The world has made progress on ways to save tropical forests and other elements of a planned UN pact to slow global warming, the UN's top climate official said as 160-nation talks in Ghana ended on August 27.
"We are still on track, the process has speeded up," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said of the August 21-27 negotiations, one of a series meant to end in Copenhagen in 2009 with a new UN pact.
"There is a growing sense of urgency," he told a news conference after the meeting of up to 1,500 delegates in Accra. He said countries expressed widening commitment to plans to safeguard fast-disappearing tropical forests. Burning forests to clear land for farming emits about 20 percent of greenhouse gases from human activities.
"We cannot come to a meaningful solution on climate change without coming to grips with deforestation," he said. Plants soak up carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as they grow and release it when burnt or when they rot. Governments are trying to find a deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 37 developed nations to curb greenhouse gases until 2012.
Neither the United States nor China, the top two greenhouse gas emitters, have limits under Kyoto. Accra is the third meeting in a marathon meant to end with a new UN accord in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 to slow rising temperatures that the UN Climate Panel says will bring more heatwaves, droughts, rising seas and more powerful storms.
Countries came up with proposals to raise tens of billions of dollars in funds for forest protection - such as a Saudi Arabian call for a levy on the logging industry or a proposal by the Pacific island of Tuvalu to tax air tickets and shipping.
De Boer said a highlight of Accra was agreement that a text on possible new actions to fight global warming would be drawn up before the next meeting in Poznan, Poland, in December.
"We may have something in Poznan pretty close to a negotiating text," he said. But many delegates said a deal was still way off, with splits about how rich and poor nations should share the burden of cutting greenhouse gases, mainly emitted by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories, buildings and cars. Brice Lalonde, representing France which holds the rotating European Union presidency, likened the talks to a railway journey. "We have laid the rails," he told Reuters. "Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed".
"Progress has not been enough," said Bill Hare of environmental group Greenpeace. He accused Japan, Canada, Russia and Australia of doing too little. The WWF conservation group said rich nations would need to provide about $130 billion a year by 2030 to help poor countries cope with climate change - about five times current flows. Africa was attracting least cash.
Comments
Comments are closed.