Copenhagen Climate Treaty

New UN Battles Loom Over Copenhagen Climate Accord

April 12, 2010

Reuters - Delegates from 175-nations agreed on two extra sessions of U.N. climate control talks this year at the end of a tortuous meeting in Bonn that presaged big battles ahead over the non-binding Copenhagen Accord.

The Copenhagen Accord seeks to limit a rise in average world temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) over pre-industrial times but does not spell out how.

Reached at a fractious U.N. climate summit in December, the accord was strongly backed by Washington and bitterly opposed by some developing nations, though it also holds out the prospect of $100 billion climate aid a year from 2020.

"This process has big problems," said Annie Petsonk of the U.S.-based Environmental Defense Fund, at the end of the meeting in Bonn.

The session had been due to end on Sunday, but delegates wrangled deep into the night over a two-page plan to guide negotiations, with several hours spent on the wording of what appeared to be uncontroversial phrases.

The final text skirted one of the biggest problems -- the fate of the Copenhagen Accord. The December summit had disappointed many by failing to come up with a binding treaty.

"We have just about worked out the procedural kinks -- save the big one, which is what to do about the way in which we will respond to the Copenhagen Accord," Dessima Williams of Grenada, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, told Reuters.

The accord was not mentioned by name in the Bonn workplan.

Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe of Zimbabwe, who chaired the U.N. talks and will draw up new draft texts by May 17, said the phrasing had a "constructive ambiguity...to me it seems to cover the work that was done to produce the Copenhagen Accord."

The Accord has backing from almost 120 of 194 member states, including top emitters China, the United States, the European Union, Russia and India.

It faces opposition led by countries such as Bolivia, Cuba, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Some developing nations complained that rich countries pledged insufficient action under the Accord to stop disaster for millions of people from floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.

By contrast, Saudi Arabia fears a shift from oil to renewable energies.

Bolivia said that the Bonn meeting had ruled the Accord out of negotiations that will culminate in a ministerial meeting in Mexico in November and December.

"Despite continual attempts by the U.S. to make the completely unacceptable Copenhagen Accord the basis for future negotiations, I am glad to say they failed," said Pablo Solon, Bolivia's chief delegate.

The U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, said he did not expect a breakthrough to achieve a new treaty in Mexico.

For a $125 billion carbon market, failure to agree a global legally binding deal would be "regrettable" but tough national policies were more important, said one expert.

"It is cap and trade which is driving this market," said Andrei Marcu, head of regulatory and policy affairs at oil trading firm Mercuria.

Cap and trade schemes control industrial carbon emissions by forcing companies to buy from a fixed quota of emissions permits.

A European scheme is at the center of a carbon market which could grow significantly if the United States passes a climate bill this year.

"I'm looking very much to what the U.S. will do," said Marcu, who was upbeat that the Bonn meeting had re-launched talks which "fell apart" in Copenhagen.

Climate Negotiators Resume Talks in First Meeting Since Copenhagen Summit

April 8, 2010

Reuters - Climate negotiators meet in Bonn on Friday for the first time since the fractious Copenhagen summit but with scant hopes of patching together a new legally binding U.N. deal in 2010.

Delegates from 170 nations gathered on Thursday for the April 9-11 meeting that will seek to rebuild trust after the December summit disappointed many by failing to agree a binding U.N. deal at the climax of two years of talks.

Bonn will decide a programme for meetings in 2010 and air ideas about the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, backed by more than 110 nations including major emitters China, the United States, Russia and India but opposed by some developing states.

The Accord seeks to limit world temperature rises to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F), but without saying how.

"We need to reassess the situation after Copenhagen," said Bruno Sekoli of Lesotho, who speaks on behalf of the least developed nations who want far tougher cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to limit temperature rises to less than 1.5 C.

Many nations favor progress on practical steps in 2010, such as aid to developing nations to combat climate change that is meant to total about $10 billion a year from 2010-12 under the Copenhagen Accord, rising to $100 billion a year from 2020.

Delegates said perhaps two extra sessions of talks were likely to be added before the next annual ministerial talks in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29-December 10. That would mean a less hectic pace than last year's run-up to Copenhagen.

"There has been a constructive attitude" in informal preparatory talks in Tokyo and Mexico, said Harald Dovland, a Norwegian official who is the vice-chair of U.N. talks on a new deal to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol.

COPENHAGEN

But it is unclear what will happen to the Copenhagen Accord.

The United States is among the strongest backers of the Copenhagen Accord, but many developing nations do not want it to supplant the 1992 Climate Convention which they reckon stresses that the rich have to lead the way.

"I don't believe that the Copenhagen Accord will become the new legal framework," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told reporters in a briefing about Bonn last week.

He also doubted a legally binding deal would be reached in 2010, saying he hoped Cancun would agree the basic architecture "so that a year later, you can decide or not decide to turn that into a treaty." The 2011 meeting is in South Africa.

Wendel Trio, of environmental group Greenpeace, said many nations had to toughen their targets for curbing greenhouse gas emissions if they wanted to stay below a 2 degrees Celsius rise.

"The pledges so far will probably take us to somewhere between 3.5 and 4 degrees Celsius," he said. That would spur dangerous changes such as floods, heatwaves, droughts, more extinctions and rising sea levels.

In other signs of a revival of talks, the United States will host a meeting of major economies in Washington on April 18-19, top U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern said on Wednesday.

He said he did not know if a legal U.N. treaty could be reached in 2010. One hurdle to a pact is that U.S. legislation to cap emissions is stalled in the U.S. Senate.