Climate progress possible in Cancun despite problems: UN

Yahoo News 10 Nov 10;

PARIS (AFP) – World climate talks resuming in Mexico shortly could recover lost momentum by crafting a deal on four big issues, including the outlines of a fund to muster hundreds of billions of dollars in aid, the UN climate chief said on Wednesday.

"Everything I see tells me that there is a deal to be done," said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The meeting to take place in the resort city of Cancun from November 29 to December 10 is the annual conference of the 194 parties to the UNFCCC.

It caps a miserable year for the United Nations' forum on climate change, stymied by a near-fiasco at last December's Copenhagen summit where world leaders had been expected to approve a post-2012 pact and by belt-tightening in many countries.

The future treaty will, at best, be completed only at the end of 2011, say sources at the negotiations.

Figueres, however, said Cancun could unlock "a mutually agreeable deal to get action started" in four important areas.

These were: measures to cope with climate change, the transfer of clean technology from rich economies to poorer countries, curbing carbon emissions from forest loss and creating a new fund for long-term climate financing.

Progress in Cancun would be a springboard for "bigger and better agreements every year," she argued, adding though that compromise was essential.

"I'm not going to underestimate the political gaps that still need to be bridged," she said.

Figueres pointed to three major areas of discord: burden-sharing on reducing carbon emissions that drive climate change; the future of the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol after pledges expire at the end of 2012; and how to count and monitor national pledges of action.

Even so, a spirit of pragmatism now infused talks after the Copenhagen setback, she told reporters in a teleconference from Bonn.

"Countries have actually learned for themselves... that there is no such thing as one all-encompassing solution," Figueres said.

"They also seem to be setting out to develop the building blocks upon which they can build realistic action on the ground, because countries really need results on the ground right now. And I don't see them veering away from that in any sudden way."

The climate fund would be the biggest star in a constellation of institutions to help finance emissions reductions or shore up defences against worsening drought, floods and rising seas.

In Copenhagen, rich countries set the goal of channelling up to 100 billion dollars a year in climate aid from all sources by 2020. They also promised a total of 30 billion in "fast-start" aid from 2010 to 2012.

Figueres said debate over the still-unnamed fund was whether the entity should be formally launched in Cancun and then its architecture agreed, or the other way round.

Even so, "there is consensus about the need to establish a fund, there is also consensus about the need to have a trustee and to have a government structure around the fund," she said.

"I am confident that the differences that are still on the table about the fund can be ironed out."

Mexico urges India, China to support Cancun talks
Yahoo News 10 Nov 10;

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Mexico urged China and India and the world's other major greenhouse gas emitters to support UN-backed talks on climate change that it will host later this month in the resort city of Cancun.

The appeal came after officials from 35 countries and regional groupings met in New Delhi ahead of the year-end UN talks to try to build on an accord hammered out at marathon talks in Copenhagen widely regarded as a flop.

"We cannot be responsible for the final results as the talks are a UN event," Mexico's Environment Secretary Juan Elvira Quesada told reporters after the two-day meeting in the Indian capital.

"But we hope to have the support of India and China for a balanced outcome to the talks," Quesada said.

Last December's conference in Copenhagen fell short of delivering the binding treaty that nearly all nations say is needed to spare the planet from the ravages of global warming.

Cancun will host negotiators from November 29 to December 10 who are set to discuss a binding agreement on reducing carbon dioxide emissions that will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in December 2012.

However, all the major players appear to have given up on the goal of a treaty by year's end that would establish a plan to reduce emissions enough to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the target of the Copenhagen Accord.

One of the major hurdles is a disagreement between the United States and China -- the world's two top greenhouse gas emitters -- on slashing carbon dioxide emissions.

Developing nations including India have resisted a legally binding treaty, arguing that wealthy nations bear primary responsibility for climate change.

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh assured support but called for "practical" methods to sort out the thorny issue of intellectual property rights linked to sharing climate-saving technologies.

"We are not the deal-busters and we want to be part of the solution at Cancun," Ramesh said.

"In Cancun we need a decision on what the technology mechanism would look like, how will it be governed and how it is going to be financed," he said.

Mexico has said it is striving to bring countries which felt excluded from the Copenhagen climate talks into the negotiations for this year's summit.

Climate Talks Seek Complex, Interlocked Deal: U.N.
Alister Doyle PlanetArk 11 Nov 10;

U.N. climate talks starting in Mexico this month will seek a complex set of interlocking deals to slow global warming but will fall well short of a new treaty, the U.N.'s climate chief said on Wednesday.

