Rich nations stall talks on their record of cutting emissions

NEW DELHI: On the second day of the Bonn climate change negotiations, the US, the EU and other developed countries tried to stall discussions on whether the rich countries had met their obligations on reducing emissions and financing the poor countries. Many developed countries pushed for talks to take place only on a new single legal treaty that would wipe out all past and existing obligations.

The talks got stalled with developed countries opposing adoption of the agenda, which requires pending issues from the Bali Action Plan of 2009 to be addressed before negotiations on this parallel channel come to end this year. Under the Bali Action Plan, the developed countries, including the US, are required to increase their ambition levels to cut emissions.

India intervened to say that it was important to address the “unresolved issues” and these should not be allowed to fall off the table.

India was also in the lead in making a joint statement on behalf of the BASIC countries which includes Brazil, China and South Africa. In a not so veiled threat, the four countries said the negotiations would falter unless the developed countries operationalized their targets to reduce emissions under Kyoto Protocol Phase II by the end of the year.

“The failure in reaching a satisfactory resolution and completion of work of AWG-KP (a channel where rich countries give their targets) at COP 18 (to be held in November 2012 in Doha) without any further conditions would gravely affect the full scope of negotiations and implementation under the climate change regime,” they said.

After EU, along with least developed countries and small island states, pushed for starting talks on a single new treaty in 2012 itself, the major developing countries fear that Kyoto Protocol II would be made redundant before it takes off in 2013 and the firewall between rich and poor countries’ responsibilities breached unless principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities are first addressed.

At the Bonn talks which are scheduled to run for two weeks, the BASIC countries in a joint statement expressed “serious concern” about “ship-jumping” by developed countries like Canada and Japan renouncing their commitments under Kyoto Protocol.