THE LATEST round of UN climate talks concluded yesterday with developing countries complaining that an “unbalanced” approach was being adopted in preparing for this year’s summit in the Mexican resort of Cancun.
Latin American, African and the G77 bloc of 134 developing countries were referring in general to a revised negotiating text drafted by Zimbabwe diplomat Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe, who chairs one of the two key working groups.
“The situation is very critical. If this document is going to be the outcome of Cancun, then the future of humanity and Mother Earth is really in danger,” Bolivian negotiator Osvaldo Paz Rada declared, calling on civil society to come to their aid.
He said Bonn marked “the beginning of the elimination of the Kyoto Protocol” that binds developed countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent on average; it is due to run out in 2012 unless a “second commitment period” is agreed.
Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre – a think tank for developing countries – said it was clear that some developed countries wanted to “jump” from Kyoto into a looser arrangement with the US that would involve making fewer commitments.
He said that if emissions from developed countries did not peak within the next five years, the world would be on course for a rise in global temperatures of three to four degrees – much higher than the two-degree target specified in the Copenhagen Accord.
“The situation is much more desperate than it was a year ago”, Mr Khor said.
An aggregate figure for reductions in emissions needed to be set for developed countries, otherwise these would rise by 6 per cent by 2020 “with all the loopholes”, he warned.
Outgoing UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said the willingness of some developed countries to continue with Kyoto depended on whether the US was prepared to take on an internationally legally binding target to cut its emissions; otherwise, it would be unbalanced.
Giving his last press briefing after four years as executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Mr de Boer said progress had been made in Bonn, because countries were now “talking to each other rather than at each other”.
But he stressed more ambitious action by developed countries to reduce emissions was essential. With current pledges that fell well short of what was needed, “the door to a two-degree world will be closed and to 1.5 degrees will be slammed shut”, he said.
“I hope now that Cancun will deliver what Copenhagen failed to deliver,” Mr de Boer said – the “substance” of a global agreement on climate change that could be “turned into a treaty afterwards”, possibly at the UNFCCC’s 2011 summit in Cape Town.
Oxfam’s climate change policy adviser Antonio Hill agreed that the new “constructive” atmosphere offered hope that Cancun could make real progress. But he said a “glaring lack of political will from the richest, most powerful countries” was still the “signature tune”.