THE LATEST round of UN climate talks ended here yesterday with delegates making some progress on the road to Copenhagen, but still at loggerheads over whether the Kyoto Protocol should be allowed to die after its first phase runs out in 2012.
With its name politically poisonous in Washington, even among Democrats, the EU has concluded that only a new treaty that would incorporate many of Kyoto’s “nuts and bolts” has any chance of engaging the US in a global agreement on climate change. By promoting this line in Bangkok, the EU was criticised both by environmentalists and developing countries for having abandoned its leadership role – especially as it had worked so hard to ensure the protocol came into force without the US.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), conceded there was a “great deal of dissatisfaction” among developing countries over what they see as an attempt to “kill” Kyoto while there was “not something better in sight”. But he said the issue of what form any new treaty should take, without first agreeing on its scope, was “like arguing about the colour of the wrapping paper for a present you have yet to buy . . . We need to focus on the substance now . . .”
The European Commission’s lead negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, said the EU wanted “an ambitious, comprehensive, legally-binding agreement” that would include all major emitters – including the US and major developing countries such as China, India and Brazil.
However, chief US negotiator Dr Jonathan Pershing made it clear at his final press conference that the Obama administration was seeking a deal under which countries would set their own targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions – with no penalties if these were not met. “We’re not calling for any particular policy to be adopted by any country. But the major economies need to focus on how to reduce their emissions, as 15 to 20 of them account for 80 per cent of the total. How they do it is a sovereign matter for each country to resolve.”
Despite this gulf between the two sides, especially on the issue of compliance, Michael Zammit Cutajar, the Maltese-born former UN official who chairs one of the main strands in the negotiations, said there would be “no agreement in Copenhagen without the US”. He also warned that even ambitious actions by developed countries to reduce their emissions “cannot solve the problem” of global warming. Major developing countries would also “have to contribute”, he said.
Stanislaus Lumumba, chairman of the G77 group of 130 developing countries, said they were “disappointed and upset at the attempt by developed countries to shift commitments” to them, and he described attempts to ditch Kyoto as “absolutely unacceptable and deplorable”.
Alden Meyer, Washington-based director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that although President Barack Obama “gets the issue” of global warming, action by the US Congress was being hampered by “all-out war” launched by oil and coal interests.
Responding to the Nobel Peace Prize award for Mr Obama, Greenpeace International executive director Gerd Liepold said he hoped it would prompt the US president to “take personal leadership . . . to reverse his country’s current blocking role” in the climate talks.
Delegates representing 180 countries are to reconvene in Barcelona on November 2nd for a final five-day round of preparatory talks to clarify “some very hard issues”, as Mr Zammit Cutajar put it, left unresolved by two weeks of negotiations in Bangkok. These revolve around “who should do what and who should pay”, in the words of Sweden’s Anders Turesson.
Although progress was made in Bangkok, notably in streamlining the negotiating text, Mr de Boer said it was “now urgent” for political leaders to “break this disconnect” over long-held differences and pave the way for a global deal.
The EU delegate who consented to a controversial downgrading of protection for forests, earning a “Fossil of the Day” award from environmntalists, had made a mistake that would be rectified, one of the chief EU negotiators said in Bangkok yesterdayFRI.
Artur Runge-Metzger, climate negotiator for the European Commission said the delegate involved — who he didn’t name — “has been slapped in the face” for what he described as an “unfortunate mishap”. He stressed that the EU had not “changed our position” on forests.