Climate talks made progress today towards a new UN treaty to curb global warming but ended far short of calls by developing nations for the rich to make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Four years of talks to widen the existing Kyoto Protocol have struggled to agree on how to share the cost of efforts to curb greenhouses gas mainly emitted by burning fossil fuels.
The United States and Europe warned in closing remarks today that the private sector would finance the climate fight, not their governments.
"I look back on this as a significant session that has advanced our work in important ways," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference at the talks among 183 nations in Bonn.
He said governments staked out far clearer views after their first review of a draft legal text of the treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December to succeed Kyoto.
But developing countries called for more, despite the global recession.
"We finally managed to have a positive exchange on the numbers" for developed nations, China's climate ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters. "But still we hear repeated statements resisting calls for further meaningful cuts."
China and many developing nations want the rich to cut by at least 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst effects of global warming such as droughts, floods and rising sea levels.
Offers made by developed countries so far work out at cuts of between 8 and 14 per cent below 1990, according to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
The United States and Europe poured cold water on hopes for major public funds, such as the 1 per cent or more of national wealth demanded by many poor nations to help them avoid a model of high-carbon growth dominant since the Industrial Revolution.
"The key issue is not the number," said Jonathan Pershing, head of the US delegation, referring to "marginally" bigger investments to improve efficiency or to install low-carbon instead of polluting coal plants.
"We'd like to change that" view of developing countries that governments would bankroll the fight against climate change, he said, adding that carbon offset markets could play a big role.
The European Union also underscored that private finance would dominate in the climate change fight.
Mr Pershing said progress in Bonn had been "slow", and the European Commission's Artur Runge-Metzger said "enormous effort" was required to get a deal in Copenhagen in December.
The United States expected China to undertake action, such as setting renewable energy targets, but not be legally bound to prove curbs. China and the United States are top emitters. "We have advanced perhaps a couple of miles towards Copenhagen. We still have thousands to go," said Jennifer Morgan of the London-based E3G think-tank. The next meeting will be in Bonn in August.
Outside the talks in a Bonn hotel, protesters brought along two live camels and laid out some sand to illustrate fears of creeping desertification. "We spit on weak targets," one banner said, another said: "Shrinking targets, growing deserts".
The chair of a group looking at new actions to curb emissions by all countries said a draft text had swollen with new ideas from about 50 pages to 200. Big breakthroughs were likely to happen only in Copenhagen, he said.
"This is like the evolutionary process in reverse. The Big Bang comes at the end," said Michael Zammit Cutajar, of Malta.
Reuters