Key meetings unfolding in Washington, New York and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the coming week may determine whether a two-year effort to combat climate change will triumph or be written off as a flop of historic dimensions.
Negotiations under the UN flag are tasked with delivering a treaty in Copenhagen in December to curb the heat-trapping emissions that drive global warming and help poor countries most threatened by drought, flood and rising sea levels.
But for months the process has been deadlocked by rifts between rich and developing countries over how to divvy up the task of slashing greenhouse gases and who should pay for it.
PHOTO: AFP
The more than 190 countries at the table cannot agree on the treaty’s geometry or even on a procedure for drafting the text.
Pressure is mounting for a breakthrough in what has been dubbed “Climate Week,” which kicks off in Washington today and tomorrow with a ministerial-level gathering of the world’s 17 largest carbon polluters.
Next Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will host a climate summit in New York, followed by a two-day G20 summit in Pittsburgh next Thursday and Friday.
In the corridors, bilateral talks and haggling among blocs of countries will help shape the Copenhagen denouement.
“This is a critical moment for the climate change debate,” said US Senator John Kerry, who is fighting to push ambitious domestic energy and climate legislation through Senate.
“What happens now in September is going to lay a lot of the foundation for what is achievable in December,” he told journalists by telephone on Tuesday.
“The situation is a little desperate, and time is slipping through our fingers,” Brazilian Environment Minister Carlos Minc said in an interview.
“If we want an agreement in Copenhagen, we need to make real progress here and now,” he said.
Green groups concur.
“This is a unique opportunity to show political will and face up to global warming,” said Kim Carstensen, head of the World Wildlife Fund’s global climate initiative.
“Without new, powerful political impetus at the meetings in September, the climate negotiations could be doomed,” she said.
The major stumbling blocks are emissions and money.
Poor and emerging economies say the US, Japan and the EU are historically responsible for today’s global warming.
Rich countries acknowledge that charge but say the problem of climate change will only be resolved if China, India and Brazil — the big polluters of tomorrow — take on firm, if lesser, commitments too.
Concretely, developing countries are demanding that wealthy ones commit to cutting carbon pollution by least 40 percent before 2020. An 80-strong bloc of small island states and the world’s least developed countries have set the bar even higher, at 45 percent.
That is a far cry from the offers of the table, even from the EU, which has unilaterally vowed to slash emissions by 20 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels.
The US’ 2020 targets remain modest by comparison: legislation wending its way through Congress would trim carbon dioxide output by about four percent off the same 1990 benchmark.
The one silver lining is Japan, whose incoming government has leapfrogged to the head of the club of rich countries by offering to cut pollution by 25 percent, if others follow suit.
A UN panel of climate scientists have said developed countries must cut emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020, and by at least 80 percent by 2050, to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2°C over pre-industrial levels. On finance, the gap is even larger. The UNFramework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) calculates that, by 2020, the cost of mitigating and adapting to climate change will soar to US$200 billion and US$100 billion per year. Some estimates are even higher.
But even the modest down payment called for by the UNFCCC of US$10 billion has caused wealthy countries — coping with stalled economies and concerned about the money will be managed — to balk.
Much of the focus will be on the top two emitters of carbon dioxide, the US and China, whose leaders are expected to stake out their positions at the special UN summit.
“The crucial question is this,” Kerry said. “Can we forge a partnership that can act boldly enough to prevent a climate catastrophe?”
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