ID :
93422
Sat, 12/05/2009 - 21:55
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https://www.oananews.org//node/93422
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FOCUS: U.N. meet touchstone of commitment to binding emissions cut framework
TOKYO, Dec. 5 Kyodo -
A key U.N. climate conference, which will open Monday in Copenhagen for 12 days
of intense negotiations, will be the touchstone of the world's commitment to
averting the catastrophic impact of climate change, with participants aiming to
reach a ''political deal'' that will lead to the creation of a new global
treaty.
The Copenhagen talks were originally intended to seal a successor treaty to the
1997 Kyoto Protocol on fighting global warming that will expire in 2012.
But host Denmark has downgraded the talks' mandate due to stalled negotiations
and time constraints, and is instead urging the around 100 leaders who will
come to the Danish capital from among the more than 190 signatories of the U.N.
Framework Convention on Climate Change to produce a strong political accord
involving numerical targets.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen has said the envisioned Copenhagen
agreement should be ''concrete and binding on countries committing to reach
targets, to undertake actions and to provide agreed finance.''
The Danish prime minister also said the planned agreement should ''set a
deadline for the conclusion'' of talks on a legal framework beyond Copenhagen
and provide for ''immediate action in all areas,'' calling on countries to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deliver promised financial and technical
aid even before the adoption of a legal text.
The issues at stake are numerical, medium-term, emissions cut targets for
industrialized economies, nonbinding actions by industrializing economies to
mitigate climate change, the amount of financial support for developing
countries grappling with global warming and how the aid should be managed.
Sharp differences between developed and developing countries over these key
issues have stalemated negotiations so far, but a series of new emissions cut
targets announced recently by major emitters -- the United States, China and
India -- have brightened the prospects for the upcoming confab yielding some
sort of agreement.
Climate negotiation sources have indicated that the Copenhagen talks are
expected to result in an agreement on the amount of ''upfront'' finance, which
will cover immediate financial aid to developing countries through 2012, and a
goal to cut aggregate emissions for developed countries to be achieved by 2020.
As for short-term finance, U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer has said $10 billion
in aid will be needed annually and major industrialized countries such as the
United States and Britain have expressed their readiness to contribute.
Japanese Environment Minister Sakihito Ozawa has said Tokyo is ready to offer
by 2012 a $9.2 billion aid package, which consists of previously announced
initiatives, and present an additional amount during the Copenhagen talks.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said over the longer term about $100
billion in aid will be needed each year to finance actions to tackle climate
change by 2020. But the negotiation sources said it is unlikely that the
upcoming U.N. confab will agree on how to generate such funding.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. body of scientific
experts, has recommended a 25 to 40 percent emissions reduction by developed
countries from 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst impacts in terms of
floods, droughts and rising sea levels. But climate negotiators say their
collective emissions cut pledge at present falls short of that range.
The sources expressed hope that major emitters will toughen their goals or
select more ambitious figures for the proposed range of their targets.
The United States has unveiled a plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions by 17
percent from 2005 levels by 2020, which translates into a reduction of 3 to 4
percent below the 1990 benchmark, while the 27-nation European Union has
offered a 20 percent cut from 1990 levels by 2020 and has promised to raise the
target to 30 percent if other nations present equally ambitious targets.
The European bloc might agree to adopt a single target figure during the next
European Council meeting slated for Thursday and Friday, the sources said, but
the chances are low that Washington will strengthen its goal because the figure
has been stipulated in domestic legislation still being deliberated in
Congress, the sources said.
Japan, for its part, has announced an ambitious target of a 25 percent
reduction by 2020 compared with 1990 levels under the government of Prime
Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who leads the Democratic Party of Japan that swept to
power in September.
The nation's goal was presented on condition that other major emitters such as
the United States, China and India join a new international framework on
curbing global warming.
The tough target has triggered an outcry from domestic business
representatives, who claim the burden on industry will be unduly heavy to
achieve the 25 percent reduction, which they say will put Japanese firms in a
disadvantageous position in global competition.
Since the country is already a front-runner in energy conservation, it would be
costly to slash emissions domestically compared with other countries, they say.
What the country's business circles fear most is the possibility that the
climate talks will fail to agree on the future integrated legal regime on
curbing global warming, leaving only developed country members of the Kyoto
Protocol legally bound to reduction goals and penalties if they fail to achieve
them.
As the United States is not a member of the pact and fast-growing emerging
economies such as China and India are not obliged to slash emissions, the Kyoto
framework only covers emitters accounting for 28 percent of the world's total
carbon dioxide emissions as of 2007.
China and the United States -- the world's two major emitters -- were
responsible for a combined 41 percent of global CO2 emissions that year,
according to the International Energy Agency.
Many developed countries are calling for the eventual creation of a single
legal framework, but developing countries have insisted that the Kyoto process
should not be killed off and that a two-track approach should continue because
it symbolizes the historical responsibility of industrialized nations in
aggravating global warming.
Akihiro Sawa, senior executive fellow of the 21st Century Public Policy
Institute, a think tank set up by the Japan Business Federation, said Hatoyama
should declare in Copenhagen that Tokyo will ''graduate from'' the Kyoto
framework so that the nation will be treated under the same conditions as the
United States, China and other countries whose emissions are not covered by the
pact.
The federation, better known as Nippon Keidanren, is Japan's most powerful
business lobby.
A Danish climate negotiator, who declined to be named, has said it is unlikely
that the Copenhagen talks will agree on the specifics of the envisioned legal
framework and predicted that negotiations on the matter will continue next
year. Denmark anticipates that a final accord on the legal text will be agreed
by the end of 2010, he said.
