WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's lame-duck status means major progress on climate change will be unlikely at an international meeting next month, the chief of a multibillion dollar environmental group said yesterday.
Monique Barbut, who heads the Washington-based Global Environmental Facility, had doubts about any big agreements from December's meeting in Poznan, Poland.
The Poznan conference is being convened as part of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and is meant to help craft a global agreement by December 2009 to succeed the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol in 2012.
"It's going to be very difficult in Poznan to come out with something," Ms Barbut said in an interview.
"One of the main players in all those negotiations, which is the United States, is going to be in an almost impossible position to discuss anything."
This is because the administration of US president George Bush will be in its final weeks when the conference gets under way on December 1st, she said.
"Without the US engaging . . . the full negotiation on climate change will not make so much sense for everybody else," Ms Barbut said.
Progress is likely to be limited to such basic principles as an agreement that technology transfer and deforestation will be part of the final negotiation, Ms Barbut said.
There also could be assent on a baseline year that all countries would use to measure reductions in greenhouse emissions.
She said she expected the incoming administration of president-elect Barack Obama would be represented at the conference, but this has not been announced.
As the world's second-biggest greenhouse gas emitter - China is now the biggest - the United States is alone among major industrialised nations in rejecting the Kyoto agreement.
US senators voted unanimously against it (95 to zero) during the Clinton administration, and Mr Bush opposed it on the grounds that it gave fast-developing countries like China and India an unfair economic advantage.
Other countries have pointed to the lack of US participation as a reason to wait to act.
There are widespread doubts that the December 2009 deadline will be met, and Ms Barbut said that may be just as well.
What was more important, she said, was to get a comprehensive US energy and climate package approved by the next administration and Congress, then take up global negotiations.
"At the end of the day, it doesn't matter that we lose six months, if we are sure that the result will be something that the US administration and the US Congress can feel comfortable about," Ms Barbut said.
She said there has been a significant positive change in Bush administration climate policy in the last year, and praised the Bush team's series of meetings with the world's biggest greenhouse gas-polluting countries.
The Global Environment Facility is an independent financial organisation that unites 178 countries with international institutions, non-governmental groups and the private sector to provide grants for environmental projects.
- (Reuters)