China accused rich countries of undermining key elements of an international climate change agreement that nations hope to agree by the end of this year, adding to a chorus of discord over the negotiations.
Su Wei (蘇偉), who led Beijing’s delegation to climate treaty talks in Bangkok that ended on Friday, said splits over the framework for a new pact to fight global warming remained “quite large,” just two months before negotiations culminate in Copenhagen.
China, the world’s biggest developing country and biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity, is at the heart of those disagreements.
Su told Xinhua news agency that rich countries were seeking to abandon key principles of the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty that governs nations’ efforts to address climate change up to the end of 2012.
Negotiators have been wrestling with whether to extend Kyoto into a second commitment period from 2013, amend the pact or create a new one, a step many developing nations resist.
Kyoto obliges rich countries to make quantified commitments to cut emissions of greenhouse gases that are stoking global warming, while developing countries do not have to assume quantified emissions targets.
Su said that any attempt to abandon the Kyoto Protocol “gravely violated the fundamental basis of the international climate negotiations,” Xinhua reported yesterday.
“With so little time left for negotiations, proposing a new plan that fundamentally violates the basis of negotiations is in effect setting up new obstacles to their progress,” he said.
Su heads the climate change policy division of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, an agency that steers economic policy and dominates global warming policy. He made the comments on Friday, Xinhua said.
The Kyoto Protocol and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change should form the two tracks guiding negotiations, Su said.
“If one of these tracks is abandoned, then the climate negotiations train won’t be able to head smoothly towards Copenhagen,” he said.
His warnings came after a chorus of similar rancor in Bangkok, where senior delegates from developing countries walked out of a session this week saying they would not discuss a future without the Kyoto Protocol climate pact.
Negotiators have been trying to find a formula that will bring the US and developing nations into a framework that commits all nations to curb their emissions to prevent dangerous climate change.
Many developing nations want industrialized countries to cut emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing