Tagged: Kyoto Protocal
China-led bloc to consider Kyoto climate pact future
Reuters | Wed Apr 21, 2010 | 12:19pm IST
A bloc of the world’s fastest growing carbon emitters, seen as key to a global deal on climate change, appears for the first time willing to discuss the future of the Kyoto Protocol to get the United States on board. Kyoto binds about 40 rich nations to cut emissions by 2008-12 and developing countries want a tougher second commitment period. That demand is opposed by many developed nations that want to jettison Kyoto to include emerging markets like India and China. Next week’s meeting of the environment ministers of Brazil, South Africa, India and China – the so-called BASIC nations – will look at ways to bridge a trust deficit with rich nations, according to its agenda, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.
"How long will the Kyoto Protocol survive? Could we envisage a shorter second commitment period designed solely to secure carbon markets?" said the agenda of the meeting to be held in South Africa on April 25-26. "If no second commitment period, what would replace Kyoto?" was another question listed on the agenda. Unmitigated distrust between rich and poorer nations about who should do how much has stalled negotiations for a global deal to fight climate change. Officials say they are less hopeful of a broader deal in Mexico in November. So a willingness on the part of the BASIC nations to soften their stand on the Kyoto Protocol could help break the negotiations logjam and bring on board the United States which never ratified the protocol.
Climate deal unlikely unless economy lifts – India
Davos | Reuters | Fri Jan 29, 2010 | 2:26am IST
U.N. climate talks will “probably not” agree an ambitious deal this year unless the economy improves and voters press for action, said India’s top climate official Shyam Saran. “If the economic and financial crisis continues or even worsens during the coming year then the kind of ambitious response that the world expects is probably not going to happen,” said India’s special envoy on climate change, on the fringes of a business and policy summit in Davos. “But if the situation improves … if there is much more public opinion pressure on governments domestically … that remains to be seen.”
The financial crisis had contributed to deadlock at last month’s climate talks, by heightening concerns that climate laws would drive jobs overseas, for example to the developing world, if they faced less onerous targets, said Saran. Saran hinted at compromise, however, on a major stumbling block in Copenhagen last month — but the United States first must agree to make its proposed targets to curb carbon emissions enforceable under international law. The United States never ratified the existing Kyoto Protocol, whose present commitments expire in 2012, and time is running out for the world to agree and then ratify a successor pact. The United States has said it will not sign up to an extended Kyoto Protocol, preferring a new agreement. Continue reading
“Earth to Ban Ki-moon” or how a deal was sealed in Copenhagen
Reuters blog | December 23rd, 2009 | 03:26
Sweden complained that the recent Copenhagen climate change summit was a “disaster.” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described it as “at best flawed and at worst chaotic.” Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, dubbed the outcome confirmation of “climate apartheid.” For South Africa it was simply “not acceptable.” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who for over a year had been urging the 192 members of the United Nations to “seal the deal” in Copenhagen, saw things differently. In a statement issued by his press office, Ban said the two-week meeting had a “successful conclusion with substantive outcomes.” Speaking to reporters, the secretary-general expanded on that: “Finally we sealed the deal. And it is a real deal. Bringing world leaders to the table paid off.” However, he tempered his praise for the participating delegations by noting that the outcome “may not be everything that everyone hoped for.”
In fact, the outcome fell far short of what Ban had been calling for over the last year. He had originally hoped the meeting would produce a legally binding agreement with ambitious targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and funding to help developing nations cope with global warming. Instead, it “noted” an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that were widely criticized as Continue reading
India, China stronger from climate meet – Pachauri
Reuters | NEW DELHI | Wed Dec 23, 2009 | 5:24pm IST
The grouping of China, India, Brazil and South Africa has emerged as a significant force in Copenhagen and they could lead the way in future negotiations, the head of the U.N. climate panel said on Wednesday. A climate change meeting ended last week in Copenhagen with a non-legally binding political agreement at the last moment between the United States and the big developing countries — China, India, Brazil and South Africa that forms the BASIC group. The next climate change meet is in Mexico next year, where countries hope to reach a legally binding agreement.
