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After-hours deal at climate talks |
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After-hours deal at climate talks
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source£ºjiupiao
writer£ºjiupiao
pubdate£º2007-12-15
Font£º
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NUSA DUA, INDONESIA -- After two weeks of often rancorous negotiations and a last-minute effort by the United States to turn back a compromise from developing countries, the United Nations climate talks here ended today with the unanimous adoption of an agreement charting the course for negotiations on a new global warming treaty.
The treaty, which will be hammered out over the next two years, will succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, set to expire in 2012.
Despite the document's adoption, however, it was clear that the most contentious issue of the talks -- setting hard emissions caps for individual countries -- would simply be pushed into the future in anticipation of the election of a new U.S. president who might be more amenable to restrictions.
The Bush administration has steadfastly refused to accept any mandatory restrictions on emissions, saying that they would stifle the U.S. economy.
Delegates thought they had overcome Washington's objections and reached a final agreement in an extended session that pushed a day past the official end of the summit on the Indonesian island of Bali.
But reflecting the disarray in the international community about how to halt rising global temperatures, their hopes were dashed when India objected that the document did not require industrialized nations to help developing countries control their emissions with technology and funding.
The United States had been portrayed as the stubborn villain of the meeting all week. Blame for the final dispute was also laid at America's doorstep.
"You can't expect us to have national mitigating actions without technology support from outside, without financing from outside and without capacity building from outside," said Kapil Sibal, head of the Indian delegation.
He blamed the United States, specifically, for trying to block any obligation to help developing countries. "They don't want to give us any technology support," he said.
The Indian position reflected one of the central themes raised by developing nations at the meeting -- that the United States and other wealthy countries had caused global warming with their profligate use of energy and now expected less-developed countries to curb their industrialization to prevent the problem from getting worse.
The assembly was suspended temporarily while delegates worked out alternative language to reflect the developing nations' concerns. When they reconvened, U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who had flown in for the final session, told the delegates he was "disappointed" in the delay and called on them to reach a compromise on the "good and strong" proposal.
But, to a chorus of boos, chief U.S. delegate Paula Dobriansky said that America could not accept the new compromise language.
Only moments later, however, she reversed course and told the delegates that "we will go forward and join consensus today."
The document was then officially adopted.
A primary sticking point during the last week was the inclusion of tough emissions targets recommended by the U.N's. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, in a series of reports issued this year.
In a Friday night deal that seemed to pave the way for acceptance of the document, those targets -- which include a 25% to 40% reduction in emissions by industrialized countries by 2020 and a 50% reduction in overall emissions worldwide by 2050 -- were relegated to a simple footnote in the preamble.
The footnote refers to three pages in the final IPCC report detailing emission reductions that will be necessary to restrict global warming to no more than a two-degree-Fahrenheit increase from current levels.
The European Union, in particular, had been attempting to get negotiations rolling with that temperature target firmly in delegates' sights, going so far as to threaten a boycott of the meeting of the 17 largest polluters planned next month in Hawaii by President Bush if explicit emissions targets were not included.
The White House intended the Hawaii meeting to allow each of the countries, which account for 80% of the world's emissions, to set their own voluntary targets for reductions.
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