THE PROSPECT of reaching a global agreement at next December’s United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen hangs in the balance following the latest round of talks in Bonn over the past two weeks. Although negotiations have finally got under way, with three more bargaining sessions scheduled in advance of the summit, the likely shape and ambition of any agreement is far from clear.
This is mainly due to the twin-track approach adopted by delegates representing 192 countries. One track is directed towards building on the Kyoto Protocol, with stronger commitments being sought from its developed country parties in the post-2012 period, while the other could lead to an entirely new international treaty under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The latter course, it has emerged, is now favoured by the United States. After eight years of obstruction by the Bush administration, its positive engagement in the process under President Obama has “changed the dynamic” of the discussions, as chief US negotiator Jonathan Pershing said last Friday. What the new administration wants is a deal it can sell to sceptical senators in Washington, to whom Kyoto is anathema – primarily because it places no obligation on China to reduce its ever-growing carbon emissions. That’s why Dr Pershing and Todd Stern, Mr Obama’s special envoy for climate change, went to Beijing last week for high-level talks with leading Chinese officials. It was not a question of stitching them up, but rather one of stitching China into a deal that could then be “sold” on Capitol Hill.
Of course, no-one on the US side is so foolish as to imagine that the Chinese can be compelled to reduce their emissions. Obama and his team recognise that the onus falls in the first instance on those countries that got rich historically by burning fossil fuels and now owe a “climate debt” to the rest of the world.
The extent of this debt is enormous and needs to be repaid by developed countries making deep cuts in emissions as well as providing substantial aid to help developing countries adapt to the consequences of global warming and find more environmentally sustainable paths to economic growth. Indeed, China and South Africa have tabled proposals indicating not only a collective target for cuts in emissions by developed countries as a whole, but also specific targets for each country.
It is clear that the US, even with Mr Obama at the helm, will not revisit Kyoto because of the history of opposition to it in the US Senate. Dr Pershing has not yet specified how far his delegation is prepared to go, other than quoting the president’s pledge that the US would cut its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and work towards an 80 per cent reduction by 2050. In return, it would expect China and other large emerging economies such as India and Brazil to take “actions” – through the adoption of renewable technologies, for example – that would contribute to “charting a global path to a clean energy future”. All in all, the G8 summit it Italy next month will have much to discuss.