The world’s major emerging economies led by China are calling for a “binding” amendment to the Kyoto Protocol requiring rich countries to slash carbon pollution by more than 40 percent compared to 1990, according to a document seen by the news source AFP on Thursday.
The previously unseen 11-page draft “Copenhagen Accord,” to be posted on the website of French daily Le Monde, was finalized on Nov. 30 after a closed-door meeting in Beijing between China, India, South Africa and Brazil.
The initiative, led by Beijing, was conceived as a rebuttal by developing countries to another backroom accord hammered out by Denmark for the climate change summit.
The text embraces the objective of limiting the increase by 2100 of global temperatures to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times, a goal shared by developed countries.
But the emerging giants also called on rich countries -- committed to CO2 reductions under Kyoto of at least five percent by 2012 -- to “multiply by eight” that promise for a second, seven-year period running up to 2020.
The draft accord says these commitments must be made “mainly through domestic measures” and not through the purchase of so-called “offsets” outside their borders in developing countries.
It also stipulates that any developed country that is not constrained under Kyoto -- in effect, the United States -- should take on the same legally binding commitments.
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said that to help keep global temperatures increases below the 2.0 C (3.6 F) threshold, rich nations would have to cut their carbon emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020 over 1990.
The four major emerging economies -- which together account for nearly half of the world’s CO2 output -- also reject all “unilateral fiscal measures” by industrialized countries, such as the carbon import taxes that figure in pending U.S. legislation.
On finance, it calls for the creation of a special fund under the authority of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) answerable directly to member countries.
The United States, Japan, the European Union (EU) and other industrialised countries have said that money to help poorer countries cope with climate change impacts -- which could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year within a decade -- should be funneled through existing institutions.
Meanwhile, European Union leaders say they have agreed to commit 2.4 billion euro (3.6 billion U.S. dollars) a year until 2012 to help poorer countries combat global warming. EU leaders also agreed to reduce their emissions by 30 percent of 1990 levels.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the offer “puts Europe in a leadership role in Copenhagen.”
All 27 members of the European Union agreed on the figure after two days of difficult talks at a summit in Brussels.
The leaders failed Thursday to come up with a firm figure for the fund, an embarrassing setback for a bloc that was long at the forefront of the fight against global warming. Smaller eastern EU states were reluctant to donate as they struggle with rising government debt and high unemployment in the wake of the financial crisis.
Yet on Friday, EU leaders reached a final figure of 3.6 billion U.S. dollars a year for the next three years, with Britain, France and Germany each contributing about 20 percent. Britain is pushing to raise the figure higher at the Copenhagen talks.
Donations by some EU countries are thought to be only a token to reach a unanimous agreement.
The climate money is meant to go toward a global 10 billion U.S. dollars annual fund for short-term help to poor countries, particularly in Africa, adapt to the effects of global warming before a new climate treaty being negotiated in Copenhagen comes into force in 2012.
Critics noted, however, the 10 billion-dollars-a-year aid pales in comparison to the huge stimulus packages and bank bailouts paid by many governments in the wake of the global financial meltdown.
The EU leaders also pledged to reduce their emissions by 30 percent of 1990 levels by 2020 — but are still demanding that other leading polluters make comparable commitments first.
EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the pledge “conditional.”
“We will see if there is a move on the part of the other developed countries during the Copenhagen summit,” Reinfeldt said, noting in particular the United States and Canada.
Late last night, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aiping, who represents the Group of 77 (G-77) at the climate change conference, walked out of a consultation meeting with U.N. representatives in anger. “Things are not going well,” a tight-lipped Di-Aiping told the Danish TV2 News.
According to Politiken, a Danish daily newspaper, Di-Aping had been for an hour-long meeting, but left and delivered a scathing criticism.
“This conference will probably be wrecked by the bad intentions of some people,” he told TV2 News.
Watch the NCR Ecology channel and the NCR Today group blog for updates on the Copenhagen climate conference.
[Rich Heffern is an NCR staff writer. His email: rheffern@ncronline.org]
