Stalled on treaty, climate talks turn to money

Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press Yahoo News 29 Nov 10;

CANCUN, Mexico – Facing another year without a global deal to curb climate change, the world's nations will spend the next two weeks debating how to mobilize money to cope with what's coming — as temperatures climb, ice melts, seas rise and the climate that nurtured man shifts in unpredictable ways.

Beginning Monday, 15,000 government delegates, environmentalists, business leaders, journalists and others will gather in the meeting halls of this steamy Caribbean resort for the annual conference of the 193-nation U.N. climate treaty.

They meet late in a year that may end tied for the hottest globally in 131 years of record-keeping.

As the world warms, the long-running U.N. negotiations have bogged down, unable to find consensus on a legally binding agreement requiring richer countries — and perhaps some poorer — to rein in emissions of carbon dioxide and other industrial, transportation and agricultural gases blamed for global warming.

The Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives and a recent historic shift in emissions — developing countries now produce more greenhouse gases than the old industrial world — all but guarantee the standoff will drag on, at least for another year or two.

"The world is waiting for fruitful negotiations," Mexico's environment secretary, Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, told The Associated Press.

U.N. officials hope for "incremental progress" on side issues, not an overarching deal, in two weeks of negotiation ending with three days of high-level bargaining among the world's environment ministers.

"Governments need to prove the intergovernmental process can deliver and come to an agreement," U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres told reporters outside the beachside Moon Palace Hotel.

Mexican naval vessels offshore joined a giant security cordon ringing this sprawling resort area in a country plagued by drug wars, kidnappings and other crime.

Hoping to revive momentum in the talks, delegates look for decisions leading to better terms for developing nations to obtain patented "green" technology from advanced countries, and toward a system for compensating poorer nations for protecting their forests.

In particular, the developing world wants a significant deal on finance, a decision to establish a green fund to handle billions in aid dollars pledged by developed nations to help poorer countries adapt to a changing climate by, for example, building shoreline protection and upgrading water systems to deal with drought, and to install clean energy sources.

In a nonbinding Copenhagen Accord reached by world leaders at last year's climate summit in the Danish capital, richer nations set a goal of $100 billion annually in such climate finance by 2020.

The fund's operational and leadership details would likely be left for post-Cancun negotiation, as would the key question of how it would be financed. A U.N. panel of international political and financial leaders has presented a menu of revenue-raising options, including levies on international flights and on foreign-exchange transactions.

More immediately, less-developed nations will raise concerns about short-term aid, "fast-start finance" promised in the Copenhagen Accord.

"There's been too little for small island developing states. It's a trickle," said Grenada's U.N. ambassador, Dessima Williams, chair of an alliance of island states.

At Copenhagen, industrial nations as a group pledged $30 billion in quick financing over 2010-2012. Independent analysts find that governments individually since have promised $28 billion for the three years.

Poorer nations complain much of the money may not be new, but funds simply reshuffled from other development programs. At Cancun, they're expected to demand a clearer accounting of fast-start finance.

That "would build confidence in the overall funding process," Robert Orr, a U.N. assistant secretary-general, told reporters in New York. "We need new and additional money to address the problem, not repackaged money."

On the flip side, the developed north will seek a better accounting from China, India and other emerging economies of the south on what they're doing to slow the galloping growth of their greenhouse gas emissions.

Nations north and south pledged under the 2009 accord to voluntarily lower emissions by specific amounts or, in the case of emerging economies, to slow emissions growth. Developing countries also agreed to some international scrutiny of the steps they take, but the U.S. complains China has backtracked on that.

At Cancun, India will submit a compromise monitoring plan it hopes will help satisfy the north on the south's emissions actions, while the south obtains a better accounting on climate finance.

Monitoring is "the crux of all issues at Cancun," India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, told the AP in New Delhi.

The Copenhagen emissions pledges, even if all were met, would take the world only 60 percent of the way toward preventing serious climate change, the U.N. Environment Program reported last week.

Scientists say emissions overall should be cut 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent a dangerous temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) above preindustrial levels. Temperatures already rose 0.7 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) in the 20th century.

The Copenhagen pledges would together reduce emissions by only 18 percent, independent analysis shows. In the U.S. case, emissions would be cut by only 3 percent below 1990 levels.

For 13 years the U.S. has refused to join the rest of the industrialized world in the U.N. climate treaty's Kyoto Protocol, a binding pact to curb fossil-fuel emissions by modest amounts.

The rise of Republicans in Washington, many of whom dismiss powerful scientific evidence of global warming, seems to rule out for now U.S. legislation to cap emissions, essential for drawing others into a binding global deal to succeed Kyoto, expiring in 2012.

