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Climate talks: Three issues that could bust a deal

Counter-proposal drawn up for Copenhagen
Beijing (UPI) Nov 30, 2009 - Four of the world's major developing countries, including China and India, have come up with a counter-draft listing their "non-negotiable" demands ahead of the U.N. climate summit that begins next week in Copenhagen, Denmark. The draft was agreed upon following a meeting Saturday of the BASIC countries - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - along with Sudan, which chairs the Group of 77, an organization representing 130 developing nations. The four countries agreed to a strategy of jointly walking out of the Copenhagen conference if the developed nations try to push their own terms on the developing world, said Indian Environment Minister Jairam Remesh, the India Times reports. "We will not exit in isolation. We will co-ordinate our exit if any of our non-negotiable terms is violated. Our entry and exit will be collective," Ramesh told reporters in Beijing.
"But we are not going to Copenhagen to exit," Ramesh stressed. The BASIC draft will be released in Copenhagen by Xie Zhenhua, China's special envoy for climate change, on Tuesday, the same day Denmark is scheduled to unveil its text to a select group of countries, including the United States, several European countries, India and China, the Hindu daily newspaper reports. Ramesh said there are "significant new features" in the BASIC countries' draft proposal. The "non-negotiable" issues in the BASIC draft include: The countries would never accept legally binding emissions cuts, unsupported mitigation actions, international measurement, reporting and verification of unsupported mitigation actions, and the use of climate change as an excuse to set up trade barriers. "We believe this draft represents a good starting point, and hope this will serve as the basis for negotiations," said Ramesh.

"It is a minimum, compromise draft and not ideal. But it takes into account all our concerns, and is realistic as far as international requirements are concerned," he said. India and China have long rejected mandated cuts in carbon emissions, both countries maintaining that rich, developed nations should lead the way in cutting greenhouse gases. They argue that mandated cuts would thwart their economic growth. Yet Thursday China announced it intends to cut greenhouse gas emissions per unit of economic output by 40 percent to 45 percent by 2020. On Wednesday, after meetings between U.S. President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the United States pledged to slash its emissions by 17 percent by 2020, provisional on the passage of legislation in Washington.
by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) Nov 30, 2009
With only days left before the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, three big questions have emerged that could seal or shatter the effort to turn back the peril of global warming.

These are the deal-busters and deal-makers at the December 7-18 conference, say analysts:

-- sharing out the burden between rich countries and emerging giants of curbing the fossil-fuel gases that stoke global warming;

-- agreeing early figures on funding to help poorer countries tackle greenhouse gases and their impacts; and

-- the architecture of the post-2012 climate pact.

"There's still a lot of hardball to be played -- and is being played -- in terms of demanding from each side what they are prepared to do to come forward," said Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a British think tank.

Huq, in a phone interview from London, did not rule out a walkout by developing countries in Copenhagen.

"Some countries are certainly threatening to pull the plug, although I don't know if they will do that in the end."

Last week, the outlook for Copenhagen suddenly brightened, as the world's No. 1 and No. 2 carbon polluters, China and the United States, finally staked out their positions in the emissions bidding game.

At the weekend, though, the mood soured, as other issues emerged.

Four developing giants -- China, India, Brazil, South Africa -- teamed up with Sudan, which currently chairs the Group of 77 developing countries, in forging a united front.

In a secretive meeting among senior officials in Beijing, they reiterated demands for industrialised countries to sign up to deep emissions targets.

They called on rich economies to shoulder the funding burden to help the switch to low-carbon technology and shore up defences against the impact of climate change.

And they stood resolutely by the Kyoto Protocol, the world's only legally-binding emissions-curbing treaty, whose present round of commitments, expiring at the end of 2012, would cut rich nations' emissions by around five percent.

For the past two years, the 192 members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have been meeting to frame the outcome of Copenhagen.

Yet they have barely touched the core question of what the pact should actually look like.

The US rejected Kyoto, saying its binding emissions curbs were too expensive for the American economy and unfair, as they did not apply to China and other emerging giants that are becoming massive polluters in their own right.

Washington has been pushing for a more voluntary approach, in which emitters would make pledges that would be open to scrutiny but not exposed to tough Kyoto-style penalties.

The European Union (EU), despite saving Kyoto in 2001, has signalled that it wants a new overall treaty, rather than a second round of commitments under Kyoto.

The 27-nation bloc says it would be unfair for the United States to have only voluntary commitments and European states to have binding ones.

The EU's approach would be to transfer key Kyoto provisions to a new treaty that would include the United States. Developing countries, as in Kyoto's format, would still have only voluntary targets, though.

"We've been watching this coming as a very, very contentious issue for some time," said Kim Carstensen of green group WWF.

In his opinion, the EU badly under-estimated the feeling in the developing world, which mistrusts rich nations' pledges on emissions and finance and likes Kyoto because of its tough compliance mechanisms.

"It's a very understandable position," he said. "If you can just drop the Kyoto Protocol, how can we have any trust in a new instrument that you present to us?"

Coming up on the inside as a Copenhagen game-spoiler is whether the envisioned outline agreement will set a goal of reducing global emissions by 50 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels, thus limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).

China and India, notably, are opposed to this. They fear being locked into massive cuts in emissions without having the benefit, available to rich countries, of carbon-market "offsets".

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Predictions for climate change this century
Paris (AFP) Nov 29, 2009
Following is a summary of expert opinion of potential impacts from climate change by the end of the century. The source is the Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007 by the UN's Nobel-winning scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The magnitude of impacts will mainly depend on the level of warming, which the panel predicted would be in a range of 1.8-4.0 ... read more







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