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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Bangkok Talks Slow Amid Post-2012 Concerns From Developing Countries

by Eric J. Lyman

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 The latest round of U.N. climate change talks nearly ground to a halt Wednesday over one of the oldest issues in the climate change debate: the future of the Kyoto Protocol.

The 1997 Kyoto document seeks to lower greenhouse gas emissions from three dozen industrialized countries by an average of 5.4 percent compared to 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 compliance period. Most poor countries believe the same set of governments should be obligated to take on deeper cuts in a second compliance period, while most rich countries argue that a post-2012 treaty should include a wider group of countries, such as the United States, which never ratified Kyoto, and large developing countries like China and India.

The talks in Bangkok, which began Sunday and will conclude Friday, are meant to make general progress--the centerpiece is expected to be a list of priorities and goals for 2011--ahead of the 17th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to take place at year’s end in Durban, South Africa. But developing countries brought up the Kyoto Protocol issue in Sunday’s session, and it arose repeatedly Wednesday in the main plenary, making it difficult for delegates to debate other topics.

“This is really a key issue and it is one we demand should be heard,” first-year Kenyan delegate Grace Morgan said in a telephone interview.

In 2009, a similar set of negotiations in Barcelona, Spain, were halted for more than a day after members of the Africa Group walked out to protest obstacles to an extension of the protocol. They threatened to repeat the move weeks later at another round of talks in Bangkok. Some members of the Group of 77 developing nations, led by Bolivia, nearly blocked the final result from December’s climate summit in Cancun, Mexico.

A ranking U.N. official said the nature of the post-2012 framework is one of the most difficult issues facing delegates.

“Both sides are so entrenched on this topic that it is difficult to imagine how a compromise can be reached,” the official said, asking not to be named. “But what is clear is that nobody really predicts the issue will be solved here in Bangkok.”
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