AS MINISTERS began arriving in Durban yesterday for the final week of the UN Climate Change Conference, an upbeat mood replaced despondency about the prospects of reaching a deal on Friday.
“Countries are here these two weeks exactly talking about how they are going to go into a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol [which is due to expire at the end of next year]”, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said.
“The discussion this week is not about the ‘if’, it’s about the ‘how’. That doesn’t mean that we are out of the thick of it,” she said, adding that delegations are discussing the legal form of rules and conditions that would define a deal.
The protocol’s future has been in doubt because developed countries have set conditions for continuing with it, and on getting agreement from major developing countries such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa to accept legally binding cuts in carbon emissions.
Delegates have been holding intensive negotiations in closed sessions at Durban’s Inkosi Albert Luthuli convention centre, surrounded by a concrete barrier that is topped by steel fencing, as others enjoyed the sun on beaches with palm-lined promenades.
At a weekend stock-taking session one EU delegate said the mood was very constructive after what Greenpeace described as a first week of “belligerence, bickering and backstabbing” that needed to give way to “real deals about the future of our planet”.
The EU source said: “There was flexibility to get work under way and not waste any more time fighting over the agenda.”
“That was borne out by one of the chairs, Dan Reifsnyder, reporting that parties have allowed him to table a composite text for ministers to consider,” continued the source
Ministers from 130 countries will take part in the “high-level segment” of the conference as well as 12 heads of state or government, including Prince Albert of Monaco. African leaders are coming from Ethiopia, Gabon, Senegal and the Central African Republic.
One reason for optimism was a signal from Beijing that China would put limits on its emissions – the world’s largest – as early as 2020. Until now, China has only measured its emissions in terms of energy intensity per unit of GDP. Although Japan has said it would not join the EU in renewing the Kyoto Protocol, its climate envoy, Masahiko Horie, said it wanted to start discussions and adopt as soon as possible a comprehensive international agreement that would involve all major economies.
But Britain’s former deputy prime minister John Prescott accused the US and Canada of trying to scupper a new climate deal. He said efforts to secure a successor to Kyoto, which he helped to negotiate, were in danger of failing because of a “conspiracy against the poor”.
Former president Mary Robinson said the negotiating text at the talks was being blocked by linked items on levying aviation and shipping for their carbon emissions and trade issues, but it needed to deliver action on the links between climate change and food security.
Delivering a presentation on Agriculture and Rural Development Day on Saturday at Durban University of Technology, she said: “A situation where almost a billion people go hungry every day, where a further billion are malnourished, is an affront to us all.”
Mrs Robinson heads the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, which is involved in “the struggle to secure global justice for those many victims of climate change who are usually forgotten – the poor, the disempowered and the marginalised”.
