Alister Doyle PlanetArk 10 Dec 14;
European Union insistence on a right to challenge nations about their plans for fighting climate change, in the run-up to a United Nations summit in 2015, opened a rift at U.N. climate talks in Lima on Monday.
Washington said a review of national pledges for curbing rising greenhouse gas emissions before the U.N. summit in Paris next December was "not fundamental" and Beijing signaled hostility to the idea of letting other nations challenge its policies.
The dispute has big implications for the deal in Paris, which could either be a patchwork of purely national offers to fight climate change beyond 2020, or one where countries and outside observers including green groups are able to challenge and influence the scope of national pledges.
"There should be a process of assessment. That's absolutely imperative," Miguel Arias Canete, European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, told a news conference.
Under a U.N. timetable, about 190 governments have an informal deadline to submit national plans for limiting rising greenhouse gas emissions before March 31, 2015, to give time for a review before the Paris summit.
The European Union, which announced in October that it plans to cuts its emissions by 40 percent by 2030, said the informal deadline made no sense unless it allowed nations to review each others' plans for averting more heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels.
Last month, the United States said it plans to cut its emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, equivalent to 14 to 16 percent below 1990 levels, and China has promised to cap its soaring emissions by around 2030.
China last Friday demanded that all references to any formal review of emission targets should be deleted. But a new draft text for a U.N. decision in Lima, published on Monday, retained the idea of a formal review, requiring for example that countries answer within four weeks questions about their climate pledges.
The United States took a middle path, saying the important issue was to encourage ambition. "The U.S. is perfectly happy to have a consultative process," said Todd Stern, special climate envoy and head of the U.S. delegation.
"We had a concern from the beginning that we didn't want to scare countries off ... The most important part of this idea is sunshine. You encourage countries to be ambitious because they don't want to look bad," Stern said.
If a country receives criticisms, "it's certainly possible that x, y, z country may modify its contribution in some way. It's not fundamental," he added.
Separately, a scientific study on Monday revised down the likely rate of global warming this century but said it was still severe after promises by the three top emitters to limit emissions.
The Climate Action Tracker, produced by an independent group of scientists, said temperatures were set to rise by about 3 degrees Celsius (5.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times by 2100, the lowest since the tracker was set up to monitor promises made by governments in 2009.
Australia pledges $200 million to Green Climate Fund
Matt Siegel PlanetArk 10 Dec 14;
Australia will contribute A$200 million over four years into a U.N. fund to help poor nations cope with global warming, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Wednesday, despite earlier having said it did not intend to contribute to the fund.
The pledge to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is the latest in a string of stinging policy reversals for former climate-change skeptic Abbott, whose struggling conservative government has hit record low approval ratings.
"I've made various comments some time ago but as we've seen things develop over the last few months I think it's fair and reasonable for the government to make a modest, prudent and proportionate commitment to this climate mitigation fund," he told reporters in Melbourne.
The money for Australia's contribution to the fund will be allocated from its aid budget, Abbott said, and will officially be announced later today by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru.
The GCF is a major part of a plan agreed in 2009 to raise financial flows to help developing nations tackle climate change, from public and private sources, to $100 billion a year by 2020.
It aims to help emerging economies curb their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to changes such as heatwaves, mudslides and rising sea levels, and is seen as vital to unlock a U.N. climate deal meant to be agreed in late 2015 in Paris.
G20 leaders put an uncomfortable spotlight on climate change at last month's leader's summit in Brisbane despite efforts by host Australia to focus more narrowly on economic growth.
Japan pledged $1.5 billion to the fund during the summit and U.S. President Barack Obama pledged up to $3 billion, putting the fund within sight of its $10 billion goal.
In November, the United States and China set goals for curbing climate change, brightening prospects for Paris even though their promises, including Beijing's plan for a undefined peak in greenhouse gas emissions by around 2030, were vague.
The policy reversal follows Abbott's decision on Tuesday to abandon a plan to radically reshape Australia's universal healthcare system by charging patients a fee to see their doctors.
Despite significant accomplishments this year - concluding free trade deals with Japan, South Korea and China, and hosting the G20 leaders summit - the Labor Party opposition has surged ahead of the government by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent in the latest Newspoll released on Nov. 18.
(Editing by Richard Pullin)
