News | Climate Change

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=adKxVe1DKNpo&pid=20601087

The objective of this year’s climate summit should be to agree on the “architecture” for reducing global warming and restoring international trust, the United Nations top climate official said today.

The Kyoto climate-protection treaty expires in 2012 and negotiators are meeting in Cancun, Mexico, late in November and early December to work out new mechanisms to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. The Copenhagen summit failed last December to reach a binding agreement, settling for a more limited political accord.
Suspicions on the part of developing nations that industrialized countries may not stick to their emission- reduction targets are among the reasons why progress at the UN- sponsored climate talks has been so slow, said Yvo de Boer, who will be stepping down as head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on July 1.
“Our ambition in Cancun should not be a second step, which is agreeing on a legally binding treaty, but a first step that is to put together and implement an architecture on mitigation, adaptation, capacity building and financing to give developing countries the confidence that the second step would be worthwhile,” de Boer told the European Parliament in Brussels.
At Copenhagen, richer countries pledged to spend $30 billion by 2012 in so-called fast-start financing to help poor nations reduce carbon emissions blamed for global warming.
Quickly rolling out financing to the least-developed nations is one condition to build confidence, de Boer said.
Aid, Emissions
To restore trust after Copenhagen’s shortcomings, negotiators must also create a financial mechanism for distribution of long-term aid and industrialized nations must pledge ambitious emission-reduction goals, he said, calling on the European Union to boost its emissions-cut target.
The 27-nation EU plans a 20 percent cut in emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 from 1990 levels and has said it will raise that to 30 percent depending on similar commitments from developed nations outside Europe. The bloc stopped short of that in Copenhagen, citing a lack of effort by the U.S. and China.
“The 30 percent is not off the table,” EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard told the Brussels hearing, adding that the bloc’s executive is working on an analysis on such a move and will present it in June.
Hedegaard has repeatedly said the EU wants to lead the global campaign to reduce greenhouse gases and keep the global rise in temperatures since industrialization in the 1800s to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
‘Compliment’ Treaty
While in Copenhagen negotiators sought to replace the Kyoto protocol, they are now seeking to extend and “complement” the existing treaty, Mexico special envoy Luis Alfonso de Alba said in Brussels earlier today.
Ironing out a new climate-protection deal requires time and understanding, de Boer told the hearing.
“Imagine that you own a house and someone comes along and advises to sell below market value and encourages you to sign a purchase contract on a new house that’s not only very expensive but you’re also not allowed to see it before you sign the contract,” he said.
“This is the way I think may developing countries feel about the abandonment of Kyoto and the choice of a new legal instrument.”