Bangkok climate talks end on uncertain note

By: G M Mourtoza on October 10th, 2009

Bangkok, 10 October:  The two-week-long  United Nations climate change talks ended here yesterday with participants urged to abandon  self-interest and work for a fair and  equitable agreement to this global crisis.

Developing countries, scientists and environmental groups called on world leaders to show their political commitment to reach an agreement at the final round of negotiations, the UN summit in Copenhagen in December.

Still to be resolved is the argument over different countries’ commitments to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide (CO2). Other points at issue include finance to help developing countries adapt to the impacts of a changing climate, and supporting them through capacity building.

Developed and developing countries are still deeply divided on some of these key areas.

In his final briefing  the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change,  Yvo de Boer,  said all the ingredients needed for the success of the Copenhagen conference were on the table. But the remaining hurdles could not be crossed if the parties did not leave self-interest behind and recognise their common interests.

“An impression being created here that the USA wants to kill the Kyoto Protocol has made it difficult to advance the process in a constructive atmosphere”, he said in a reference to the existing global climate treaty, whose future will be discussed in Copenhagen.

Mr. De Boer said it was mistaken to argue that time was running out. There were five more days for negotiation at the final pre-Copenhagen meeting, to be held in Barcelona next month. But without real advances in some areas it would be difficult to continue to work in good faith.

Apart from good progress in a number of areas, including adaptation and technology transfer, the Bangkok meeting made advances in narrowing differences on various issues, said Michael Zammit Cutajar, Chair of the Convention’s Ad-hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA).

He said no-one had expected everything to be resolved in Bangkok, particularly the issues of the level of commitment of developed countries to mitigation (trying to slow the increase in global temperatures) and of financial support for developing countries.

Both de Boer and Zammit Cutajar said the negotiators had done their utmost, and had made useful progress on the text to be negotiated in Copenhagen.

China’s special climate change envoy, Yu Qingtai, told journalists it seemed as though the  industrialised nations’ negotiators either didn’t follow their leaders  or else hadn’t received any new instructions to move the negotiations forward.

He said the Bangkok talks had largely failed to deliver any substantive progress on targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or on the transfer of technology and finance from rich to poor nations for adaptation and mitigation.

The Indian Prime Minster’s special envoy for climate change, Shyam Saran, said: “One area of hope is that countries are now reaching agreement that adaptation is essential to protect people and economies in the developing nations”.

He said President Obama and leaders of other industrialised nations all lined up last month to say how committed they were to tackling climate change and reaching an effective agreement in Copenhagen.

But many international environment group said the developed countries’ leaders were still showing a lack of commitment to protecting the climate.