India softened climate demands on Friday, helping bridge a rich-poor divide, but said a global deal may miss a December deadline by a few months.
In contrast, EU states struggled to agree a common stance for financing a UN climate pact, meant to be agreed in Copenhagen at a meeting from Dec. 7 to Dec. 18.
India wanted generous aid on advanced carbon-cutting technologies but dropped a core demand that industrialized countries cut greenhouse gases by 40 percent by 2020.
“If we say, let’s start with 25 percent, that’s a beginning. I’m not theological about this. It’s a negotiation. We have given a number of 40 but one has to be realistic,” environment minister Jairam Ramesh said.
Ramesh said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, keen to overturn India’s image as obstructionist in multi-lateral negotiations, had ordered him to be flexible.
“I tell you my prime minister has told me two days ago, ‘don’t block, be constructive ... make sure there’s an agreement.’ What more can I say?” he said.
Indian is now in line with the EU, which has promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions by between 20 percent and 30 percent by 2020 below 1990 levels. US President Barack Obama wants to return US emissions to 1990 levels by then.
India also now supported a British estimate that the developed world should pay about US$100 billion annually by 2020 to help poorer nations cope with and slow climate change.
Until now it has suggested that the developed world pay 1 percent of their national wealth — a far higher figure which some rich countries branded a fantasy.
But Europe struggled to find a common position on climate finance on Friday, as member states guard national treasuries with a robust economic recovery still not in sight.
The EU was silent about stepping up climate aid to developing nations, after talk last month from its executive Commission of paying up to 15 billion euros (US$22.4 billion) a year by 2020 to break the impasse between rich and poor.
China and India say they cannot cut emissions and adapt to changing temperatures without help from industrialized nations, which grew rich by burning fossil fuels, emitting carbon.
A draft EU report for finance ministers called the past figures “a useful estimate for overall public and private efforts” but pointed to the “uncertainty ... of such numbers.”
And cracks emerged over EU plans for cuts in emissions.
The 27-country bloc has pledged to cut its own emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and to increase cuts to 30 percent if other rich regions take similar action.
But Romania and Slovakia have proposed making the increase to 30 percent less of a foregone conclusion, documents show. Romania also questions proposals to cut emissions by up to 95 percent by 2050.
In Nairobi, the UN on Friday urged a smarter approach to biofuels that could be part of a shift to renewable energies under a Copenhagen deal.
“A more sophisticated debate is urgently needed,” UN Environment Program Executive Director Achim Steiner told reporters.
Generating electricity at power stations using wood, straw, seed oils and other crop or waste material was “generally more energy efficient than converting crops to liquid fuels.”
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS