US considers shifting climate negotiations away from UN track
US reportedly looking to move policy debates from the UN's Doha climate conference and towards Major Economies Forum
Click here to read this story in full at The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/16/us-considers-climate-negotiations-un
New offices and hotels
in the West Bay and Oneiza district in Doha, Qatar, where climate talks
resume in November. Photograph: Nadine Rupp/Getty Images
The US is considering a funnel of substantive elements of the
Doha Climate Summit away from the UN framework and into the Major
Economies Forum (MEF), a platform of the world's largest CO2 emitters,
EurActiv has learned.
Since 1992, the
United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change
(UNFCCC) has provided an umbrella for talks to curb global greenhouse
gas emissions, and on 26 November, will host the COP18 Climate Summit in
Qatar.
But it has been confirmed to EurActiv that Washington is increasingly looking to shift policy action to
the MEF
whose members account for some 85% of global emissions, and which the
US views as a more comfortable venue for agreeing climate goals.
If
the idea gains traction, it could demote the UNFCCC to a forum for
discussing the monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions
reductions projects, sources say.
Michael Starbæk Christensen, the
deputy head of cabinet for EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard,
said he expected the US to convene another MEF forum soon which could be
fruitful for discussing raised climate ambitions.
"We need to
broaden the group to work together on this and whether it is inside our
outside the UNFCCC, by all means do it outside," he told a Green Party
conference in the European Parliament on 15 November.
"Ideally we
would like to see as much happening inside the UNFCCC as possible," he
continued, "but if we can engage with the US in other forums, it is the
action that counts".
Brussels sees the MEF as a complement -
rather than an alternative - to the UNFCCC, and is mindful of giving the
newly-elected President Obama time to finesse his climate agenda.
It
would be considered a "provocation" if the US was to unilaterally leave
the UNFCCC process itself, sources say, and could potentially split the
world into rival climate blocks led by Washington and Beijing.
The MEF is a successor to the Major Economies Meetings
set up by President Bush, and criticised by several governments for undermining the UN process.
Its
participants include: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European
Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico,
Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the
United States...
Click here to continue read this story in full at The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/16/us-considers-climate-negotiations-un
,
which calls itself the “global movement against gun violence,” and aims
to build a coordinated network of organizations “to stop the
proliferation and misuse of small arms and light weapons,” and “make
people safer by reducing demand for such weapons, improving firearm
regulation and strengthening controls on arms transfers.”
