UN urges EU to help developing world join climate deal
BRUSSELS, March 4: UN climate chief Yvo de Boer urged EU nations on Monday to offer financial support to developing nations such as China and India over climate change policy to help secure a global deal next year.
De Boer, speaking on the sidelines of an EU environment ministers meeting in Brussels, told reporters that despite efforts in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to tackle greenhouse gas emissions there was still much to be done to get China, India, Brazil and other developing nations on board.
A lack of commitment from the developing world was one of the reasons why the US failed to ratify the Kyoto treaty on climate change which world leaders will seek to replace next year.
Kyoto was always “fatally flawed”, said de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as it failed to get everyone to engage.
Therefore its successor must be not only laudable in its aims but ratifiable in the real political world. Talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol were launched after marathon debates in Bali in December, and are set to culminate in Copenhagen from Nov 30 to Dec 11, 2009.
De Boer said he had seen in recent weeks “significant movement in the US position” especially concerning the kind of internationally binding climate change targets that it baulked at over Kyoto.
“The question of course remains ... what kind of counter-offer are you going to need from major developing nations ... to make it economically and politically viable for the US and other industrialised nations to make a commitment as well,” de Boer asked.
“I don’t believe it will be possible to arrive at a similar approach for industrialised countries on the one hand and major developing countries on the other.
“At the end of the day ... there will be differences between the commitments of rich nations on one hand and developing nations on the other,” he predicted.
“Europe needs to begin thinking now about the kind of financial architecture it can put in place in order to engage larger developing countries to ensure we reach an agreement than can be ratified,” he said. “The international community is watching,” to see how the far-reaching proposals are “translated into real policy”, he said.—Agencies