“What has happened politically which is very significant is the emergence of this grouping of Brazil, South Africa, India and China,” Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in New Delhi. “Undoubtedly whatever agreement comes into existence by the time Mexico completes its conference of the parties, will necessarily have to deal with the power of this group (BASIC).” In November, the BASIC countries forged a united front in Beijing to put pressure on developed countries in Copenhagen. India said the BASIC countries were successful in thwarting global pressure to agree to a legally-binding emissions cut. Continue reading
ANALYSIS – Climate deal won’t cap warming, big gaps
Reuters | COPENHAGEN | Sat Dec 19, 2009 | 6:04am IST
A climate deal among world leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama puts off many tough decisions until 2010 and sets the planet on track to overshoot goals for limiting global warming. Obama spoke of “the beginning of a new era of international action” but many other leaders said it was “imperfect”, “not sufficient” and at best a “modest success” if it gets formally adopted by all 193 nations in Copenhagen on Saturday. Problems faced by China and the United States — the world’s top emitters — stood in the way of a stronger deal for the world’s first pact to combat climate change since the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol in 1997.
In big advances, the deal adds a promise of $100 billion a year to help developing nations from 2020 and promotes the use of forests to soak up carbon dioxide. But it is unclear where the cash will come from. European leaders fell in reluctantly after Obama announced the deal with China, India, South Africa and Brazil. It was drafted by 28 nations ranging from OPEC oil producers to small island states. A drawback is that the deal is not legally binding — a key demand of many developing nations. The text instead suggests an end-2010 deadline for transforming it into a legal text that had long been expected in Copenhagen. Continue reading
China, US hold key to UN climate talks
Reuters | Fri Dec 18, 2009 | 9:10pm IST
World leaders tried to rescue a global climate agreement on Friday but the failure of leading greenhouse gas emitters China and the United States to come up with new proposals blocked chances of an ambitious deal. U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders are trying to reach consensus on carbon emissions cuts, financial aid to poor nations, temperature caps and international scrutiny of emissions curbs. There has been progress in some areas, but gaps remain over emissions targets and monitoring, delegates said. “We are ready to get this done today but there has to be movement on all sides, to recognise that it is better for us to act than talk,” Obama told the conference. “These international discussions have essentially taken place now for almost two decades and we have very little to show for it other than an increase, an acceleration of the climate change phenomenon. The time for talk is over.”
At stake is an agreement for coordinated global action to avert climate change including more floods and droughts. Two weeks of talks in Copenhagen have battled suspicion between rich and poor countries over how to share out emissions cuts. Developing countries, among them Continue reading
India says Kyoto climate pact in ‘intensive care’
Reuters | Wed Dec 16, 2009 | 6:08pm IST
The Kyoto Protocol which binds nearly 40 rich nations to limit carbon emissions is in “intensive care” and global negotiations to extend the pact have stalled, India’s environment minister said on Wednesday. More than 190 countries are meeting in Copenhagen to agree the outlines of a new global deal to combat climate change, hoping to seal a full treaty next year to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Developing countries want rich nations to be held to their Kyoto obligations, and sign up to a second round of tougher commitments from 2013. But Jairam Ramesh said many developed countries were “vehemently opposing” the protocol and some of them wanted a single new accord obliging all nations to fight global warming. “The sense we get is that Kyoto is in intensive care if not dead,” Ramesh told reporters.
The protocol obliges nearly 40 industrialised nations to limit emissions by at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. It does not impose curbs on poorer nations. Talks on a pact to succeed Kyoto have been sluggish since they started two years ago, largely because rich nations want to merge Kyoto into a single new accord obliging all nations to fight global warming. Industrialised nations want a single track largely because the United States, the world’s second biggest carbon emitter, never ratified Kyoto. They fear signing up for a binding new Continue reading
Obama Faces ‘Constipagen’ on Global Warming Accord in Denmark
Bloomberg | December 15, 2009 | 19:00 EST
World leaders will arrive in the Danish capital of Copenhagen over the next three days to agree on a pact to fight global warming. There may be nothing to sign. Envoys from China, the U.S., the European Union and India, the world’s top polluters, have bickered, quarreled and walked out during talks among 193 nations. They’ve left presidents and prime ministers a choice between fudge or a flop for the accord that the United Nations framed as the most comprehensive deal to curb global warming. “Countries and blocks of countries have come here with very hard positions,” Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo said yesterday in an interview in Copenhagen. “You need some seismic shifts to really close a deal.”
