The fractious close to last year’s Copenhagen Summit cast a long shadow over the first day of the latest round of international climate talks in Bonn as a small group of Latin American countries blocked efforts to resume negotiations.
The conference, which is being attended by representatives of 185 nations and runs until June 11, will attempt to move the stalled negotiations forward ahead of the main UN climate change summit in Cancún in November.
The UN had planned to present a new negotiating text that included some elements of the controversial Copenhagen Accord for discussion.
However, the Copenhagen Accord was fiercely opposed by a small group of countries at the close of the Copenhagen Summit and many of the same countries, dubbed the ALBA group and including Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba, yesterday said that they would not take part in negotiations on the new text.
“The chair has prioritised the Copenhagen Accord,” Rene Gonzalo Orellana Halkyer, a member of the Bolivian delegation, told news agency Reuters, explaining the country’s opposition to the new text.
A number of countries have refused to support the Copenhagen Accord, which was thrashed out by the US, Brazil, South Africa, India and China, arguing that it favours rich nations, risks sidelining the existing Kyoto Protocol, and fails to set targets for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
Aware of these concerns the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA), chaired by Zimbabwean diplomat Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe, included only elements of the Copenhagen Accord in the new formal negotiating text alongside a host of different options.
Jonathan Pershing, head of the US delegation, told Reuters that the latest text was only intended as “a constructive next step” towards developing a formal negotiating text.
However, the move appears to have again antagonised the ALBA group and work is now underway to develop an alternative draft text that is expected to be presented before the end of the week.
The in-coming UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres, who it is hoped will help improve relations between industrialised and developing countries, recently expressed some sympathy for the ALBA group, telling Bloomberg that she shared their concerns about the Copenhagen Accord.
“Many of their concerns are very legitimate and shared not just by the immediate members of the ALBA countries but actually by quite a few countries around the world,” she said.
Her comments were backed up by South African diplomat, Alf Wills, who told Reuters that the latest negotiating text was “unbalanced” and still too focused on the need for emission cuts by developing countries.
The opening of the latest talks follows a stark warning last week from outgoing UN climate chief Yvo de Boer that countries are running out of time to deliver a binding international climate change treaty.
“The Copenhagen meeting may have postponed an outcome for at least a year, but it did not postpone the impacts of climate change,” he said. “The deadline to agree an effective international response to climate change at Copenhagen was set because governments, when launching negotiations in Bali in 2007, recognised the scientific warning on climate for what it was: a siren call to act now, or face the worst.”
He added that governments should act now to clarify the future of the Kyoto Protocol, warning that the central issue of whether to extend the treaty or deliver a new agreement from 2012 onwards “cannot be left unattended until Cancún”.
Meanwhile, other elements of the negotiations are expected to move forward over the next few days.
In particular, negotiations will continue on proposals for improving forestry protection, while the UN and developing countries are expected to step up pressure on industrialised nations to make good on their pledge to deliver $30bn (£20.7bn) of “fast-track” climate funding over the next three years, warning that the Mexico Summit will be seriously undermined if the first tranche of money is not made available by the autumn.
Both areas were given a boost last week when the Indonesian government announced that it would revoke existing forestry licenses handed out to palm oil and timber firms as part of a $1bn climate change deal signed with Norway.
Under the agreement, Indonesia will impose a two year moratorium on the clearing of natural forests and peatlands, while also cancelling some existing permits. Part of the new fund will be used to compensate forestry and palm oil firms, while the rest will aim to improve forestry protection and support pilot projects operating under the UN-backed reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) scheme.
