Developing countries yesterday rounded on the US and its allies at emergency climate talks, accusing the world’s richest nations of stalling a deal aimed at preventing runaway global warming.
Experts from around the world have been locked in discussions over the past week in Bangkok, aiming to reach a comprehensive rulebook for countries to implement the landmark Paris Accord on climate change.
However, talks have foundered over the key issue of how efforts to limit climate change are funded and how contributions are reported.
Photo: AFP
Delegates representing some of Earth’s poorest and smallest nations said on the final day of the summit that the US and other Western economies were failing to live up to their green spending commitments.
“Developed countries are responsible for the vast majority of historic emissions, and many became remarkably wealthy burning fossil fuels,” said Amjad Abdulla, the head of a negotiating bloc of small island states.
“Yet, we face devastating climate impacts and some of us could be lost forever to rising seas” without progress on the Paris deal by the end of the year, he added.
Photo: AFP
The Paris deal, struck in 2015, aims to limit global temperature rises by the end of the century. To do this, countries agreed to a set of promises, including to establish an annual US$100 billion fund to help developing nations react to our heating planet.
The US and other developed economies want less oversight on how their funding is gathered and more flexibility over how future funding is structured, but developing nations insist they need predictable and open funding in order to effectively plan their fight against the fallout from climate change.
A senior source within the African nations’ negotiating bloc said the US and others were reneging on pledges made in Paris by refusing to discuss future climate funding.
“It’s as if we started from scratch” in Bangkok, the source said.
The Bangkok talks were organized as an emergency negotiating session after little progress was made at previous rounds towards a final rulebook.
Under the timeframe set in Paris, the guidelines for nations must be finalized by the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change summit in Poland in December.
While delegates have made some progress on areas such as new technology and carbon markets, activists said the US — with Western acquiescence — had stonewalled any momentum on the key funding issue.
Harjeet Singh, global lead on climate change for NGO ActionAid, yesterday the Paris deal was “on the brink.”
“Developed countries are going back on their word and refusing to agree clear rules governing climate finance,” he told reporters. “If they remain stuck in their positions and fail to loosen their purses, this treaty may collapse.”
The US under is scheduled to leave the Paris process in 2020, but multiple delegates in Bangkok said that it was still actively hindering progress in talks.
One senior negotiator said the US was “poisoning” the atmosphere of trust that led to the Paris accord.
Activists also called out the EU, Britain and Australia for falling into line with Washington’s position.
In related news, tens of thousands of people across the globe on Saturday took to the streets to demand that governments step up action on global warming.
Nearly 1,000 events in more than 90 nations delivered a two-pronged message: speed up the shift to a world powered by renewable energy rather than planet-warming gas, oil and coal; and protect the people most vulnerable to rising seas and climate-enhanced extreme weather.
The rolling, 24-hour protest peaked in San Francisco, where thousands snaked through the city chanting and carrying handmade signs and banners.
The protests came ahead of a three-day summit in San Francisco that opens on Wednesday
Additional reporting by AP
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