As a critical UN climate summit approaches, economic woes endanger recent advances. There has been progress since Bali 2007, but will Poznan 2008 lead to a worldwide agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
 | Tackling Climate ChangeDutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer makes her point at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007 (Photo: Reuters) |
For sixteen years world leaders have debated what to do about global warming. While they fiddled, the planet burned. Eleven of the hottest years on record have occurred since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
The Kyoto Protocol agreed in 1997 does commit 37 industrialized countries to legally binding emissions reductions, but also leaves the biggest emitters—China, the United States, Indonesia— to carry on business as usual.
This deadlock has to be broken. Kyoto expires in 2012. A year ago in Bali, the United Nations Climate Change Conference started a process that will hopefully end with a new treaty in Copenhagen in December 2009. Next month in Poznan, the Conference brings government ministers together for the first time since Bali and the last time before Copenhagen.
It is a crucial “transition moment” said Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate change official, at a November press conference. That is because a special meeting of government ministers will discuss the “first version of the negotiating text” that will be the basis for the Copenhagen treaty that should cover:
- Global goals for emissions reductions
- Emissions cuts by developed countries
- Mitigation by developing countries (e.g. reducing deforestation)
- Clean technology transfer from developed to developing countries
- Funding for adaptation/mitigation in developing countries
These issues will not be decided in Poznan. The conference comes in the middle of a global economic crisis, oil prices are volatile, the Doha trade negotiations collapsed souring relations between rich and poor countries, and the world is waiting to see what Barack Obama will do when he takes power in 2009. Expectations for Poznan are low.
Striking a Pose
Against this backdrop, some countries have turned up their rhetoric. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, perhaps sensitive to the awkward fact that China is now the world’s largest emitter, recently demanded that the rich world abandon its “unsustainable lifestyle” and devote one percent of GDP to technology transfer and adaptation help for poor countries. If all OECD countries paid up based on 2007 figures, it would amount to 284 billion dollars.
The U.S. and other G8 countries have made progress by agreeing in July to a goal of halving global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the U.S. overcoming its longstanding allergy to emissions targets.
 | Picture Gallery (click the image to start)A round-up of the key issues on the table at the UN climate talks (Photo: Reuters) |
But this was not enough for China and four other major developing nations—Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa. They want the rich world to cut emissions by 80 to 95 percent, thereby allowing developing nations to continue increasing their emissions while they catch up economically. Rich countries, they argue, must lead because they are historically responsible for global warming and their per capita emissions are the highest.
But the developing world will be responsible for the majority of global emissions by 2050, argues the U.S., so it must commit to emissions cuts too; China, India and other major emitters cannot be exempt.
The EU has also upped the ante, arguing that some developing countries—Argentina, Singapore, South Korea, and the Gulf States—are rich enough to start cutting emissions now. The developed country-developing country division agreed in 1992 must be revised, says the EU. Developing nations disagree. This debate will be one to watch in Poznan and beyond.
Modest Expectations
Amid all the political manoeuvrings, the UN hopes to make concrete progress in Poznan on two practical issues.
First, get more poor countries into the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which funds emissions reduction programs in the developing world by selling carbon credits to rich nations. Yvo de Boer expects “important discussions…[now that] we see the carbon market working.”
Second, establish the CDM Adaptation Fund, which de Boer hopes to “make fully operational” in Poznan. The Fund will take a cut from the sale of carbon credits and use the money for adaptation projects in vulnerable countries.
Looking ahead, the key questions about a post-Kyoto climate regime revolve around dates and numbers.
Agreement to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is fine, but what about a target for 2020 or 2030? 2050 is far enough in the future for politicians to promise much and do little. The EU is proposing a 20 percent reduction by 2020. Japan prefers 2030 as a mid-term target. Barack Obama has talked about reducing U.S. emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
And when will China and India sign up to binding emissions cuts?
In ‘Key Elements of a Global Deal on Climate Change’ Sir Nicholas Stern suggests 2020 as a start date for them. But only if developed countries take on “immediate and binding” reductions of 20 to 40 percent by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050. And only if they transfer technologies and financing to developing nations while they sell carbon credits back to rich countries.
Much will depend on how the financial and economic crises play out, but Stern’s blueprint for a deal is one the participants in Poznan might care to ponder, if they dare.
editor: James Tulloch
publishing date: November 21, 2008
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