The angst in conference rooms has been reflected on the streets, with protesters fighting riot police as Denmark mounted the biggest security operation in its history. More than half of Denmark’s 10,500 police are providing security for the talks at Copenhagen’s Bella Center, which can hold 15,000 people. The difficulty for the police is 46,000 people have tried to get into the talks in the city dubbed ‘Hopenhagen,’ leaving thousands waiting outside in freezing temperatures and yelling at security. “We’re calling it Constipagen because the line’s not moving and the talks are not moving,” said Jasmine Hyman, who works for the Geneva-based Gold standard Foundation that certifies carbon offsets. She said it took her eight hours to get in. Continue reading
Climate progress eludes ministers, protesters held
Reuters | Mon Dec 14, 2009 | 8:29am IST
Environment ministers struggled to nudge forward climate talks in Copenhagen on Sunday, and police detained more than 250 protesters on a second day of mass action. Church leaders handed a petition with half a million signatures to the United Nations and prayed for climate justice, while hundreds of demonstrators marched through the city centre for a second day to remind world leaders of the huge public pressure for a successful deal at the Dec 7-18 talks. “We are telling them: Hey you, you who are sitting there making the decisions, the world are waiting for a real agreement,” South African Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu told a crowd in the city centre.
The day after a huge demonstration flared into violence and prompted the largest mass arrest in Danish history, police shut down a small march they said had not been authorised, detaining almost all who had joined it for disturbing the peace. More than 90 ministers had met informally, on their day off from official negotiations between 190 nations, to try to break an impasse between rich and poor over who is responsible for emissions cuts, how deep they should be, and who should pay. There was a positive atmosphere, but the talks apparently achieved little beyond a consensus that time is running out. Continue reading
EU makes 7bn euro climate pledge
BBC NEWS | 2009/12/11 | 12:18:23 GMT
EU leaders have agreed to pay 7.2bn Euros (£6.5bn; $10.6bn) over the next three years to help developing nations adapt to climate change. Announcing the deal, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said all 27 EU member nations would contribute and the EU was taking its “fair share.” The leaders of the UK and France said the EU should commit to reduce its emissions by 30% on 1990 levels. The EU finance deal may boost the UN climate talks in Copenhagen. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the UK’s contribution to the international fund, at £500m (553m Euros; $800m) a year was at the moment the highest among the EU nations. But, he added: “I believe that when the final figures are made available, France and Germany will also be putting up very substantial sums.”
Earlier, Mr. Brown and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy told a news conference their two nations would contribute at least £1.5bn (1.7bn Euros; $2.4bn) spread over three years. The BBC’s Oana Lungescu in Brussels says the joint French and British news conference was an unprecedented show of unity meant to boost Europe’s efforts to get a deal in Copenhagen. The money being sought is for a “fast start” contribution to help the world’s poorest nations tackle rising sea levels, deforestation, water shortages and other consequences of climate change between 2010 and 2012, and reduce their own emissions. Continue reading
Kyoto Protocol seen extended in UN climate draft
Reuters | Thu Dec 10, 2009 | 1:59am IST
An enhanced version of the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol is set to be part of the fight against global warming until 2020, according to a draft text by Denmark which is hosting talks on a new climate agreement. “Parties to the Kyoto Protocol … decide that further commitments for developed countries should take the form of quantified (greenhouse gas) emission limitation and reduction objectives,” according to the text, intended as the possible basis for an agreement at the Copenhagen talks, which Reuters obtained on Wednesday. The Kyoto Protocol, agreed in 1997, obliges all industrialised nations except the United States to cut greenhouse gas emissions until 2012. In Copenhagen, 190 nations are puzzling over how to work out a wider deal involving all countries in combating global warming until 2020.
