Brussels, 26/09/2007 (Agence Europe) - Three months away from the Bali conference where the different parties will meet within a United Nations framework on climate change (Indonesia, 3-14 December), political initiatives are coming to the fore, with a view to speeding up vitally important preparations for negotiating an overall system for combating global warming after the Kyoto Protocol post-2012.
In New York, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, made a strong appeal on 24 September to world leaders to make firm commitments within the given deadlines for post-Kyoto negotiations. In Washington, George Bush will bring together the 15 biggest greenhouse gas producing countries (including the emerging economies) on 26-27 September. This initiative is interpreted by many observers as an act of sabotage of the UN process. The US denies this.
More than 50 countries participated in the high level meeting on climate change organised by Ban Ki-Moon before the opening of the 62nd session of the UN General Assembly, in an effort to add a boost to negotiations. Mr Ban said: “Bali must advance a negotiating agenda to combat climate change on all fronts, including adaptation, mitigation, clean technologies, deforestation and resource mobilisation”. He made this question one of his main priorities, adding: “Bali must be the political response to the recent scientific reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. All countries must do what they can to reach agreement by 2009 and to have it in force by the expiry of the current Kyoto Protocol commitment period in 2012”.
The EU participated in this meeting and reaffirmed its ambitions such as those defined by the European Council last March. It again expressed the importance it attaches to the success of a process headed by the United Nations, the only appropriate context. José Socrates, the Portuguese prime minister and president of the European Council pointed out that “in order to prevent dangerous fall-out from climate change, in fifty years' time an increase in the earth's average surface temperature must not rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius above that of the pre-industrial epoch. These are certainly ambitious targets but can be attained. The EU has a clear vision of the framework we need. The scale of the challenge we have to meet demands unprecedented international cooperation with all countries rallying to make this global effort to stop climate change according to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective resources”. Socrates believes that this will be through an international agreement on a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, with binding and identical targets for all industrialised countries and with the collaboration of the most advanced developing countries; examination of emissions caused by deforestation, international aviation and maritime transport; cost effectiveness based on development of the world carbons market and use of the own development mechanism; inclusion of climate change adaptation into the top priorities on political agendas. Mr Socrates added: “The European Union welcomes all ongoing initiatives at the different levels that aim to conclude an international agreement on climate change. Btu let's say clearly, it is indispensable that the UN process dealing with climate change remains the most suitable forum for negotiating any future action at a global level”.
José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, explained that in the Bali perspective, the Commission would work “towards a package of measures on the eve of Bali - measures to strengthen our emissions trading scheme, to increase energy efficiency in all sectors of the European economy, to make wider use of renewable energy, to attain a low carbon economy that is at the same time efficient and innovative”. Calling for negotiators at Bali to be given “a clear mandate to launch negotiations towards a global and comprehensive post-2012 agreement”, Barroso invited Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to “organise a follow up to today's meeting, perhaps in the first half of 2009, to help deliver a global climate change agreement by the end of 2009”. Does this constitute a foot on the American's home ground? The latter deny being the instigators of a parallel process in order to short circuit the UN. Aware of suspicions surrounding the Washington meeting, Boyden Gray, the US ambassador to the EU, explained on 25 September to the press in Brussels that the US president had had a working lunch in New York, proof, according to Gray, that George Bush attached the same importance to both meetings. The Washington meeting “is not meant to supplant or be parallel to the UN process, but to support it and accelerate it”, explained the ambassador. Gray believes that what counts is reaching an agreement and that it is easier to negotiate with a smaller number of countries. (an)