EU Climate Road Map Lures Support From 120 Nations at UN Meeting
The European Union said it has the support of at least 120 nations for its “road map” proposal at United Nations global warming talks, suggesting it may be able to break a deadlock on how to fight climate change.
The shift “has the potential to be a game-changer in the sense that it’s the first time that developed and developing nations stand together,” said Martin Lidegaard, the Danish climate and energy minister whose nation takes over the EU’s rotating presidency in 2012.
Lidegaard said 48 of the world’s least developed nations along with 42 small island states and the African group of countries have joined the 27 members of the bloc to support the proposal.
The comments relate to the most controversial issue at the United Nations climate talks: how to extend restrictions on fossil fuel emissions under the Kyoto Protocol after they expire next year. Developing nations led by China and India want industrial countries make more commitments under the treaty. The EU says it will sign up to extend Kyoto only if all nations adopt a “road map” pointing toward the next treaty.
“The vast majority of the countries here want to see a really credible attack on climate change,” U.K. Energy Secretary Chris Huhne told reporters at the talks in Durban, South Africa. “We are making progress, but it’s too early to say that we’re going to be able to achieve a really good deal.”
Road Map Plan
The EU proposal would start a process that would lead to an internationally binding agreement crafted by 2015 and enacted in 2020 at the latest. China and India have opposed the EU proposal to date, saying industrial nations must move first on emissions.
Todd Stern, the U.S. envoy on climate, said at a press conference today that he supported a road map plan. His office later issued a statement clarifying the remark.
“Todd Stern said in his press conference today that the United States could support a process to negotiate a new climate accord,” said Emily Cain, a State Department spokeswoman. “He did not say that the United States supports a legally binding agreement as the result of that process. The EU has supported both a process and the result being a legally binding agreement.”
The alliance with the least developed countries, the group of small island states and the African group shows that the EU strategy is gaining majority of more than 120 countries out of 190 nations at the summit, Huhne said.
Legally Binding
“If we get the kind of road map that countries have called for, the EU has called for, that the U.S. supports, for preparing for and negotiating a future regime, whether it ends up being legally binding or not, we don’t know yet, but we are strongly committed to promptly starting a process to move forward on that,” Stern told reporters at a briefing today.
The EU plan to sketch out a timeline for a global climate treaty also gained support from Brazil, whose Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo said, “This is not something that will divide us in the final hours of this conference.”
Venezuelan chief climate envoy Claudia Salerno said in an interview today that “forces are converging for a positive outcome” in Durban.
Today’s pact calls for a package of measures to be agreed tomorrow that would ensure the increase in temperature does not exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre- industrial levels.
Drought and Floods
Exceeding that ceiling will cause more intense heat waves, floods and storms, a United Nations scientific panel on climate change has said.
The first step needed to reach that goal is the adoption by the EU and other developed countries of post-2012 targets under the Kyoto Protocol, according to Lidegaard.
“The other is that in the same package we decide that within a few years we’ll make a new common legally binding agreement which all countries, all big emitters, will be part of and will be legally bound by in the same way, but of course with different levels according to their state of development,” he said in an interview in Durban. “Thirdly, the Green Climate Fund should be placed and should start.”
Envoys have made progress in the talks on the fund that will channel a portion of $100 billion in aid pledged by rich nations to developing ones by 2020, Lidegaard said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ewa Krukowska in Durban, South Africa at ekrukowska@bloomberg.net Alex Morales in Durban, South Africa at amorales2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net
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