The world cannot agree a final climate deal this year, outgoing U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer told Reuters on Sunday, saying the focus should be on practical steps to help the poor and save forests.
De Boer was speaking on the sidelines of the first U.N. talks since a bad-tempered summit in Copenhagen in December fell short of agreeing the full legal treaty many nations had wanted.
Negotiators at the April 9-11 talks in Bonn struggled to find a formula to revive negotiations on a pact to combat global warming and agree a schedule before the next annual ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico in November and December.
“I don’t think Cancun will provide the final outcome,” said de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. climate change secretariat, who steps down in July after almost four years.
“I think that Cancun can agree an operational architecture but turning that into a treaty, if that is the decision, will take more time beyond Mexico. I think that we will have many more rounds of climate change negotiations before the ultimate solution is arrived at.”
Many delegates at the Bonn talks were gloomy about the outlook, saying the negotiations to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol after 2012 had lost momentum.
De Boer said the focus should be on practical actions to slow climate change, rather than trying to make a deal legally binding — a major barrier to progress so far.
“We have legally binding targets under the Kyoto Protocol but it’s very difficult to take a country to court if a target is not met. Perhaps the rules and instruments, the compliance that is put in place, is even more important than the international legal definition.”
De Boer said many scientists were advocating a halving of world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. “Even in my wildest dreams I don’t think that Cancun in detail is going to define exactly how that will be achieved,” he said.
After two years of talks the Copenhagen summit failed to agree a successor to Kyoto, but more than 110 countries have since signed a non-binding accord. U.S. President Barack Obama is one of its top supporters.
The accord pledged $30 billion from 2010-2012 to help the poor face the impacts of climate change, such as floods, droughts, mudslides and rising seas.
It also sought to keep a rise in average world temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) from pre-industrial times. But it did not spell out how this should be done.
De Boer described the Copenhagen Accord as a “very important outcome,” but many developing countries in Bonn rejected further mention of it in U.N. talks, underscoring tension with the United States, which never ratified Kyoto.
The mood in Bonn was also soured by Bolivia’s claim that the United States and Denmark had withdrawn funding to the Latin American nation, which opposes the accord.
De Boer said the most needy should get funds to help adapt to the impacts of a changing climate.
“There is a general agreement on the question of adaptation, in that the money should go primarily to small island countries, to least developed countries and to African nations.”
“I hope that the decision in Cancun will be that irrespective of how those countries feel about the Copenhagen accord they should be eligible for adaptation support.”