American negotiators say Washington will never submit to a new Kyoto-style deal on emissions unless China, India and others take on commitments under a legally binding treaty. The Chinese and Indians counter that they're still too poor to risk stifling economic growth, and the historic responsibility for industrial emissions lies with the north.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, seeks limited emissions reductions via executive action. But the rest of the world, from Europe to island states facing rising seas, is skeptical of the American will to take demanding long-term action.

As the debates drag on, heat-trapping carbon dioxide fills more of the atmosphere. From 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution, the concentration stood at 386.8 ppm in 2009.

If too little is done, temperatures this century may rise by up to 6.4 degrees C (11.5 degrees F), leading to severe climate disruption, say scientists of the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The disruption may already have begun.

Researchers point to this summer's historic heat wave in Russia and nationwide floods in Pakistan as portents of things to come. In the Arctic Ocean, the summer melt of the ice cap has reached unprecedented proportions in recent years, and studies suggest the summer ocean may be ice-free as early as this decade.

Here in Mexico, research points to a drying out and shrinking of farm output in some regions, which might lead to a greater exodus of Mexican migrants to the U.S.

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Associated Press writer Katy Daigle in New Delhi contributed to this report.


Battle lines drawn for Cancun climate conference
Richard Ingham Yahoo News 28 Nov 10;

CANCUN, Mexico (AFP) – Familiar battle lines emerged on Sunday on the eve of a conference to restore the credibility of the UN's talks on climate change after last year's near-disaster in Copenhagen.

Campaigners said the interests of the environment and poor countries would not be sacrificed to help boost the faltering process, while the European Union (EU) called on China, the United States and India to agree to "fair" curbs on their carbon emissions.

Nearly 200 countries will take part in the 12-day conference in the Mexican resort of Cancun.

It aims at healing the wounds of the December 2009 UN summit in Copenhagen, where more than 120 leaders failed spectacularly to deliver the promise of a post-2012 pact to roll back climate change.

Instead of grappling for an overarching treaty, negotiators are being asked to notch up progress on half a dozen issues to help revive faith in the UN climate arena.

The European Union's chief negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, said there was "no guarantee" the talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would follow this new, pragmatic, incremental path.

"But what I can hear very clearly over the last weeks and months (is) that all parties want to make headway here in Cancun," he told a press conference.

"They want to show the world that this process can deliver, it can move the international climate agenda forward."

Runge-Metzger warned: "If we are not able to do that, then we would really have to reconsider if this process is a process that can address this very important question for humanity in this century."

The EU looked to China and the United States -- the world's No. 1 and 2 carbon emitters -- as well as India to make "firm commitments to do their fair share of reducing global emissions," he said.

Activists fighting for tough curbs on greenhouse-gas emissions warned they would fight against a sellout in Cancun, while Bolivia said it suspected a backdoor attempt to enshrine the troubled outcome of Copenhagen in negotiating texts.

It took aim at the so-called Copenhagen Accord, a face-saving compromise document assembled by a couple of dozen leaders in the final hours of last year's summit but never accepted by a UNFCCC plenary session.

"Cancun should not be the Copenhagen Accord, Part II," the Bolivian delegation said in a statement.

The deal sets a goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but does not identify the stepping stones to achieving this -- and the promises to curb greenhouse gases, the toughest issue of all, are only voluntary.

Issues where the Cancun talks could make progress include measures to avert deforestation in tropical countries, which accounts for between 12 and 25 percent of global emissions of greenhouse gases.

Countries could also give the formal go-ahead to a so-called Green Fund serving as the main vehicle for providing up to 100 billion dollars a year in aid to poor countries by 2020.

That money is part of the Copenhagen Accord, along with 30 billion dollars earmarked as "fast-start" help in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Still unclear is how much "fast-start" money is being allotted to help reduce emissions and how much to help poor countries adapt to its impacts.

Poor countries are least to blame for the fossil-fuel pollution that causes global warming, yet are most exposed to the worsening drought, flood, storms and rising sea levels that will result.

"Only three billion dollars has been formally allocated for adaptation," said Saleemul Huq of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

"There is also a danger that some of this could come in the form of loans which would further in debt already poor nations and force them to pay to fix a problem that the developed nations created."

U.N. talks in Mexico to seek modest climate steps
* Cancun talks seek ways to slow global warming; no treaty
* Strains between U.S. and China likely to dominate
* Nations running out of time to replace Kyoto Protocol
Robert Campbell and Gerard Wynn Reuters AlertNet 28 Nov 10;

CANCUN, Mexico, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Almost 200 nations meet in Mexico beginning Monday to try to agree on modest steps to slow climate change, a gathering overshadowed by strains between the United States and China.

