News | Climate Change

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6932UG20101004

In a strategic shift, the United Nations has stopped urging nations to commit to tougher pledges to curb carbon emissions, fearing further debate could derail already fraught talks on a more ambitious climate pact.

It is better to start with pledges already offered and build from there, officials say, given the short time left to hammer out a pact that broadens the existing Kyoto Protocol by signing up all major emitters to fight climate change.
This effort is critical to ensure there is no gap after the end of Kyoto's first phase in 2012, to assure certainty to investors in the $2.7-billion U.N. carbon market.
"These pledges fall short of expectations but are not likely to change in the short run," senior U.N. climate official Halldor Thorgeirsson said in a speech late last month. "Continuing to negotiate ambition delays delivery of action."
The comments recognize that the talks risk stalling over the bitter issue of sharing the emissions-cutting burden between rich and poor nations and the lack of trust between major players, such top emitters China and the United States.
One senior climate negotiator called the move damage control.
Thorgeirsson's comments are also recognition that existing pledges won't stop the world warming well beyond an agreed temperature limit of less than 2 degrees Celsius.
Above this temperature, scientists say the world faces dangerous climate change, such as crop failures and wilder weather swings such as those that brought floods in Pakistan and drought in Russia this year.
Governments should focus on securing formal pledges of the emissions cuts already proposed, "fully realizing it is a first, necessary but insufficient step," the U.N.'s top climate official, Christiana Figueres, told Reuters on the sidelines of U.N. climate talks in China.
The one-week talks began on Monday in the northern city of Tianjin and aim to try and find a way forward ahead of a major meeting in the Mexican resort of Cancun from late November.
CHALLENGES
Negotiators are looking for ways to formalize the existing pledges of rich and poor nations listed under the Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding pact agreed amid acrimony at climate talks last year in Denmark.
A leaked U.N. report last year said the pledges would mean a world temperature rise of 3 degrees C. Scientists say greenhouse gas levels are rising quickly from big emitters such as China and that there is little time to act.
Tough targets are also crucial to help governments and businesses frame policies to guide investment away from polluting fossil fuels into green energy, such as wind and solar power.
Mobilizing potentially trillions of dollars in private capital is key to the climate fight and the final shape of any new climate pact will help determine how this money is spent.