News | Climate Change

http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/a-year-in-the-hot-seat/69835.aspx

Commissioner vows to push for climate deal and praises ‘balanced' agreement at Cancún.

Europe must keep up the pressure in 2011 for a strong global deal on climate change, says Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action. Although the international climate negotiations in Cancún last month concluded with a better agreement than had been expected, she believes there is still a long way to go to nail down a new climate treaty.
Back in her office on the ninth floor of the Berlaymont, the Commission headquarters, Hedegaard is brisk and businesslike about what has to be done to make the most of the Cancúnnegotations, which, she says, exceeded expectations.
The EU came away from Cancún with “the balanced package” that she wanted – that is, agreements on forestry, adaptation and climate finance, as well as an unexpected breakthrough on the politically sensitive issue of monitoring China's emissions.
The Cancún agreement “really stretched some parties...they really went as far as they could go,” she says, naming Japan and Russia. Europe, she says, is cast in the role of “demandeur”. “We still have things we would like to see,” she observes, while “there are probably others who would not mind that much if the Cancún agreement was basically that”.
In Hedegaard's view, the EU's “stepwise approach” – working through issues one by one, rather than the all-or-nothing approach that came unstuck in December 2009 at the Copenhagen meeting – has helped the international talks recover their momentum. Now she wants a similar reflection period inside the EU to work out its next steps on the road to the UN climate summit in South Africa at the end of 2011. The first round of climate-change pledges under the Kyoto protocol are to expire at the end of 2012, so time is short to find a successor agreement.
Legal complications
The most difficult issue will be the legal form of a climate deal, Hedegaard thinks. Should a new climate agreement be an extension of the Kyoto protocol (as favoured by developed countries) or a brand new agreement (as preferred by some developed countries, notably Japan)?
The issue nearly derailed agreement in Cancún, which was saved only by postponing the question. Another challenge in South Africa will be getting countries to take action to reduce their emissions in line with the overall goal of keeping global warming below 2°C. Hedegaardnotes that current pledges “bring us 60% of the way to staying below 2°C...we still have some work to do”.
Despite this, she is not at the moment calling on the EU to deepen its emissions reduction target, from the current target of a 20% reduction by 2020 to 30%. She rejects the idea that Europe's credibility is lost by not upping its pledge. “Everyone knows that you cannot find a region in the world that has made as ambitious targets as Europe,” she says, adding: “In the very close future, it is not very likely that some of the other big economies will move a lot on this one.”
The question will, however, return. While Hedegaard does not advocate 30%, she argues that doing less now will mean having to do more later. “If you did not do a lot by 2020, then you would have a more steep road to 2050,” she says.
And Europe may lose out to other competitors in the race for green technologies: “The choice we have in Europe is whether we want to do more to stimulate our own innovation, to stimulate our own green growth.”
America's ‘problem'
Since Copenhagen, the EU seems to have put less stress on the US. Hedegaard does not see the absence of climate legislation in the US as a stumbling block to a climate deal. “The lack of legislation is primarily the Americans' problem,” she says, a shift in tone compared to the pleas for American action from EU politicians in the run-up to Copenhagen.
In the coming months, the EU's domestic action will be to the fore again. This spring the Commission will publish a low-carbon plan for 2050, with ‘roadmaps' for energy and transport, as well as a proposal for a target for greenhouse-gas reduction by 2030.
Controlling emissions in the transport sector could be the trickiest task, but the commissioner steers away from a message of blanket austerity. “Transport since 1990 has only gone one way and that is up. They have increased their emissions significantly in the last 20 years. So to have substantial reductions by 2050, one should not think that is very easy.” Individual mobility is still desirable, she says, but “the mobility of the individual” must not mean “the immobility of the collective”.