The meeting, in a sprawling "Moon Palace" resort by the Caribbean from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10, will seek to get negotiations back on track after last year's acrimonious Copenhagen summit fell short of a binding U.N. treaty to slow global warming.

Delegates gathered on Sunday for talks that will seek agreement on lesser measures such as a "green fund" to channel aid to poor nations, new ways to share clean technologies and to protect tropical forests that soak up carbon as they grow.

"These are important steps but they are only marginal in relation to the problem the world is facing," said Johan Rockstrom, head of the Stockholm Environment Institute.

"We can't celebrate what's happening," he said.

This year is on track to be one of the top two warmest years since records began in the 19th century. The U.N. panel of climate scientists says rising temperatures will mean more floods, droughts, sandstorms and rising sea levels.

The meeting, to be opened by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, will seek to end a deadlock in 2010 between the China and the United States, the top greenhouse gas emitters.

Each insists that the other must do more to curb emissions from burning fossil fuels, a disagreement that has strained relations already hit by disputes over China's big trade surplus and exchange rate controls. And neither is in a position to sign up for binding emissions curbs.

KYOTO

The talks' main goal is to find a successor to the existing 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which obliges all industrialized nations except the United States to cut emissions by an average of at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Kyoto underpins carbon prices.

Tokyo said last week that it would be "meaningless and inappropriate" for Kyoto backers to extend the pact without more action by the top emitters. [ID:nTOE6AO01G] The European Union similarly wants wider action as the price for extending Kyoto.

Washington never signed up, saying Kyoto unfairly omitted binding 2012 targets for developing nations. Beijing and other emerging nations say rich nations have to agree to new goals for 2020 and allow the poor to use more energy to end poverty.

But Kyoto backers are fast running out of time to agree what to do after a first period ends on Dec. 31, 2012. The 2012 climate talks will be in South Africa.

"You can buy one more year to try to figure it out. But that's not a very robust strategy if it's conditional on getting real movement from the U.S. by South Africa," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

U.S. President Barack Obama will be unable to carry out a plan to cut U.S. emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels, roughly 3-4 percent below 1990, after gains by Republican during this month's midterm elections. Members of the party have been suspicious of the scientific claims behind global warming.

A binding global deal to slow climate change has proven far harder to obtain than hoped, involving an overhaul of the world's fossil-fuel-based industries to favor investments in alternatives such as wind, solar, hydro or nuclear power.

And the weak world economy, with euro zone bailouts of Greece and Ireland, has sapped attention from climate change.

Tom Burke, of the E3G think-tank in London, said the world needed to learn from decades of talks on freeing world trade or reducing arms. "What we are dealing with here is a much more complicated negotiation than either," he said.

"You don't want to be too quick to judge a failure, or be too quick to give up," he said.

(Writing by Alister Doyle, editing by Philip Barbara)

UN climate talks seek to avoid hype in Cancun
Reuters AlertNet 28 Nov 10;

Nov 28 (Reuters) - A U.N. climate meeting in the Mexican beach resort of Cancun is taking a low key approach to unblocking U.N. climate talks after last year's much hyped Copenhagen summit ended acrimoniously.

Following are a comparison of the numbers of delegates at the two meetings, and of the costs of the U.N. climate talks in 2010 and 2009. The Cancun gathering of nearly 200 countries runs from Nov. 29-Dec. 10.

The Copenhagen summit was billed as the world's best chance to agree a global climate deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, whose present round ends in 2012, but ended with a non-binding agreement rejected by a clutch of countries on a bad-tempered final day.

The Cancun conference aims to agree on funds and approaches to preserve rainforests and prepare for a hotter world, and to formalise existing targets to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

DELEGATES AND OBSERVERS

* Cancun, 2010: Mexican authorities expect up to 22,000 people, including 9,000 official delegates plus journalists, environmentalists and others

* Copenhagen, 2009: more than 45,000 delegates and observers

COST

* The total cost of the U.N. climate talks, not including bills for many of the delegates, was about $238 million in 2009 and $82 million in 2010, or $320 million for the past two years combined.

* Cancun conference, 2010: cost about 841 million Mexican pesos ($67.33 million) to the Mexican government.

* Copenhagen summit, 2009: the Danish finance ministry said total costs were about 1.2 billion Danish Krone ($213.3 million)

* U.N. meetings: the United Nations climate change agency estimates that the cost of smaller meetings are about $5 million each. It organised five such meetings in 2009 and three in 2010. (Reporting by Gerard Wynn, Editing by Jackie Frank)