Climate Negotiators Warn Time is Running Out

Climate Negotiators Warn Time is Running Out

International climate change negotiators gathered in the Thai capital Bangkok on Monday hoping the momentum built up by recent emissions pledges by China, India and Japan could break the deadlock to achieve consensus as the clock ticks down to the deadline of December’s Copenhagen summit.

Deep divisions, however, remain.

The developed nations are waiting for firm commitments from the emerging economies to reduce the growth in their emissions and the developing nations are waiting for the developed world to commit to financing the massive costs of restructuring.

In Bangkok, the leaders of the meeting warned of a failure to bridge the gap.

“Time is not just pressing, it has almost run out,” said Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change...

The Bangkok meeting is aimed at slimming down the current 200-page discussion document to closer to 30 pages.

“We have a text which is excessive and unmanageable, our driving message here in Bangkok is to speed up the process and achieve this condensed document,” said Anders Turesson, the chief climate negotiator for Sweden, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union.

Tove Ryding of Greenpeace was blunter.

“We’re drowning in text,” she said. “In three months we have managed to cut it down by just 18 pages: if we continue at that rate it will take us two or three years to get to down to size.”...

Most scientists agree that in order to keep temperatures from rising to catastrophic levels, the industrialised nations will have to cut their emissions to between 25 and 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, while developing countries will have to limit their emissions growth to between 15 and 30 per cent below their current trajectory by 2020.


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2009-09-28
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/23504a4c-ac19-11de-950b-00144feabdc0.html