This time last summer, there was considerable optimism that the world’s nations just might be able to approve a pact to limit a global increase in greenhouse gases at a United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen last December.
That meeting, overseen by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, ended with a weak agreement known as the Copenhagen Accord. It was an aspirational political statement with no clout, not a legally binding treaty. A small number of the 190 countries in attendance never even endorsed the document.
The Copenhagen Accord set a goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels without being at all specific about how nations would meet that measure. Likewise, without being very clear about who would write the check, it called for hundreds of billions of dollars to flow from wealthy nations to countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
This week in Bonn, negotiators are meeting to prepare for this year’s annual climate meeting, COP-16 (the 16th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), which opens in late November in Cancún, Mexico. There is little optimism this time around. Even the few areas of agreement that were hailed as great accomplishments in the Copenhagen Accord seem to be back on the negotiating table.
The negotiating document for the Bonn session, which ends on Friday, leaves open – once again — whether the goal of a new treaty should be to limit the temperature rise to 1 degree, 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees Celsius.
Delegates will have to decide anew whether developed countries should “commit to a goal of mobilizing” $100 billion to support poorer nations or should be “assessed contributions of 1.5 percent of the G.D.P.”
Likewise, the negotiating document suggests that delegates will be revisiting emissions reductions goals for richer nations: Should developed countries, as a group, be required to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by “75 to 85 percent,” or “at least 80 to 95 percent,” or “more than 95 percent” from 1990 levels by 2050?
The divisions between industrialized and developing nations over climate policy seem even deeper than they were six months ago. China, which has long acted as a spokesman for developing countries, scolded developed countries on Monday for failing to accept their “historical responsibility” for climate change and urged them to do more in the way of emissions cuts, according to Xinhua, the government news agency.
The European Union, which has led the way in vowing to reduce its emissions, complained that some of the options included in the negotiating text seem “outside the realm of what is achievable,” according to reports from the conference by the Third World Network. Indeed, many scientists say that limiting climate change to 1 or 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is probably impossible.
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