Christiana Figueres said that governments had lowered their sights for the November 29-December 10 talks in Cancun, Mexico, after the Copenhagen summit in December 2009 failed to reach a sweeping new U.N. pact to slow climate change.

Even so, almost 200 nations faced a balancing act in Cancun, where governments were aiming for a less ambitious but still complex package deal.

"This is a complex process and it's going to be a slow process," she said of efforts to work out a new accord to slow increasing greenhouse gas emissions that threaten more floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.

In Cancun, governments will seek to agree measures including a new "Green Fund" to handle long-term aid, actions to help developing nations adapt to climate change, a new mechanism to share clean technologies and ways to protect tropical forests.

"I don't hear any party saying that there would be a possibility to only to pick out some of the components and move those forward," she told a telephone news conference. "What I hear from the parties is the need for a balanced package."

"A Cancun deal isn't going to solve the whole problem," said Figueres, a Costa Rican who heads the Bonn-based U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.

COPENHAGEN

She said that she was confident a deal could be done in Cancun, given compromise by all sides. She did not spell out the risks of the talks collapsing if one element failed.

The Copenhagen summit fell short of a treaty partly because countries insisted that nothing could be agreed until everything was agreed -- including deep cuts in emissions by developed nations that have been toned down for 2010.

Figueres also said that U.S. President Barack Obama should stick to a plan to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 even though he has lost the chance of legislating cuts after Republican gains in mid-term elections.

"The world certainly expects the United States to live up to that pledge," she said. She said Obama had the option of regulating cuts via the Environmental Protection Agency.

She said that pledges by all nations were too weak to meet a goal set in a non-binding Copenhagen Accord to limit a rise in world temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F). Temperatures have already risen 0.7 C over pre-industrial times.

She said that developed nations in Cancun had to do more to firm up their pledges for greenhouse gas cuts until 2020 -- many such as the European Union or Australia have promised ranges for cuts that depend on the ambition of others.

Among disputes before Cancun are on how to set up a "Green Fund," meant to channel funds to developing nations to help them cope with climate change and meant to reach $100 billion a year from 2020.

Figueres said there were differences over whether it was best to take a "political decision" in Cancun to set up the fund and then design how it would work, or to design the fund first.

The United States insisted at preparatory talks in Mexico last week that the design had to come first -- a view at odds with many other nations, diplomats said.

"I am confident that the differences that are still on the table can be ironed out," Figueres said of the Green Fund.

India: Cancun Will Test Climate Talks' Credibility
Matthias Williams PlanetArt 11 Nov 10;

U.N. climate talks in Cancun will be the last chance for nations to agree on thorny issues such as technology transfers and will test the dialogue's credibility, India's environment minister said on Wednesday.

Nations must reach a consensus on sharing green technology between rich and developing countries and resist the temptation to cling to old positions "like a mantra," Jairam Ramesh told a news conference after a two-day climate meeting in New Delhi.

Nations were so divided on intellectual property rights (IPR) for costly technology that some saw it as an essential ingredient of a deal, while others refused to talk about it, he said.

"We have to find a middle path because these two extreme positions have held back an agreement for too long, and frankly we are running out of time," Ramesh said.

"Cancun is the last chance. The credibility of the entire climate change negotiating system is at stake. If you do not get a set of operational and meaningful decisions at Cancun, everybody is going to get sick and tired of us."

Prospects for the November 29-December 10 climate change talks in the Mexican resort of Cancun have dimmed in recent months because of near-deadlock in the 194-nation negotiations over how to share the burden in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Ramesh had earlier hosted a climate meeting in the Indian capital, drawing on delegates from 35 countries including China, the United States, Mexico and the European Union, as well as a host of smaller developing countries.

The focus of the meeting was to push agreement for a mechanism to develop and transfer technology to tackle climate change. The meeting pushed for such a mechanism to be a "key deliverable" at Cancun, a statement said.

Reaching an agreement in Cancun to extend the Kyoto Protocol was a make-or-break issue for developing countries and would determine the outcome of any future discussions, Ramesh said.

Some nations want the Kyoto Protocol extended into a second period, others such as Japan and the United States, which never ratified Kyoto, want a new treaty. Many developing nations back an extension to Kyoto because it enshrines wording that allows poorer nations to take voluntary steps to curb emissions.

Last year's U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen failed in its goal of working out a legally binding treaty.

"We must have a practical approach to solve the problems in front of us and not repeat positions like a mantra," Ramesh said.

(Editing by C.J. Kuncheria)