Brussels, 07/12/2010 (Agence Europe) - As far as EU Environment Commissioner Connie Hedegaard is concerned, no way are we coming back from Cancún empty-handed. The environment ministers of the 192 parties to the UN's international climate talks started examining two documents on Tuesday, but have only three days left to make any real decisions. Speaking at a press conference in Cancun, Mexico, on Monday 6 December, the commissioner stressed the urgent need to respond to the climate problem, which will require comparable efforts from all major economies around the world, starting with the United States and China (the two biggest polluters) and will inevitably require compromises.
“Is it easy to make Europe speak with one voice? Of course not always. It's 27 different governments. It's 27 different ministers but in the preparation for this, we've examined our position very carefully and there is a common denominator. When we speak with one voice it's to push things most and that is what we are trying to do. Europe is not the problem but rather the other bigger parties that have not committed internationally so far. That is where the main problem and the main challenge for this COP lie,” she explained.
Explaining that Europe is planning to use the ETS (carbon trading) to prevent carbon leakage by giving free quotas to industries most at risk from relocation outside the EU, she said: “In Europe we take care to avoid carbon leakage. (…) It's up to other countries also to have environmental standards, to get targets for energy efficiency, to put up regulation for their companies. We need binding targets. It's the best we can get”. The commissioner deemed it unimaginable, except if all credibility is to be lost with the public, for the world's governments who, last year in Copenhagen, told citizens the climate question was the most serious of all problems facing the world, to leave Cancun without doing anything. “That's a very bad sell, and very difficult to defend”, she said, adding that “all governments know what ought to be done. We need to make some compromises that are necessary. ”
The two draft negotiating document on the table (one on the Kyoto Protocol that does not include the United States and another on long-term cooperating) are both criticised by environmental charities which see the danger of the Kyoto Protocol falling apart. Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) says the first does not include any overall reduction targets for developed countries but adds get-out clauses to the land use, land-use change and forestry section (Lulucf), whereas the second has ruled out serious ideas put forward by developing countries, ideas like restricting temperature rises to safer levels. A collective target needs to be set out under the Kyoto Protocol whereby rich countries pledge to cut their emissions by at least 40% by 2010 from the 1990 levels without the use of carbon trading, compensation and get-out clauses, warned Manuel Graf of FoEI, accusing the United States of trying to get other countries to agree to a system based on commitments that take no account of science or climate justice. (A.N. trans/fl)