UN talks deadlocked on climate agreement
China leads dispute
LONDON — The prospect of agreeing on a new United Nations climate treaty appears “very bleak” as countries led by China seek to preserve different rules for developed and developing nations, the European Union’s lead negotiator said.
Envoys from more than 190 governments who met in Durban, South Africa, last December agreed to discuss replacing by 2020 the Kyoto Protocol, which sets emission- cutting targets only for developed states. They planned to sign a legal deal in 2015.
“At the moment, it’s very bleak,” the EU’S Artur Runge- Metzger said in Bonn. “The hardliners among the developing countries would want to see a similar firewall also erected in the Durban Platform. Particularly China has been vocal.”
China is concerned developed nations are trying to shirk their current commitments and isn’t trying to create a firewall, Su Wei, the country’s lead envoy, said Thursday in an interview.
Keeping a division between industrialized and developing nations would unpick the Durban Platform, an agreement reached in the South African city after negotiations overran by a record day and a half. The UN talks seek to curtail greenhouse- gas emissions and contain to 2 C the global warming since industrialization.
The Bonn meeting, concluding today, is deadlocked over a debate on who will chair talks and what will be on the agenda, Runge- Metzger and Bangladeshi envoy Quamrul Chowdhury said.
“We have lost the whole two weeks in that agenda fight,” Chowdhury said in an interview. The debate pitted 36 nations including China and India against a larger group that includes the EU, island nations, Africa and the U. S.
“There has been a lot of backtracking” since December and “that has come through in this agenda fight,” Runge- Metzger said. “The decision in Durban has been interpreted in a very different way from what was intended by our ministers.”
Indian envoy Tishya Chatterjee declined to be interviewed on the matter, saying the discussions were “in transition.”
Venezuela, Egypt and the Philippines are also seeking to bring a form of firewall back into the talks, the EU envoy said.
“Everybody knows that the whole debate around differentiation is something that will keep us busy under the Durban Platform until 2015 when the deal is decided,” he said. “When you decide on the agenda, you should not predetermine now the outcome of that differentiation discussion. This is what the hard line developing countries are seeking to do.”
The negotiations are split into three tracks: one to define what nations bound by targets under the current Kyoto Protocol will do when they expire at the end of 2012; another known as the Long- Term Cooperative Action, or LCA track, to define what those without targets will do, including the two biggest emitters, the U. S. and China; and the Durban Platform.
Negotiators in Durban agreed to try to complete the Kyoto and LCA discussions this year, while Canada, Russia and Japan have all said they won’t take new Kyoto commitments after 2012.
China’s objections focus on proposals for a Durban- Platform agenda that includes increased efforts to stem emissions, Su said. Those can’t be discussed under the new- talks track until the ambitions of the Kyoto and LCA strands are decided, he said.
“You cannot do anything in addition to something non- existent,” Su said. China has a “very big concern” some developed nations are trying to move from accepting legally binding commitments to targets that are voluntary.
The discussions have failed to yield any increase in countries’ ambitions for emissions cuts, Chowdhury said.
The EU has proposed allowing governments the flexibility to boost their ambitions for lowering emissions midway through the 2012- 2020 second round of Kyoto pledges, RungeMetzger said. The second round is due to take force when current targets expire.
“We had constructive discussions on the Kyoto Protocol,” RungeMetzger said. “We are in the endgame for deciding the second commitment period.”