There have been numerous disagreements during a week of intense climate-change talks in Bangkok but there is one point all sides agree on — a long, tough road lies ahead.
The five-day negotiations stretched past midnight on Friday before reaching a deal aimed solely at setting up more talks, the eventual goal to draft by the end of next year the most far-reaching treaty yet to battle global warming.
Rich and poor nations were at loggerheads, with developing countries especially suspicious of a Japanese-led proposal on industry standards and demanding greater aid to help them cope with the ravages of climate change.
The talks set up seven more sessions — three this year and four next — amid growing global concern that rising temperatures could put millions of people at risk by century’s end through drought, floods and other extreme weather.
The next session meets in June in Bonn, Germany.
”We have 18 months to agree on a deal and it is probably one of the most important deals that mankind has negotiated,” said Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace Brazil.
”This shows that we still lack political will and that is something we’re very concerned about,” he said.
The treaty due next year is meant to decide on an action plan after the Kyoto Protocol’s obligations to slash greenhouse gas emissions expire at the end of 2012.
The United States, which snubbed Kyoto, and developing nations, which have no obligations under it, agreed at a conference in December in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate to craft the next treaty.
Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations body on climate change, acknowledged there were issues that each side was ”very attached to” and said the Bangkok agreement created ”bite-sized chunks” to allow smoother negotiations.
”It takes time to find a way out and they did,” he said of the Bangkok negotiations.
De Boer said the Bangkok talks made genuine headway by approving a statement that lauds the burgeoning market in carbon emissions trading.
Under Kyoto, countries and companies can buy and sell credits to emit greenhouse gases so as to meet their own requirements.
De Boer said the statement sent a strong signal that the market would continue even after Kyoto’s obligations run out.
”Businesses have been asking for clarity on this issue and now they have it, making it possible for them to plan their investments accordingly,” De Boer told an early morning press conference.
‘Worrisome indication’
The Bangkok talks, attended by more than 160 countries, also called for studies into how to slash emissions by airplanes and ships.
International transport accounts for a growing amount of emissions but was exempted under Kyoto obligations, in part because the sector is inherently difficult to classify under individual countries.
Talks stalled late in the conference as Japan pushed for an early discussion of a ”sectoral” approach, in which each industry is given standards for energy-efficiency.
Japan’s chief delegate, Kyoji Komachi, said he believed more countries came to understand Tokyo’s position but that more work was needed.
Developing countries and environmentalists charged that Japan, whose emissions are rising amid an economic recovery, was trying to pass on the burden of emissions cuts to nations with less energy-efficient infrastructure.
”They didn’t get the respect for their proposal that they wanted and instead half the rest of the world is now very suspicious as to what Japan’s real agenda is,” said Daniel Mittler, a climate expert at Greenpeace International.
Byron Blake, an envoy from Antigua and Barbuda, which leads the bloc of developing nations, said the Japanese sectoral approach ”would move away from the spirit of the convention and the protocol”.
”The real negotiations are going to take place over the next two years,” Blake said.
Greenpeace Brazil’s Furtado said the at-times painstakingly slow negotiations in Bangkok to agree future meetings, or a ”work plan”, did not bode well for the future.
”If we took all these hours to agree on a work plan, one can only imagine what will happen when the real negotiations take place,” he said.
”It is a worrisome indication of how these negotiations will develop.” — AFP
