Sunday 11 December 2011

Climate talks end with late deal

Newslink: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16124670
  
Elements of the draft text caused much discussion

11 December 2011 Last updated at 07:10 GMT
 By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News, Durban

UN climate talks have closed with an agreement that the chair said had "saved tomorrow, today".

The European Union will place its current emission-cutting pledges inside the legally-binding Kyoto Protocol, a key demand of developing countries.

Talks on a new legal deal covering all countries will begin next year and end by 2015, coming into effect by 2020.

Management of a fund for climate aid to poor countries has also been agreed, though how to raise the money has not.

Talks ran nearly 36 hours beyond their scheduled close, with many delegates saying the host government lacked urgency and strategy.

Nevertheless, there was applause in the main conference hall when South Africa's International Relations Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, brought down the long-awaited final gavel.

"We came here with plan A, and we have concluded this meeting with plan A to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come," she said.

"We have made history."

The conclusion was delayed by a dispute between the EU and India over the precise wording of the "roadmap" for a new global deal.

India did not want a specification that it must be legally binding.

Eventually, a Brazilian diplomat came up with the formulation that the deal must have "legal force", which proved acceptable.

The roadmap proposal originated with the EU, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Least Developed Countries bloc (LDCs).

They argued that only a new legal agreement eventually covering emissions from all countries - particularly fast-growing major emitters such as China - could keep the rise in global average temperatures since pre-industrial times below 2C (35.6F), the internationally-agreed threshold.

"If there is no legal instrument by which we can make countries responsible for their actions, then we are relegating countries to the fancies of beautiful words," said Karl Hood, Grenada's Foreign Minister, speaking for AOSIS.

"While they develop, we die; and why should we accept this?"

Impassioned arguments

Delegates from the Basic group - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - criticised what they saw as a tight timetable and excessive legality.

"I stand firm on my position of equity," said an impassioned Jayanthi Natarajan, India's environment minister.

"This is not about India, it is about the entire world."

India believes in maintaining the current stark division where only countries labelled "developed" have to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

Western nations, she said, have not cut their own emissions as they had pledged; so why should poorer countries have to do it for them?

Xie Zhenhua, head of the Chinese delegation, agreed.

Apparently trembling with rage, he berated the developed countries: "We are doing things you are not doing... we want to see your real actions".

However, Bangladesh and some other developing countries weighed in on the side of AOSIA, saying a new legally-binding deal was needed.

AOSIS and the LDCs agree that rich countries need to do more.
 
But they also accept analyses concluding that fast-developing countries such as China will need to cut their emissions several years in the future if governments are to meet their goal of keeping the rise in global average temperature since pre-industrial times below 2C.

Once the roadmap blockage had been cleared, everything else followed quickly

There were some surreal moment of confusion, but few objections, except from members of the Latin American Alba group, who said the developed world was not living up to its promises

Green fund
A management framework was adopted for the Green Climate Fund, which will eventually gather and disburse finance amounting to $100bn (£64bn) per year to help poor countries develop cleanly and adapt to climate impacts.

There has also been significant progress on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD).

Environment groups were divided in their reaction, with some finding it a significant step forward and others saying it had done nothing to change the course of climate change.

Many studies indicate that current pledges on reducing emissions are taking the Earth towards a temperature rise of double the 2C target.
 
Michael Jacobs, visiting professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in London, said the agreement could bring real changes.

"The agreement here has not in itself taken us off the 4C path we are on," he said.
"But by forcing countries for the first time to admit that their current policies are inadequate and must be strengthened by 2015, it has snatched 2C from the jaws of impossibility.

"At the same time it has re-established the principle that climate change should be tackled through international law, not national, voluntarism."


U.N. climate talks agree legal pact on global warming

Newslink: http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/12/11/climate-kyoto-idINDEE7BA00F20111211

Photo:  Reuters/Rogan Ward


By Jon Herskovitz and Nina Chestney




DURBAN
Sun Dec 11, 2011 9:50am IST


DURBAN (Reuters) - U.N. climate change talks agreed a pact on Sunday that for the first time would force all the biggest polluters to take action to slow the pace of global changing.

The deal follows years of failed attempts to impose legally-binding, international cuts on emerging giants, such as China and India.

The developed world had already accepted formal targets under a first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out at the end of next year, although the United States had never ratified its commitment.

After days of emotional debate, the chairwoman of the United Nations climate talks urged delegates to approve four packages, which have legal force.

"We came here with plan A, and we have concluded this meeting with plan A to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come," South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said.

"We have made history," she said, bringing the hammer down on more than two weeks of sometimes fractious talks in the South African port of Durban, the longest in two decades of U.N. climate talks.

The deal was welcomed by Brazil, one of the globe's emerging economic powers.

"I am relieved we have what we came here to get. We have a robust outcome, an excellent text about a new phase in the international fight against climate change. It clearly points to action," said Brazil's climate envoy Luiz Alberto Figueiredo.

The Durban talks had been due to wrap up on Friday, but dragged into a second extra day on Sunday because of disputes over how to phrase the legal commitment.

The European Union pushed for strong wording and the three biggest emitters the United States, China and India resisted.

"We've had very intense discussions, we were not happy with reopening the text, but in the spirit of flexibility and accommodation shown by all, we have shown our flexibility, we have agreed to the words you just mentioned and we agree to adopt it," India's Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan said.

But environmentalists and small island states, which fear they literally could sink under the rising sea levels caused by climate change, have said it is still not strong enough.

(Reporting by Nina Chestney, Barbara Lewis, Agnieszka Flak, Andrew Allan, Michael Szabo and Stian Reklev; editing by Jon Boyle)

World's nations set course for 2015 global climate pact


By Marlowe Hood and Richard Ingham

Photo courtesy of AFP
DURBAN, December 11, 2011 (AFP) -- A marathon UN climate conference on Sunday approved a roadmap towards an accord that for the first time will bring all major emitters of greenhouse gases under a single legal roof.

If approved as scheduled in 2015, the pact will be operational from 2020 and become the prime weapon in the fight against climate change.

The deal was reached after nearly 14 days of talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The world forum also launched a "Green Climate Fund" to help channel up to 100 billion dollars a year in aid to poor, vulnerable countries by 2020, an initiative born under the 2009 Copenhagen Summit.

Approval came after two and a half days of round-the-clock wrangling among 194 nations.

Even by UNFCCC standards, the meeting broke the record for going into overtime.

The talks should have ended on Friday but wrapped up in the dawn light of Sunday amid scenes of exhaustion and shredded nerves.

And the often-stormy exchanges reflected concerns among many countries over the cost of making energy efficiencies and switching to clean renewable sources at a time of belt-tightening.

UNFCCC chief Christiana Figueres was exultant.

Citing the words of Nelson Mandela, she said on Twitter: "In honour of Mandela: It always seems impossible until it is done. And it is done!

"I think in the end it ended up quite well," said US chief negotiator Todd Stern.

"The first time you will see developing countries agreeing, essentially, to be bound by a legal agreement."

European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the deal marked the shift that had occurred over the last 20 years, when the world first set out to tackle climate change and tied only rich countries to carbon constraints.

"The BASIC countries took some significant new steps in acknowledging that the world of the 21st century is not the same as the 20th century," she said referring to the four big emerging economies -- Brazil, South Africa, India and China.

In the runup to the conference, scientists pounded out loud warnings, saying future generations would pay the bill for foot-dragging.

Current measures to tackle carbon emissions are falling far short of the goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

According to research presented by German scientists, the world is on track for a 3.5 C (6.3 F) rise, spelling worsening droughts, floods, storms and rising sea levels for tens of millions of people.

The European Union (EU) led the charge in Durban, pushing for the "roadmap" in exchange for renewing its pledges to the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty deemed iconic by developing countries but increasingly dismissed by rich ones as out of date.

Kyoto's first roster of legally-binding carbon curbs expires at the end of 2012.

The EU will sign up for fresh commitments taking effect from 2013, although this will be little more than symbolic, translating into the UN framework its existing plan for reducing European greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 over 1990 levels.

It could also be joined by New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland in a show of unity, say European diplomats. The duration of the post-2013 commitments will be either five or eight years; negotiations on this will take place next year.

The EU made the pledge to help assemble a coalition of developing and small island states -- together accounting for nearly two-thirds of the world's nations -- that lobbied China, the United States and India to support the quest.

China and India have become huge emitters of carbon over the last half-dozen years but do not have Kyoto constraints as they are developing countries.

The United States, the world's no. 2 source of man-made carbon, also has no legal curbs as it refused in 2001 to ratify Kyoto.

The key to the Durban deal lay in overcoming the opposition of the Big Three by crafting vague text about what the pact will be -- essentially reassuring them that the price will not be unaffordable.

Observers say the talks for the 2015 pact will be arduous.

The thorny issues include determining the agreement's exact legal status and apportioning carbon constraints among rich and poor countries.

"A heavy load of work ahead on the post 2020 arrangement needs to be done," China said in a statement, eyeing next year's UNFCCC conference in the Gulf state of Qatar.

"The lack of political will is the main element that hinders cooperation on addressing climate change in the international community. We expect political sincerity from developed countries next year."