ACCRA, GHANA — Talks on a new global warming agreement have begun to resolve some major sticking points, the U.N. climate chief said Wednesday, sounding a promising note after months of sluggish negotiations often marked by confrontation among industrial and developing countries.
Yvo de Boer, who in the past has chided delegates for delays, gave an upbeat assessment at the end of a weeklong conference of 160 nations, the latest round in a two-year process that is due to end with the signing of an accord in December 2009.
“This has been a very important and a very encouraging meeting, said De Boer. “The process has speeded up, and governments are becoming very serious about negotiating a result.” Environmentalists agreed progress had been made. “Accra shows that overcoming the muddle of conflicting views and crafting an effective deal to tackle climate change is possible,” said the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, or WWF.
The delegates found some common ground on ways to help developing countries limit emissions and strategies for compensating poorer countries, especially in Africa, that will likely be hard hit by the effects of global warming.
Last year a U.N. panel of scientists said that climate change already is happening, and the earth’s temperature would continue to rise even if carbon emissions were reduced to zero today because of the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But they warned of possible catastrophic effects unless emissions peak within the next 10 to 15 years and then decline sharply.
The U.N. talks aim for a treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which regulates the emissions of 37 industrial countries and sets out ways they can benefit from helping poor countries use clean energy.
The United States rejected the Kyoto accord, arguing it would harm American business and that it made no comparable demands on emerging economies. China, India and other large developing countries refused to accept a binding arrangement that would limit their development and their declared mission to ease poverty at home.
In what could be a step toward a compromise, the Accra talks made headway on an arrangement that would focus on limiting carbon emissions by specific industries such as steel, cement or power generation. Unlike industrial countries, developing countries would face no binding targets on their economies as a whole.
In a second area of progress, delegates agreed that countries should be compensated for slowing or halting deforestation, and that countries where forests have largely been depleted should be rewarded for conserving and expanding their remaining forest cover.
New and detailed proposals also were suggested for raising the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to help poor countries grapple with the effects of climate change. Poor countries, especially in Africa, are expected to suffer harsher drought, flooding and crop failures, and hundreds of millions of people will feel the stress of water shortages.
De Boer said the various proposals will be packaged together for the next round of talks in Poland in December, in what would amount to “a first version of a negotiating text.” “The issues are still contentious, but ideas have been put on the table,” said Jake Schmidt, of the National Resources Defense Council. “The posturing stage is closing a little bit.”
