UN climate talks went deep into overtime on Friday as negotiators struggled to break a deadlock between rich and developing nations on the underpinnings of a world carbon-cutting pact.
A years-old dispute over sharing responsibility for curbing greenhouse gases saw the 12-day negotiations enter a familiar phase of poker-like holdout, darkening prospects for the ambitious environmental accord.
Hours after the scheduled close of the session, officials and ministers were engaged in frantic haggling over a draft outlining a variety of national approaches — trying to whittle it down to a consensus text.
“We are almost there. We need to make just a final effort,” Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal said. “We need to take political decisions.”
Nations disagree on how a principle called “differentiation” will apply in a process next year of declaring national pledges for curbing Earth-warming fossil fuel emissions. Developing nations insist the West must bear a bigger burden for the carbon cuts, having started decades earlier to pollute their way to prosperity.
However, rich nations point the finger at developing giants like China and India furiously burning coal to power their rapid growth. Developing nations further demand that pledges incorporate not only action on reducing carbon emissions, but also financial help and adaptation aid to shore up their climate defenses.
A format for the pledges must be agreed in the Peruvian capital to allow nations to start their submissions from the first quarter of next year. They are set to be at the core of a global climate pact that nations have agreed to sign in Paris in December next year, to enter into effect by 2020, seeking to limit average global warming to 2oC over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
Campaigners in Lima said they feared a weak-willed compromise.
“The latest text which countries are working on has been stripped down to its bare bones to accommodate the whims of the lowest common denominator,” Christian Aid climate change adviser Mohamed Adow said. “Right now we are facing the prospect of being no further forward than we were when we left last year’s meeting in Warsaw.”
Green group WWF, also observing the annual negotiations round, said the new draft “contains a mixed bag of options.”
“It’s crunch time for negotiators here in Lima and everything is still up in the air,” the WWF said.
The goal of the pact was set down in Durban in 2011, but negotiations on its scope and scale have been a minefield.
“Some key elements fell to the cutting room floor and are not in the text at all,” Union of Concerned Scientists analyst Alden Meyer said of the latest draft.
Dropped text included language on absolute, economy-wide mitigation targets for developed nations.
The current range of options on key points “go from weak or minimal, to barely acceptable, to OK,” Meyer said.
He predicted differentiation would remain a tough issue, having been “pretty much scrubbed out of most of the text.”
“That may not be acceptable to some” developing nations, he said.
Another major blocking point is whether or not to have a process to assess the pledges’ global impact on the 2oC goal — with China a key opponent. Pope Francis also weighed in on the debate, saying in a letter to Pulgar-Vidal that “time to find global solutions is running out.”
“We can only find adequate solutions if we act together,” the Pope said in a message on Thursday.
There was a “moral imperative to act,” he said. Climate change “affects all of humanity, in particular the poorest, and future generations.”
Scientists say 2oC warming is relatively safe, but still no guarantee against damage to the climate system.
On current carbon trends, the planet is on course for about 4oC warming this century, dooming future generations to a planet of worsening drought, floods, storms and rising seas, they say.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in