Barcelona meeting 'critical' to sealing pact in Copenhagen

Delegates from 192 countries are meeting for a five-day convention in Barcelona ahead of a highly anticipated showdown in Copenhagen in December. The meeting has been called "critical" to sealing a pact on climate change.

AFP - Negotiators meeting for a final session before a worldwide conference on climate change heard urgent demands on Monday to craft simple, clear options for politicians facing next month's haggle in Copenhagen.
  
"The clock has almost ticked down to zero and, as always, time will fly," the head of the UN's climate convention, Yvo de Boer, warned the 192-nation forum, meeting in Barcelona until Friday.
  
"These last five days are critical on the road to success to Copenhagen. They need to be used wisely."
  
Senior officials have been meeting over the last two years, following a "road map" designed to lead a December 7-18 showdown in Copenhagen that will build a new pact on climate change beyond 2012.
  
But the negotiations are mired in discord.
  
Rich countries and poor countries are squabbling over how to apportion curbs in carbon emissions, finance a switch to lower-pollution technology and shore up defences against climate change.
  
Successive rounds have given birth to a baffling and bloated draft text, whose forest of brackets denotes discord.
  
Connie Hedegaard, Danish minister for climate and energy, who will chair the Copenhagen talks, urged negotiators to "cut the plenaries short and go directly to smaller negotiating groups and informals" to spur progress.
  
"Your job now is to create clear options for politicians, clear options across the building blocks, in order for ministers to decide in Copenhagen."
  
Hedegaard admitted Copenhagen would not deliver a complete treaty, as many people around the world had initially hoped.
  
"Of course, we will not solve every single detail in Copenhagen, but Copenhagen must deliver a coherent and ambitious answer to the challenge," she said.
  
Delegates should not be tempted to postpone the business of getting down to the nitty-gritty, she said.
  
"The world can wait no longer," said Hedegaard. "I know that striking a deal is not easy, but do any of you believe it's going to be any easier next spring, next year or the year after? You know it's not going to be any easier. Failure is the only thing we can't afford."
  
Small-island states and the so-called G77 and China bloc of developing countries said the deal at Copenhagen had to be given legal cement to prevent backsliding.
  
There has to be "a comprehensive, meaningful and legally binding agreement in Copenhagen," said the delegate for the Caribbean state of Grenada, representing small island nations that could be badly hit by climate change.
  
The future treaty would take effect beyond the end of 2012, when current provisions of the UN's Kyoto Protocol expire.
  
The five-day talks should yield the first responses to the finance proposals agreed by the European Union (EU), which deems itself the world's leader on climate change.
  
An EU summit in Brussels last Friday said developing nations would need 100 billion euros (147 billion dollars) worth of help annually by 2020.
  
But the leaders failed to say how much of that money would be coming from Europe, amid strong differences mainly between the poor eastern European nations and the richer west.
  
Oxfam on Monday said rich countries should stump up "at least 110 billion euros" (161 billion dollars) annually.
  
"Europe and America's fair share of this global total is around 35 billion euros (51.45 billion dollars) each per year, based on their historical responsibility for creating the climate crisis and financial capacity to tackle it," the British charity said.
  
Scientists are clamouring for early, drastic measures to curb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuels and deforestation.
  
On present trends, these heat-trapping gases could cause catastrophic damage to the world's climate system, leading to hunger, drought, rising oceans and melting snowcaps just decades from now, they say.

Date created : 2009-11-02