations and Mexico have been pushing for agreement on less contentious issues such as a scheme to protect carbon-absorbing rainforests, a deal to share clean energy technology with poorer nations and to help them adapt to the impacts of climate change.

But Pershing repeated the U.S. stance on wanting a full package to be agreed.

"The consequences of not having an agreement coming out of Cancun are things that we have to worry about," he said. "It doesn't mean that things may not happen; it may mean that we don't use this process exclusively as the way to move forward."

Underscoring the lack of trust between rich and poorer nations, he pointed to the need for big developing nations such as China, India and Brazil to commit to legally binding emissions reduction obligations as part of a new treaty.

The Kyoto Protocol only commits nearly 40 industrialised nations to meet binding targets in the pact's first phase till 2012.

China is the world's top greenhouse gas emitter after the United States, India is number 3. Both, which have pledged a range of emissions reduction steps under the Copenhagen accord, want Kyoto to be extended into a second period to make sure rich nations don't wriggle out of taking climate action.

Pershing said poorer nations' pledges under the accord must be internationally verifiable, something that was agreed in the final hours of last year's turbulent climate talks in Denmark.

Many negotiators at the Tianjin meeting echoed frustration at the slow pace, while some said that was an inevitable part of such a complex discussion.

"Things are going very slowly," said a delegate from a large African country, who spoke on condition he was not identified. "It's like we're going round and round in a whirlpool."

Thilmeeza Hussain, an official from the Maldives at the talks, said smaller, vulnerable countries worried that big emitters could use shifting away from the Kyoto Protocol to weaken their emissions-cutting commitments.

"If it's a two-track process, how can we create a legally binding treaty so that they don't jump ship?" she told Reuters. (Writing by David Fogarty)