EU set to push for legally binding climate agreement |
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=135542
EU to push for a legally binding agreement at the next round of UN climate talks.
CAPE TOWN — The European Union (EU) would push for a legally binding agreement at the next round of United Nations (UN) climate talks, in Durban in December, despite strong opposition, EU Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard said yesterday.
Ms Hedegaard was in Cape Town for a two-day meeting of the UN High Level Panel on Global Sustainability, which is co-chaired by President Jacob Zuma and President Tarja Halonen of Finland.
Earlier this week, the US top climate change negotiator, Todd Stern, said he did not expect the talks to produce a legally binding agreement on curbing global warming.
SA will host this year’s meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change , which takes place annually, and is expected to push for a binding conclusion after the 2009 talks in Copenhagen failed to yield a new deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires next year.
"We can hear from different parties that it is very difficult to see (a legally binding agreement) as the outcome of Durban … (but) we need to find a way forward to achieving a binding deal," said Ms Hedegaard.
In direct contrast to Mr Stern, who said the world’s big greenhouse gas producers should set their own emissions targets, Ms Hedegaard argued that this kind of "bottom-up" approach was not the way to go.
Conceding that the UN’s processes could be frustratingly slow, she said if each country set its own targets then the world would be "heading for much higher temperatures".
S he outlined the EU’s hopes for what might be achieved at the Durban talks. More ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gases and other "deliverables" needed to be set to maintain the political momentum that followed last year’s meeting in Cancun, Mexico, she said.
"Unep (the UN Environmental Programme) has calculated that the pledges made so far will take us 60% of the way to getting below 2°C ," she said, referring to the Copenhagen Accord, which said the world should aim to contain the average global temperature rise to 2°C. It was clear more needed to be done, but it was a "very controversial and difficult discussion", she said.
"We also … could look at reform of the clean development mechanism, and try to find solutions for aviation and shipping. It is simply not logical that one of the world’s truly global means of transportation is explicitly not part of the regulation," she said.
Ms Hedegaard also said more work needed to be done to identify sources to fund the 100bn pledged in Cancun to help poor countries tackle climate change .
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