Bangkok Climate Talks Stalling At Halfway Point

Bangkok climate talks stalling at halfway point

BANGKOK: -- Negotiations to finalise an ambitious international climate change deal have not made any progress at the midway point of a two-week meeting in Bangkok.

"Two months before Copenhagen and we are not making any progress in Bangkok," Chinese ambassador Yu Qingtai, who is special representative to the UN's climate change talks said yesterday.

"The fundamental reason is the lack of political will from the 36 Annex I countries to make progress," he added.

[Annex 1 countries include most OECD member states, central and eastern Europe countries and the Commonwealth of Independent States ]

The Bangkok talks are among five major negotiating sessions under a UN convention leading up to the climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, for which a negotiating text is being prepared.

The sessions began in 2007 when countries agreed to launch a two-year negotiating process, to culminate in an ambitious international climate change pact at the end of 2009.

The eventual purpose of the Copenhagen conference is to avoid catastrophic climate change and to help the most vulnerable countries adapt to the changing environments.

The world has only a very narrow window of opportunity to undertake the first dramatic shift towards a low-carbon society and to prevent the worst scenarios as foreseen by scientists from coming true.

The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this year should be historically momentous. The existing legally binding agreement which governs carbon emissions - the Kyoto Protocol - expires in 2012.

In order to take mankind into a sustainable and equitable future, an ambitious new deal needs to be agreed on so that national governments have time to prepare for implementation beyond 2012.

The Copenhagen agreement must focus on four key issues: The first is clarity on the mid-term emission reduction targets that industrialised countries will commit to.

Second, there must be clarity on the actions that developing countries could undertake to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. Third, it must define stable and predictable financing to help the developing world reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the inevitable effects of climate.

And finally, it must identify institutions that will allow technology and finance to be deployed in a way that treats developing countries as equal partners in the decision-making process.

"We see here a pattern. Every time when we have an agreement and every time when we have an instrument to agree on, we have seen an effort to move away from the agreement.[And] that is a very worrying pattern," Yu said.

Negotiators from both developed and developing countries are now playing the blame game. One side puts forward a new rule, new format and new mandate - and expects the other side to agree and make it a precondition for progress.

"That is not a fair way of conducting a negotiation," he said.

In a bid to reach a deal, Yu said political will is critical and necessary to shoulder commitments under the convention and the protocol.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that China's carbon dioxide emissions would rise by about 2.5 to 5 per cent each year, between 2004 and 2010.

On the other hand, the Group of 77 and China expressed concern about the concentration on market mechanisms at the cost of non-market based approaches, and opposed a market-centred approach to mitigation.

European Commission representative, Artur Runge-Metzer asked developed countries not to blame the US and EU for murdering the Kytoto Protocol, saying the world should improve, develop and strengthen the protocol.

"We want legal and single instruments for Copenhagen including Kyoto Protocol system. We want the content of Kyoto Protocol to be alive," he said.

-- The Nation 2009-10-06