Last negotiation round before Copenhagen

Monday, 02 November 2009 08:41

Negotiators from nearly 180 countries hope to nail down the outline of a plan to provide tens of billions of dollars a year to fight climate change, in their final round of talks before a decisive conference in Copenhagen next month.

The five-day meeting beginning today (2 November) in Barcelona will resume work on the draft of an agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first international accord on controlling emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate-changing gases.

They are charged with whittling down a thick draft document full of competing proposals, disputed wording and minority-backed options, and crafting a workable agreement that can be accepted by all 192 nations due to attend the Dec. 7-18 Copenhagen conference.

But with time swiftly running out, skepticism is mounting that one of the most complex treaties in history can be reached in the Danish capital, as envisioned when the negotiations began two years ago.  

Deep divisions remain among industrial countries and the developing world on commitments by the rich countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and on how the developing countries can lower the upward trajectory of their own emissions.

"It is realistic to say that in Copenhagen we will not be able to conclude a treaty, but it is important to lay down a political framework which will be the basis of the treaty," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the close of a European Summit in Brussels on Friday.

Even with that framework, she said, "negotiations will drag out longer until we get a treaty."  

Money is the key 

Money is the key to the success of Copenhagen, according to a news analysis in the Indpendent. Developing countries want up to £245bn to reduce their carbon emissions while the EU thinks it should cost them as little as £20bn.
Developing countries fear the cost of dealing with climate change will come out of aid budgets
The Copenhagen agreement on climate change that the world community will attempt to sign in December is just as much about money, as greenhouse gasses. 

In brutally simplistic terms, the essence of any deal will be to pay the developing countries of the world, led by China and India, to cut back on the carbon dioxide pouring out of their now-mushrooming economies, which will come to represent 90 per cent of all future emissions growth, and the inducement for them to do this will have to be substantial.
It has hardly dawned on the general public just how big are the sums of cash that the developing world is seeking, and that the rich world will have to go some way towards providing, if the vital pathway to keeping global temperature rises below C is to be mapped out.
But they are truly colossal, and the gap between the potential donor countries and the recipients may be unbridgeable; it is finance, rather than the setting of emissions targets, which is more likely to be the deal-breaker in Copenhagen.

 
Source: cop15.dk, AP, the Independent