NEGOTIATIONS:NEGOTIATIONS GOT back on track at the UN climate summit yesterday, with groups of ministers and delegates from 193 countries meeting behind closed doors late into the night in an effort to resolve outstanding differences.
A senior Brazilian delegate said last night that “there is a lot happening”, and he anticipated that ministers and other negotiators would be “working very late” in an effort to whittle down the amount of disputed text still in square brackets.
The deadlock stalling the talks was lifted earlier yesterday when Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen – now president of the conference – announced the formation of two “contact groups” to deal with two official texts that emerged from the talks.
One of these texts is looking at further commitments by developed countries under the Kyoto Protocol from 2013 onwards, while the other deals with everything relating to those countries – including the US and China – which remain outside the remit of Kyoto.
“Hold tight and mind the doors, the cable car is moving again,” said a delighted Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
“We now have clarity on the process. We have clarity on the documents that will be the basis of the work.”
He was referring, in particular, to the fact that negotiations were proceeding on the basis of official texts generated during the past two weeks rather than any extraneous texts in circulation. The last thing delegates needed was “texts raining down from the sky”, he said.
But Mr de Boer welcomed initiatives being taken by the advance guard of world leaders already in Copenhagen who were “working on ideas” – such as British prime minister Gordon Brown, who was holding an endless round of meetings with other countries, notably Mexico.
In his speech at the plenary session, Mr Brown said his talks this week “convinced me that while the challenges are difficult there is no insurmountable wall of division to reaching agreement now”, with the aim of limiting the rise in global temperature to two degrees.
But Algerian envoy Kemal Djemouai, chair of the 53-strong African Group, said “no deal is better than to have a bad deal, particularly for Africa. Those who are forcing the process, who are trying to jeopardise what we are doing, I am not sure humanity will forgive them . . .”
He expressed fears that developed countries would not commit themselves to cut carbon emissions under any new treaty that might replace Kyoto.
“We are taking huge risks. No one can assure us when any new agreement will enter into force. It could be 10 years.”
Stanislaus Lumumba, who is Sudanese chair of the G77 group of 134 developing countries, said that it was “morally and politically irresponsible” for developed countries to “pick targets to suit themselves”, because this would involve a “gross violation” of human rights in Africa.
The tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu also emphasised its strong view that the emission targets should result in a temperature rise of no more than 1.5 degrees, and not the two degrees that EU member states and other developed countries are quite prepared to settle for.
Tuvalu’s prime minister, Apisai Ielemia, expressed his frustration at countries which are trying to break the solidarity of small island states like his by offering them adaptation funds in return for less rigid demands on the issue of a maximum temperature goal.
Speaking at the high-level segment of the conference, Brazilian president Luiz Lula da Silva said his country was already spending $16 billion (€10.8 billion) a year on climate change mitigation and adaptation, and would continue to do so until 2020.
He said Brazil was more than willing to play its part in finding an agreement in Copenhagen before the climate summit concludes. “Now is the time to act. The verdict of history will not well judge those who have failed in their responsibility,” he declared.
China said it was willing to provide details about its actions to control carbon emissions, moving to meet a key US demand for verification of its promises to fight global warming – providing that it’s “not intrusive [and] does not infringe on China’s sovereignty”.
Meanwhile, an internal UN document leaked to the press yesterday suggested that the pledges so far given by all nations for curbing greenhouse gases would mean a world temperature rise of three degrees, above many estimates of “dangerous” climate change.
The note by the UN Climate Change Secretariat said that present pledges were not enough, and that they exceeded safer emissions limits by about 1.9-4.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases a year by 2020. – (Additional reporting: Reuters)