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Current Biology, Volume 20, Issue 8, R335-R336, 27 April 2010
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Push for new climate change agreement
- Politicians are finally looking ahead to ways to move on from the failed Copenhagen summit in December. Nigel Williams reports.
There was worldwide gloom following the Copenhagen conference in December which failed to reach agreement on a new global climate treaty. The eventual Accord fell well short of many expectations. As recently as February, many experts believed that it would be almost impossible to come up with a solution — and new treaty — this year. And the recent controversy about some of the climate change data and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has done little to improve the mood.
“There has been a lot of talking about climate change. It's an area under strict scrutiny,” said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC panel of experts and at the heart of the controversy about some of their data, at the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank. “We at the IPCC, we've listened, we've learnt, we've done something about it.” And the wider mood now appears to be changing.
The UK stated a new flexibility — its possible support for a new twin-track climate deal was announced last month to help end the deadlock. This is a key demand from developing countries and championed by China.
In a policy turnabout, instead of seeking a single comprehensive new global agreement, the climate and energy secretary, Ed Miliband, announced that the government would agree to an extension of the current international climate treaty — the Kyoto protocol — which, since its agreement, puts the onus on developed countries to cut their emissions, exempting developing countries from similar levels of action. As the developed world is responsible for most of the increased greenhouse gas emissions, the developing countries thought this was fair.
Britain is no longer now seeking a comprehensive agreement and would accept a renewed Kyoto protocol, Miliband said, alongside the entirely new, legally binding global agreement it had been pursuing. In effect there could be two separate international climate treaties, covering emission cuts in different countries.
The move is likely to put pressure on China, now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, which blocked agreement at Copenhagen and may now come under pressure to join a comprehensive new global climate arrangement.
Analysts now believe it was the insistence of the EU on abandoning the 1997 Kyoto agreement which was the cause of the Copenhagen talks breakdown. The Copenhagen Accord put together by world leaders on the last day fell far short of a legally binding agreement.
Britain's new move makes a major concession to developing countries. “We are interested in trying to break the deadlock and find ways through some of the issues raised in Copenhagen,” Miliband said. “We do not want to let a technical argument about whether we have one treaty or two derail the process. We are determined to show flexibility as long as there is no undermining of environmental principles.”
“We are uncompromising about the need for a legal framework covering everyone, but we are willing to be flexible about the precise form that takes,” Miliband said. “By making these proposals, we can take away this myth that developed countries were trying to destroy Kyoto and get on with a legal treaty.”
There is now renewed commitment to achieve a new legal agreement before the end of the year amongst many developed and developing countries.
“We are uncompromising about the need for a legal framework covering everyone, but we are willing to be flexible about the precise form that takes”
Kick-starting the revived process is a new round of climate change talks beginning earlier this month in Bonn. This meeting will also decide whether further negotiations should be organised before the key UN meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in November, where there is a growing wish to make up for Copenhagen's failure.
And a new drive to pick up the pieces has come from the US. Environmentalists were alarmed at the announcement this month that President Obama intends to grant licences to explore for oil and gas off the east coast and Alaska. But the move was soon seen as an attempt to win Republican support for the climate change bill which faces senate scrutiny. Obama's administration can expect serious and ongoing objection to the drilling plans, but passage of the bill will give the US the authority for a key role in future global climate change negotiations that was absent under George Bush's presidency.