Many rich nations favour a single United Nations pact to succeed Kyoto. But poor nations, which say the rich want to “Kill Kyoto”, prefer two tracks — Kyoto with deep emissions cuts for the rich and a new, less binding accord for the poor. The four-page text, dated Nov. 30, suggests that the Kyoto Protocol may survive the Dec. 7-18 meeting in Copenhagen, alongside a new pact that would spell out obligations by developing nations and the United States, the only industrialised nation outside Kyoto. The text said that international emissions trading and other mechanisms under Kyoto, including a scheme for promoting green technologies in developing nations, should be “enhanced.” Continue reading
Draft text divides climate summit
BBC NEWS | 2009/12/08 | 19:06:42 GMT
Documents leaked at the UN climate summit reveal divisions between industrialised and developing countries over the shape of a possible new deal. Campaigners say a draft text proposed by the Danish host government would disadvantage poorer nations. It also sees everything coming under a single new deal, whereas an alternative text from developing countries wants an extension to the Kyoto Protocol. Other blocs are expected to release their own texts in the next few days. Chairmen of working groups will then have to turn the various documents into a political document that 100-odd world leaders, plus delegates representing all other nations, could sign at the end of the conference. The Danish document, plus the alternative text submitted by the BASIC group (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) were discussed by a small group of key countries in Copenhagen last week. But the Danish proposal had remained under wraps until The Guardian newspaper published it on its website during the second afternoon of the conference.
More ambition
The documents show that at the broadest level, developed and developing worlds are split on several points:
- The level of cuts from developed countries
- The establishment of a target date by which global emissions should peak and begin to fall
- Most fundamentally, the shape of any future deal.
The BASIC draft sees emission reductions from developed countries coming under the Kyoto Protocol, whereas the Danish draft envisages all measures coming under a single new agreement. Although this might appear a technical point, developing countries have so far remained Continue reading
Participants overcrowd UN climate change conference
Xinhuanet | 2009-12-09 | 18:09:13
Government officials, representatives from non-governmental organizations (NGO) and journalists overcrowded a UN climate change conference which kicked off on Monday. The Danish government had expected 15,000 participants for the event, a key meeting that would pave the way for an international agreement on further reduction of green-house gas emissions after the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. But more than double that number, 34,000 people on Sunday asked to physically attend the meeting, forcing the organizer to issue a media alert and apply limits on the number of journalists and NGO representatives allowed to enter since the maximum capacity of the Bella Center, the venue of the conference, is 15,000.
“Due to these constraints, NGO delegates will be allowed access to the building according to a quota system,” according to which only a prearranged percentage of each organization’s representatives can get inside during peak times, the conference’s secretariat and the Danish government said in a joint statement. “Also due to the space constraints, a maximum of 3,500 journalists will be allowed access to the Bella Center at this point in time,” they said. For fear that even more people will come for the official opening ceremony on Monday morning, the organizer simply barred media and NGO representatives who arrive late from picking up their badges to enter. “No exceptions will be made,” they said. Continue reading
China announces targets on carbon emission cuts
Xinhua | 2009-11-26 | 15:59:58
- China is going to cut the carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP in 2020 by 40 to 45%.
- This is “a voluntary action” taken by the Chinese government “based on our own national conditions.”
- China will also devote major efforts to developing renewable and nuclear energies.
The State Council announced Thursday that China is going to reduce the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP in 2020 by 40 to 45 percent compared with the level of 2005. This is a “voluntary action” taken by the Chinese government “based on our own national conditions” and “is a major contribution to the global effort in tackling climate change,” the State Council said. In a meeting presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao Wednesday, the State Council reviewed a national task plan addressing climate change.
A press statement released Thursday said the index of carbon dioxide emissions cuts, announced for the first time by China, would be “a binding goal” to be incorporated into China’s medium and long-term national social and economic development plans. New measures would be formulated to audit, monitor and assess its implementation, said the statement. Wu Changhua, the Greater China director of the Britain- Continue reading
Leaked emails stoke climate debate
AP | November 22, 2009 | 7:29AM
Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research centre in Britain and posted hundreds of private emails and documents online – stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change. The University of East Anglia, in eastern England, said in a statement on Saturday that the hackers had entered the server and stolen data at its Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research centre on climate change. The university said police are investigating the theft of the information, but could not confirm if all the materials posted online are genuine. More than a decade of correspondence between leading British and US scientists is included in about 1,000 emails and 3,000 documents posted on websites following the security breach last week. Some climate change sceptics and bloggers claim the information shows scientists have overstated the case for global warming, and allege the documents contain proof that some researchers have attempted to manipulate data.
The furore over the leaked data comes weeks before the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, when 192 nations will seek to reach a binding treaty to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases worldwide. Many officials – including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon – regard the prospects of a pact being sealed at the meeting as bleak. In one leaked email, the research centre’s director, Phil Continue reading
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