The battle over whether to include greenhouse gas emissions targets in the "roadmap" for a new climate accord intensified yesterday, with the Europeans and environmentalists clamoring for the targets against opposition by the US and others.
Talks at the UN climate change conference, now in its second week, stepped up yesterday with the scheduled arrival of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and new Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who signed onto the Kyoto Protocol on global warming just last week.
Delegates from 190 nations have been trying to hammer out a roadmap for negotiations for a pact to succeed Kyoto when it expires in 2012. But countries rich and poor have struggled with the wording for the text.
PHOTO: AFP
A draft of the final document notes -- in a nonbinding way -- a widely accepted view that reductions of 25 percent to 40 percent in industrialized nations' overall emissions would be required by 2020, calling for even deeper cuts later.
The US is resisting inclusion of the language. But Stavros Dimas, the European commissioner for environment, said it was crucial toward preventing global temperatures from exceeding 2°C over preindustrial levels.
"We need this range of reductions by developed countries," he told reporters yesterday. "Science tells us that these reductions are necessary. Logic requires that we listen to science."
The EU has itself committed to 20 percent to 30 percent reductions below 1990 levels by 2020.
Chief US negotiator Harlan Watson has argued against including the targets, saying it would be premature to set goals -- even non-binding ones -- at the opening of what is expected to be at least two years of negotiation toward a post-Kyoto agreement.
The US is expected to win out, since Bali's decisions require consensus, and the final "Bali roadmap" is expected to be what has been long anticipated -- a vague, broad mandate for two years of negotiations on Kyoto's successor.
UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said that the range was only meant to guide subsequent negotiations, but that including it was not vital.
Australia, despite its sudden embrace of the Kyoto pact, has shied away from supporting the interim target range, saying it must await the conclusion of a study sometime next year.
Canada and Japan also oppose inclusion of the suggested figures.
Meanwhile, Indonesian President Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono said finance ministers meeting on the fringes of climate talks in Bali were not doing enough to find the money to fight global warming.
"Ministers of finance can and should play a much larger and more active role in responding to climate change, both domestically and internationally," he said.
Government ministries including energy, industry, forestry and agriculture also had to take part, he said.
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