Time is short to work out a new treaty to fight global warming as planned by the end of 2009 because drafts of a deal must be ready in less than a year, the UN's top climate change official said on Wednesday.
Negotiators from almost 200 nations will meet in Accra, Ghana, from August 21-27 to discuss elements of a future pact such as deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, ways to slow deforestation and aid for developing nations to adapt.
"Time is short," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters of a timetable meant to end with agreement on a new climate treaty to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol at a meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009. "If you are going to negotiate something in Copenhagen in December in 2009 the elements of that negotiation have to be available six months before," he said. So far, only vague proposals have been floated at the talks.
Asked about what Accra would achieve, de Boer said: "To make a squirrel analogy I hope we gather more nuts. I hope we get more specific proposals." The talks are the third session this year to work out a pact to slow rising temperatures blamed by the UN Climate Panel on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels that could bring desertification, shift monsoons, and raise world sea levels.
De Boer said he did not believe the collapse of the world trade talks last month and an economic slowdown in many rich nations would derail efforts to confront climate change. "Business is still calling for clarity and ambition," he said. Many industries want to know the long-term rules to decide, for instance, whether to build a coal-fired power plant or a wind farm.
He said that the breakdown of the World Trade Organisation talks in Geneva illustrated that developing nations needed a stronger voice in international bodies, such as the UN Security Council. "If you are asking major developing countries to engage on a topic like climate change in a serious way, don't they also deserve a serious place in the governance? I think that's something to think about," he said.
The Accra meeting will be the first since the Group of Eight industrialised nations agreed a vision last month of cutting world greenhouse gases by 50 percent by 2050. De Boer said it was unclear, however, whether the 2050 target would help. He has called 2050 too distant and urged nearer-term goals to force politicians to act now, rather than leave cuts to a future generation.
"In order to know if it's a help or not I'd need clarity on a couple of things," he said, saying it was not clear if the vision of halving emissions would be non-binding or a firm goal. And he noted that the G8 text did not name a base year for cuts - the European Union favours 1990 but Japan wants it to be from current levels.
The base year makes a big difference because world greenhouse gas emissions leapt to 49 billion tonnes in 2004 from 39 billion in 1990, according to the UN Climate Panel. The Kyoto Protocol binds all developed nations except the United States to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent by 2008-12 below 1990 levels. The new deal aims to include all countries in a successor pact that would start from 2013.