Watch China and US in stand-off at climate talks

China and US in stand-off at climate talks


AFP/File – Smoke is seen rising from a chimmny in the northern port city of Tianjin where the UN Climate Change
TIANJIN, China (AFP) – UN climate talks were set to wrap up on Saturday with China and the United States locked in a stand-off, slowing down progress ahead of a major summit next month on global warming.
The major powers sparred throughout the six days of talks in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, prompting the hosts to warn on the penultimate day that the atmosphere for negotiation had deteriorated.
"I want to emphasise no compromise... on the interests of developing countries," the Chinese foreign ministry's special representative for climate change, Huang Huikang, told delegates on Friday.
"We are losing trust and confidence."
Delegates from more than 170 countries attended the latest round of the long-running United Nations negotiations that are aimed at eventually securing a binding global treaty on how to limit and cope with climate change.
World leaders failed to broker such a treaty in Copenhagen last year as developed and developing nations battled over who should carry more of the burden in cutting greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for global warming.
The Tianjin meeting was the last big gathering before an annual UN climate summit, which will be held in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29 to December 10.
Delegates reported that progress had been made on some specific issues in Tianjin, but many others also said that negotiations were not moving quickly enough to limit global warming below dangerous levels.
"We want to call for greater urgency in the negotiations," Dessima Williams, Grenada delegate and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, told reporters on Friday.
"We have seen some movement, we are pleased with the engagement and the atmosphere, but there's much more that needs to be done and greater urgency is needed."
Chinese delegate Huang on Friday repeated China's long-held positions that for progress to be made the United States and other rich nations must commit to making bigger cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
He said they must also give money and transfer technology to developing countries to help them cut their emissions and adapt to climate change.
"Now the key is there is a lack of substantive progress on the developed countries' side," Huang said.
The United States, meanwhile, has insisted all week that it will not provide climate funds unless the big developing countries such as China allow their greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts to be monitored and verified.
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Climate aid reaches $30 bln goal, but is it new?

Climate aid reaches $30 bln goal, but is it new?
OSLO (Reuters) - Aid promises from rich nations to help poor countries slow global warming are reaching the $30 billion goal agreed in Copenhagen but analysts say much of that is old funding dressed up as new pledges.

A boy touches an ice sculpture of a polar bear as it melts to reveal a bronze skeleton in Copenhagen December 8, 2009. Aid promises from rich nations to help poor countries slow global warming are reaching the $30 billion goal agreed in Copenhagen but analysts say much of that is old funding dressed up as new pledges. (REUTERS/Bob Strong/Files)
Officially, the promises total $29.8 billion, Reuters calculations show, apparently meeting a pledge of "new and additional" funds "approaching $30 billion" for 2010-12 made at the U.N. summit in Copenhagen in December.

But austerity policies to combat government debt problems and a re-labelling of past promises will undermine real funding that is vital to unlock a new U.N. climate deal by showing that the developed world is serious about taking a leadership role, analysts say.

"I'm afraid the pledges of Copenhagen will not be realised," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "It would be a little political miracle if it happened. I'm fairly pessimistic."

He said that Germany, the biggest European Union economy, was unlikely to fulfil its promises even though it had fewer economic problems than most EU nations, struggling to plug huge budget deficits.

Climate aid is widely seen as a key to build trust between rich and poor in the run-up to the 2010 U.N. meeting of environment ministers, in Cancun, Mexico, from Nov. 29-Dec. 10.

The cash was meant as a "fast start" for action to slow floods, droughts, heat waves and rising seas. Donors say projects are starting, from Nepal to Mali.

Many poor nations say "new and additional" means cash above an unmet 1970 U.N. target for rich nations to give 0.7 percent of their gross national product in aid -- OECD figures show that aid totalled $120 billion, or 0.31 percent of developed countries' combined GNP, in 2009.

Developed nations have varying definitions of what counts.

RENAMING AID

"It's hard to know what's really new and additional," said Clifford Polycarp of the Washington-based World Resources Institute, which tracks pledges by all nations. Some funds were "restated or renamed commitments already made."

Japan's pledge of fast start funds is by far the highest -- $15 billion -- but much of the money stems from a "Cool Earth Partnership" agreed several years ago to run from 2008-12.

Among other big pledges, the EU plans $9.6 billion for 2010-12 and U.S. President Barack Obama plans $3.2 billion for 2010-11. But some money was committed before Copenhagen to climate funds, for instance managed by the World Bank.
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