THE EU now expects that the US and other developed countries are unlikely to show their hands on greenhouse gas emissions cuts and development aid until the final days, perhaps even the last night, of next month’s Copenhagen climate change conference.
“The numbers and the financial figures are the hardest parts of the whole deal, and will be left to ministers and heads of state [or government] to decide,” chief European Commission negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger told a press briefing here yesterday.
The EU “will still be pushing to come to a fully fledged treaty”, he said, while conceding that some of its political leaders – such as German chancellor Angela Merkel – are now saying openly that it would be more realistic to seek a “framework agreement”.
Mr Runge-Metzger was speaking after negotiations resumed following a dramatic one-day boycott by African countries in protest against the unwillingness of developed countries to “put numbers on the table” showing how far they would go to reduce emissions.
It is believed that the boycott caused a flurry of diplomatic activity on Tuesday, with African leaders being phoned by their counterparts elsewhere in an effort to persuade them to order their delegations back to the negotiating table in Barcelona.
Algerian chairman of the Africa Group Jamil Djemouai was abruptly recalled to Algiers to explain what was going on to his government – even though African leaders agreed last month that some “dramatic intervention” would be made at the climate talks.
Stanislaus Lumumba, chairman of the G77 group of 130 developing countries, confirmed that African countries were fully participating once again, and he was “guardedly optimistic” that their brief boycott had given “a degree of focus” to the negotiations.
But he dismissed the “notion” that political leadership would only be brought to bear on the crunch issues in the final days of the Copenhagen conference as a “very wrong approach”, saying it was up to governments to give delegates their “riding instructions”.
Asked if the main African demand for developed countries to cut their emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 was “too heavy a lift” – as UN climate chief Yvo de Boer put it – Mr Lumumba said they had managed to find trillions of dollars to deal with the financial crisis.
Sweden’s Anders Turesson, negotiating on behalf of the EU, said it was “not unreasonable” for African countries to call for a 40 per cent cut – twice as much as the EU is prepared to do unilaterally – given the “serious consequences” of climate change for Africa.
“We share many of the concerns of the African Group, but we cannot lose time in this process. Time is already scarce and we cannot lose one minute,” he said. Delegates would have to “work hard in Barcelona” to prepare for the “end-game” in Copenhagen.
Mathias Duwe, senior climate policy official with the Climate Action Network, said several countries were “downplaying” what might be agreed in the Danish capital, but he believed they would not be “let off the hook” by people around the world who expected action.
May Boeve, of 350.org – which campaigns for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to be capped at a “safe level” of 350 parts per million – said there had never been a time when civil society was more networked, and that’s what had helped elect Barack Obama.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate, which has called for emissions cuts of between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020, said in a video address to delegates that the scientific evidence “must be kept in focus” in the run-up to Copenhagen.
