Support grew on Thursday for an EU plan to agree a global climate change pact with binding targets by 2015, after poor nations vulnerable to climate change forged alliances with developed countries. The European Union said it was encouraged its "road map" to legally binding commitments by 2015 to cut greenhouse gas emissions was gaining traction at the talks, which are due to wrap up in the South African port of Durban on Friday.
US climate change envoy Todd Stern said Washington supported an EU roadmap to a new treaty, and Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent said Ottawa had forged a partnership with small island states which could be swamped by the rising sea levels caused by global warming.
"We're not setting a hard target on this date...(but) 2015 would be a reasonable target to set to pull together any new climate change regime," Peter Kent told reporters. Days earlier Kent had said that the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding accord on reducing carbon emissions, was "in the past". With the EU pact gaining momentum, pressure could shift to the developing world's biggest polluters - China and India - to come on board.
A group of 48 of the least developed countries said it now backed the European plan for a firm timetable, joining African nations and 43 small island states. "The EU roadmap is totally in play right now. The shift of the least developed countries and AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) to work with the EU potentially shows some kind of roadmap coming out of here," said Jennifer Morgan at the World Resources Institute.
Reflecting the changing mood in Durban, Brazil, an emerging economy that is a key player in climate negotiations, also said there was convergence on a deal in Durban. "It think it's possible," Brazil's chief negotiator Luiz Alberto Figueiredo told reporters, when asked if Durban could agree a date by which a legally binding accord could be reached.
"We are in favour of negotiating a legally binding instrument that will cover the phase after 2020. The parties are moving there, it's a question of completing the negotiations," he said. One EU source said US negotiators still opposed specific targets because they had no mandate to sign up to a legally binding deal. Environmental legislation is the subject of intense wrangling in the US Congress, which must ratify any treaty.