After Copenhagen, UN seeks way forward on climate

PARIS, France—Countries gather this week in the hope of erasing bitter memories of the Copenhagen summit and restoring faith in the battered UN process for combating climate change.

Negotiators meet in Bonn from Friday to Sunday for the first official talks under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since the strife-torn confab.

Their first job will be stocktaking: to see what place climate change now has on the world political agenda.

Disappointment or disillusion swept many capitals when 120 heads of state and government returned from Copenhagen after coming within an inch of a fiasco.

Over the past three months, political interest in climate change has ebbed, says Sebastien Genest, vice president of a green group, France Nature Environment.

“The summit prompted a widespread sense of failure and a kind of gloom,” says Genest.
Moving to fill the vacuum are climate skeptics and pragmatists—those who call for priority to domestic interests and the economy rather than carbon emissions.

On the table in Bonn will be how to breathe life into the summit’s one solid outcome: the Copenhagen Accord.

The slender document was hastily crafted by the heads of 28 countries as the December 7-19 marathon wobbled on the brink of collapse.

It sets the goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), gathering rich and poor countries in action against carbon pollution.

It also promises $30 billion (22 billion euros) for climate-vulnerable poor countries up to to 2012, and as much as $100 billion annually by 2020.

The deal falls way short of the post-2012 treaty that was supposed to emerge from the two-year haggle which climaxed in Copenhagen.

Its many critics say it has no deadline or roadmap for reaching the warming target and its pledges are only voluntary.

It was not even endorsed at a UNFCCC plenary, given the raucous reception it got from left-leaning countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. So far, less than two-thirds of the UNFCCC parties have signed up to it.

Yet the accord also has powerful supporters.

While acknowledging its flaws, they note it is the first to include advanced and emerging economies in specified emissions curbs.

And, they argue, it could provide the key to resolving climate financing, one of the thorniest problems in a post-2012 pact.

A big question in Bonn will be how to dovetail the Copenhagen Accord with the UNFCCC, so that money can be disbursed.

But negotiators will be unable to duck what went wrong at Copenhagen—the cripplingly slow textual debate, the entrenched defense of national interests, and the deep suspicion of rich countries among the developing bloc.

“The meeting… is going to be very important to rebuild confidence in the process, to rebuild confidence that the way forward will be open and transparent on the one hand, and efficient on the other,” UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer says.

Many voices, such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, are arguing for changes to the UNFCCC’s labyrinthine, two-track negotiating process.

The final hours at Copenhagen showed how quickly things could move when handled by a small group, as opposed to gaining unanimity of all 194 parties in one go, they say.

The way forward could lie with a representative group which would advance on major issues and consult the full assembly, which would also vote on the outcome, according to this argument.

Some are looking closely at the G20, which accounts for rich and emerging economies that together account for some 80 percent of global emissions.

Lord Nicholas Stern, a top British economist, says the G20 has gained clout and credibility thanks to the financial crisis.

“We’ve essentially marginalized the G8 and replaced it with the G20,” Stern said in an interview in Paris. –Richard Ingham, Agence France-Presse