Rich-poor hurdle in climate deal
2008-12-16 08:41
Poznan - World leaders led by President-elect Barack Obama may be needed to help agree even a modest UN climate treaty in 2009 after a rift deepened between rich and poor nations over funds and new goals to cut emissions.
About 190 nations aim to work out a new treaty by
mid-December 2009, but two weeks of preparatory talks in Poland
ended on Saturday with developing nations accusing the rich of
doing too little to help them cope with impacts such as
droughts, floods, disease and rising seas.
"Poznan achieved what it was supposed to, but it ended on a
rather grim note," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change
Secretariat, told Reuters after countries including Brazil and
India faulted the rich for a lack of generosity.
"It's a worrying sign that people are taking up positions
for a hard negotiation," he said of the sour closing session.
Lacklustre
The Poznan talks, attended by environment ministers to
review progress halfway through a two-year push for a new
treaty, showed that more than half the work remained to be done.
The Poznan talks lacked the urgency and ambition of 2007,
when they were launched at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia.
In Bali, a core group of 40 ministers stayed up one night in
negotiations almost until dawn.
One evening in Poznan, when
talks came to a crunch, many in the same group sent deputies to
negotiate and went to a party.
After the latest meeting De Boer welcomed a suggestion by
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for a summit in New York in
September 2009 to get world leaders, including Obama, involved.
Many other experts agree a push from the top is needed to
secure a new treaty after faded hopes in Poznan.
Many are
pinning hopes on Obama, who has promised a more aggressive
climate policy than President George W Bush.
"We are concerned about the widening gap in trust between
developed and developing countries," South Africa's Environment
Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said.
"Some developed countries
are still playing hide-and-seek with the climate."
"A passive EU joined the US as the second lame duck in the
Poznan pond, while Canada, Japan, Australia and Saudi Arabia
openly undermined progress," said Kim Carstensen of World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
Achievement
At Poznan, a main achievement was to unblock a fund to help
developing nations adapt to the impacts of climate change - for
instance by building flood defences, or developing drought- or
flood-resistant crops.
But the fund would draw on credits totalling only $80
million - a fraction of the tens of billions of dollars a year
the United Nations says will be needed by 2030 to help adapt to
climate change.
Julia Marton-Lefevre, head of the International Union for
Conservation of Nature, suggested a new approach to the glacial
pace of UN talks.
"These talks focus too much on what governments should do.
I'd like to see meetings of ordinary people around the world to
discuss what they can do to change lifestyles and cut
emissions," she told Reuters.