==Kyodo
A key U.N. climate conference, which will open Monday in Copenhagen for 12 days
of intense negotiations, will be the touchstone of the world's commitment to
averting the catastrophic impact of climate change, with participants aiming to
reach a ''political deal'' that will lead to the creation of a new global
treaty.
The Copenhagen talks were originally intended to seal a successor treaty to the
1997 Kyoto Protocol on fighting global warming that will expire in 2012.
But host Denmark has downgraded the talks' mandate due to stalled negotiations
and time constraints, and is instead urging the around 100 leaders who will
come to the Danish capital from among the more than 190 signatories of the U.N.
Framework Convention on Climate Change to produce a strong political accord
involving numerical targets.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen has said the envisioned Copenhagen
agreement should be ''concrete and binding on countries committing to reach
targets, to undertake actions and to provide agreed finance.''
The Danish prime minister also said the planned agreement should ''set a
deadline for the conclusion'' of talks on a legal framework beyond Copenhagen
and provide for ''immediate action in all areas,'' calling on countries to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deliver promised financial and technical
aid even before the adoption of a legal text.
The issues at stake are numerical, medium-term, emissions cut targets for
industrialized economies, nonbinding actions by industrializing economies to
mitigate climate change, the amount of financial support for developing
countries grappling with global warming and how the aid should be managed.
Sharp differences between developed and developing countries over these key
issues have stalemated negotiations so far, but a series of new emissions cut
targets announced recently by major emitters -- the United States, China and
India -- have brightened the prospects for the upcoming confab yielding some
sort of agreement.
Climate negotiation sources have indicated that the Copenhagen talks are
expected to result in an agreement on the amount of ''upfront'' finance, which
will cover immediate financial aid to developing countries through 2012, and a
goal to cut aggregate emissions for developed countries to be achieved by 2020.
As for short-term finance, U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer has said $10 billion
in aid will be needed annually and major industrialized countries such as the
United States and Britain have expressed their readiness to contribute.
Japanese Environment Minister Sakihito Ozawa has said Tokyo is ready to offer
by 2012 a $9.2 billion aid package, which consists of previously announced
initiatives, and present an additional amount during the Copenhagen talks.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said over the longer term about $100
billion in aid will be needed each year to finance actions to tackle climate
change by 2020. But the negotiation sources said it is unlikely that the
upcoming U.N. confab will agree on how to generate such funding.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. body of scientific
experts, has recommended a 25 to 40 percent emissions reduction by developed
countries from 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst impacts in terms of
floods, droughts and rising sea levels. But climate negotiators say their
collective emissions cut pledge at present falls short of that range.
The sources expressed hope that major emitters will toughen their goals or
select more ambitious figures for the proposed range of their targets.
The United States has unveiled a plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions by 17
percent from 2005 levels by 2020, which translates into a reduction of 3 to 4
percent below the 1990 benchmark, while the 27-nation European Union has
offered a 20 percent cut from 1990 levels by 2020 and has promised to raise the
target to 30 percent if other nations present equally ambitious targets.
The European bloc might agree to adopt a single target figure during the next
European Council meeting slated for Thursday and Friday, the sources said, but
the chances are low that Washington will strengthen its goal because the figure
has been stipulated in domestic legislation still being deliberated in
Congress, the sources said.
Japan, for its part, has announced an ambitious target of a 25 percent
reduction by 2020 compared with 1990 levels under the government of Prime
Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who leads the Democratic Party of Japan that swept to
power in September.
The nation's goal was presented on condition that other major emitters such as
the United States, China and India join a new international framework on
curbing global warming.
The tough target has triggered an outcry from domestic business
representatives, who claim the burden on industry will be unduly heavy to
achieve the 25 percent reduction, which they say will put Japanese firms in a
disadvantageous position in global competition.
Since the country is already a front-runner in energy conservation, it would be
costly to slash emissions domestically compared with other countries, they say.
What the country's business circles fear most is the possibility that the
climate talks will fail to agree on the future integrated legal regime on
curbing global warming, leaving only developed country members of the Kyoto
Protocol legally bound to reduction goals and penalties if they fail to achieve
them.
As the United States is not a member of the pact and fast-growing emerging
economies such as China and India are not obliged to slash emissions, the Kyoto
framework only covers emitters accounting for 28 percent of the world's total
carbon dioxide emissions as of 2007.
China and the United States -- the world's two major emitters -- were
responsible for a combined 41 percent of global CO2 emissions that year,
according to the International Energy Agency.
Many developed countries are calling for the eventual creation of a single
legal framework, but developing countries have insisted that the Kyoto process
should not be killed off and that a two-track approach should continue because
it symbolizes the historical responsibility of industrialized nations in
aggravating global warming.
Akihiro Sawa, senior executive fellow of the 21st Century Public Policy
Institute, a think tank set up by the Japan Business Federation, said Hatoyama
should declare in Copenhagen that Tokyo will ''graduate from'' the Kyoto
framework so that the nation will be treated under the same conditions as the
United States, China and other countries whose emissions are not covered by the
pact.
The federation, better known as Nippon Keidanren, is Japan's most powerful
business lobby.
A Danish climate negotiator, who declined to be named, has said it is unlikely
that the Copenhagen talks will agree on the specifics of the envisioned legal
framework and predicted that negotiations on the matter will continue next
year. Denmark anticipates that a final accord on the legal text will be agreed
by the end of 2010, he said.
==Kyodo
