China digs in on rich-poor climate pact divide

Date added: 8 October, 2010

8.10.2010 (Reuters – Climate Arkk)

Country: CHINA

Author: Chris Buckle

China said on Thursday it will not bow to pressure to rethink a key climate change
treaty and was preparing to cope with a “gap” in the pact after 2012 if rich nations
fail to add new greenhouse gas goals in time.

Envoys from 177 governments are holding week-long talks in the northern Chinese
city of Tianjin on the shape of a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N.’s
main weapon in the fight against climate change.

Kyoto’s first phase, which binds about 40 rich nations to meet emissions targets,
expires in 2012 and there’s no clarity on what happens after that, worrying investors
in clean-energy projects who want long-term certainty on climate policies and
financing.

“Of course, now we’re discussing the legal issues if it happens,” said Su Wei,
a senior Chinese climate change negotiator, referring to a possible gap in Kyoto.

“I think that from a practical angle that is necessary, but it seems a bit early,
prejudging the negotiations,” he added.

The United Nations has been stepping up efforts to convince countries to avoid
a gap after 2012 and to ensure certainty for the U.N.’s $2.7 billion carbon market
that is part of Kyoto.

But the bitter negotiations are largely stalled over lack of trust between rich
and poor nations, particularly over the issue of how to share the burden in emissions
cuts to avoid dangerous climate change, which scientists say could trigger more
extreme weather, crop failures and much higher sea levels.

Nearly all wealthy countries have signed up to legally binding emissions goals
under Kyoto, with the big exception of the United States, which refused to become
a party.

Developing nations, including the world’s top carbon emitter China, are only
obliged to take voluntary steps to curb the growth of their emissions.

The United States and other rich nations want a new global pact to do away with
that either-or division to reflect the surge in emissions from the developing
world, which is now responsible for more than half of mankind’s annual greenhouse
gas emissions.

PLAYING CHICKEN

Rich nations also want China, India, Brazil and other big emitters to agree to
make their voluntary emissions reduction efforts legally binding, regularly reported
and verifiable.

Su told Reuters his government would not bend to Western demands and was reluctantly
thinking about how to handle the likelihood that the first phase of Kyoto could
expire with no full legal extension to replace it.

It also exposes game of “chicken” between rich economies and emerging powers
that could trouble higher level negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, in less than two
months that are intended to lay the foundations for a new, legally binding climate
deal.

Su said rich nations were to blame for failing to offer make greenhouse gas vows
for Kyoto in time to ensure a seamless extension of the agreement from 2013.

“The developed countries are delaying and delaying,” he said.

“Even if Cancun makes no decision on the developed countries’ emission targets
in the second phase (of Kyoto), then after Cancun we’ll accelerate the process.
I think that at the most we can’t delay it beyond a year.”

Negotiations last year failed to agree on a binding treaty and climaxed in a
bitter meeting in Copenhagen, which produced a non-binding accord that later recorded
the emissions pledges of participant countries.

The question now is whether those pledges are formalized under Kyoto or under
a new treaty. The United States is pushing China and other powers to jump aboard
a proposed new pact built on the Copenhagen Accord.

The chief U.S. negotiator at the Tianjin talks, Jonathan Pershing, said on Wednesday
that Washington was opposed to a treaty that preserved the divide between rich
and developing economies, which he called outmoded.

http://planetark.org/wen/59795

Posted: Friday, October 8th, 2010. Filed in Climate Change News.