Weekend Climate Politics News

As UN Barcelona Talks Wrap Up, Yvo de Boer Says Climate Deal May Take Another Year. By Alex Morales, Bloomberg, November 6, 2009. “The deadline for 192 countries to complete a new global-warming accord may slip by as much as one year, as negotiators hold back on pledges to slash emissions or pay financial aid to poor nations. Yvo de Boer, the United Nations supervisor for climate talks, said yesterday in an interview that too little progress has been made to conclude a treaty at a summit in Copenhagen next month, and it may take another year. He spoke in Barcelona, where the final talks before Copenhagen end today. The most powerful nations are holding back their biggest cards in what envoys liken to game-playing. The U.S., the second-largest greenhouse-gas producer after China, won’t say how much aid it may offer. China has pledged no specific emissions goals. And Japanese and European delegates said they may not put concrete numbers for funding on the table until the two-week Danish summit is almost finished.”

EU Agrees on Financing Stance for Post Kyoto Treaty. Reuters, October 30, 2009. “European Union leaders agreed on an offer Friday to put on the table at global climate talks in Copenhagen in December after healing a rift over how to split the bill. Developing countries will need 100 billion euros ($148 billion) a year by 2020 to battle climate change, and 22-50 billion of this will have to come from the public purse in rich countries worldwide, rather than industry, leaders said. The two-day EU [Brussels] summit secured a complex negotiating mandate for the Copenhagen talks to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol… ‘We managed to reach an agreement on climate finance,’ Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said. ‘The EU now has a strong position in view of Copenhagen.’”

Why India Is Playing Hard to Get on Climate Change. By Bryan Walsh, Time, November 6, 2009. “If U.S. diplomats consider India to be a major obstacle to global climate-change negotiations — and they do — it might be because of Sunita Narain. The director of the influential Centre for Science and Environment, Narain can be as caustic as she is intelligent, and never more so than when she is taking rich nations to task for what she sees as their hypocrisy on global warming. They pressure the developing world to control carbon emissions even as they refuse to move themselves, she says. ‘The rich have to reduce their emissions so the rest of the world can grow,’ says Narain, speaking in her office in New Delhi. ‘This is about sharing growth between nations and people. If we can’t, then India has to be a naysayer for a bad climate agreement.’As a leader of the bloc of developing nations, India has repeatedly argued that since rich nations like the U.S. are responsible for most of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, they should take the lead on cutting emissions before asking the developing world to step in. The result is a global standoff. The U.S. has been reluctant to cut emissions unless major developing nations — meaning India and China — take steps of their own on a global level. The conflict has stifled international climate negotiations for years, and threatens to scuttle the vital U.N. climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month.”

African Countries End Boycott of UN Meeting in Barcelona. By Arthur Max, AP, November 3, 2009. “African countries ended a boycott of meetings at U.N. climate negotiations on Tuesday, after winning promises for more in-depth talks on how much rich nations need to cut greenhouse gas emissions… The Africans, supported by about 70 other developing countries, said industrial nations were making weak commitments to stave off dramatic temperature rises while Africa was being devastated by droughts and floods blamed on global warming… The walkout by some 50 African countries from committee work at the U.N. talks in Barcelona forced only some technical meetings to be canceled, but sent a clear signal that the developing countries would be tough negotiators at next month’s final U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.”