Brussels, 01/12/2008 (Agence Europe) - Some 9000 experts from more than 190 countries met for the UN climate conference of Poznan, which opened on Monday 1 December in Poland, and will be working until 12 December on preparing negotiations for the global regime for the fight against climate change for post-2012, when the first period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol will expire. The European Union is aware that Poznan, which is simultaneously hosting the 14th conference of the parties to the UN framework Convention on climate change (COP 14) in the fourth session of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (MOP 4), can only be a "transition conference" towards the conference of Copenhagen in December 2009, where the global agreement on the multilateral post-2012 regime will be concluded.
And with good reason. There is not yet a text to negotiate- the objective being for a text to be on the table in March 2009, and the United States, getting ready to undergo the promising U-turn announced by the president elect Barack Obama, will still be represented by the Bush administration. Furthermore, the ministerial segment of the UN conference will coincide with the European Summit of 11 and 12 December in Brussels. This Summit, to be held at the highest political level, will tackle the controversial issues of the Climate/Energy package, which have been bitterly fought out within the EU. And it is by no means certain that the 27 will be able to agree in time to send out a strong signal of unity and determination in Poznan, as the European Commission and the French Presidency of the EU deeply hope they will. By a quirk of fate, Poland, which is the host country of the UN conference, is one of the Member States of the EU determined not to budge an inch if the more developed "old" Member States do not show greater solidarity towards the new ones in terms of economic catch-up. The country's European Affairs Minister, Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, recently stated that the credibility of the EU would be dealt a blow in Poznan if the required solidarity between the industrialised countries and the developing countries to lead to an international agreement was not in place between the richest European countries and the least developed European countries (EUROPE 9792). Even so, the EU continues to state loud and clear that it intends to continue its leading role in the international work towards climate success in Copenhagen. In the view of the French Presidency, "the conference of Poznañ should be decisive in keeping in place political momentum towards an ambitious new agreement". The European Commission, for its part, with the negotiation mandate conferred upon it by the Council (EUROPE 9766), has refused to countenance the hypothesis of a breakdown of the European Summit and trusts that Poznan will provide the opportunity to move negotiations up a gear.
"The financial crisis has shown that it is dangerous to ignore the obvious warning signs. We cannot afford to make this mistake again with climate change, if we hope to avoid dangerous, or possibly even disastrous, economic and social consequences over the decades to come. Even if it is too early to hope for major progress, the Poznan conference must allow us to move from exploratory discussions to concrete negotiations and send out a clear signal that the world is on the right track to conclude an ambitious climate treaty in one year's time, in Copenhagen”, said Stavros Dimas, Commissioner for the Environment, who will be taking part in the ministerial discussions on 11 and 12 December. "An agreement on the Energy/Climate package would be extremely useful for the EU if it would help to increase its credibility (...). We have a window of opportunity", said Nikola Notaro, a European Commission expert, in a presentation to the press on 28 November about what lies at stake with Poznan. Sweeping away the possibility that a Europe divided over its Climate/Energy package could lose all credibility, he added: "what is of interest to the parties at Poznan is not the cost of the package for any given country, but the total level of effort and its binding nature”.
Discussions in Poznan will be based on three thematic areas: the shared vision of a new post-12 regime, risk management, and research and development of new technologies. The conference will also provide the opportunity to continue the reflection on the international financial architecture of the fight against climate change. Given that at this point, the United States, Australia and Japan are not announcing any targeted commitments for 2020, no commitments should be expected from the developing countries. Under these circumstances, the EU takes the view that Poznan will be a success if the following can be obtained: - an agreement on the working programme to steer negotiations in 2009 and a decision by Poland to convene, next summer, an extraordinary conference allowing the full involvement of the new American administration; - consensus of all countries on a common vision of the future agreement with objectives between now and 2020 and 2050 (the last G8 reached an agreement on a reduction in global emissions by 50% before 2050); - an in-depth examination of the means to improve and reinforce the Kyoto Protocol and the adoption of two decisions: a firm decision to make the climate change adaptation fund in favour of the developing countries operational as quickly as possible, and a decision aiming to rationalise the management of the clean development mechanism, to finance clean transfers of technology to the developing countries. (A.N./trans.fl)