Merkel, Macron to lead climate talks push

US delegation to attend Paris Agreement rules meeting in Bonn

The leaders of France and Germany were set to lead a diplomatic charge Wednesday to reinvigorate UN climate talks clouded by Washington’s rejection of a planet rescue plan backed by the rest of the world.

Despite announcing it would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the US has a delegation in Bonn where rules for executing the pact on winding down Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil and gas are being drawn up.

The US presence is not universally appreciated, especially after White House officials hosted a sideline event Monday, defending continued fossil fuel use.

“A lot of negotiators are not happy with the way the US has been behaving in some of these negotiations,” Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a veteran observer of the climate process, told AFP.

“Things like this fossil fuel initiative... are not making things easier.”

The US, which championed the Paris Agreement under former president Barack Obama, ratified it just two months before Donald Trump – who has described climate change as a “hoax” – was voted into office.

In June, the new president announced America would pull out of the pact.

This week, Syria became the 196th country to formally adopt the hardfought agreement, leaving the United States as the only nation in the UN climate convention to reject it.

For the past nine days, bureaucrats have been haggling over a Paris Agreement “rulebook,” which will specify how countries must calculate and report their contribution to global emissions cuts.

Along with UN chief Antonio Guterres, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were set to seek to inject political impetus into the talks when they kick off the “high-level segment” – a day-and-ahalf of back-to-back speeches.

About 25 heads of state and government are expected to attend, including Fiji’s Frank Bainimarama, the conference president.

“Ministers speaking at the UN summit in Bonn on Wednesday have a big job to do,” said Mohamed Adow of Christian Aid, which represents poor country interests at the talks.

“This meeting is not making progress on some key issues. It almost feels like negotiators have taken this Fiji-led summit and treated it as if they are on holiday in the Pacific.”