ANALYSIS:With just 44 days to go to the Copenhagen climate conference, the EU faces difficulties agreeing a position
THE EUROPEAN Union always wanted to be seen as playing a leadership role in tackling climate change. If it wasn’t for Europe, indeed, the Kyoto Protocol would never have come into force, in the wake of former US president George Bush spurning the treaty in March 2001, just two months after taking office.
So it was of the utmost importance that the EU would go to the 15th UN climate change conference in Copenhagen with a strong negotiating position, showing the rest of the world that Europe was determined to address all of the issues – from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to providing aid for developing countries.
EU enlargement in 2004 has weakened its position, however. On two crucial issues, the newer member states in central and eastern Europe have proved quite recalcitrant – firstly, by declining to shoulder their share of the international aid burden and, secondly, by seeking to hold onto vast quantities of “hot air”, as it’s known in climate circles.
This term refers to the tradeable bank of credits built up by Poland and others as a result of the collapse of their Soviet-style economies in the early 1990s. Potentially, these assigned amount units (AAUs) – also held in abundance by Russia – are worth a fortune. But they could seriously undermine the international carbon market.
The compromise agreed by EU environment ministers at their meeting in Luxembourg on Wednesday said the unrestricted “banking” and use of AAUs at their full value to comply with commitments on emission reductions beyond 2012 would have to be “addressed appropriately” to ensure the environmental integrity of a Copenhagen deal.
The issue of international aid is even thornier, and EU finance ministers failed to agree on it at their meeting on Tuesday. Polish finance minister Jacek Rostowski said wealthier member states “cannot expect the poorer countries of the EU to be the ones who are disproportionately helping the poorest countries in the Third World”.
Poland, together with other former Soviet satellites, sees no reason why it should have to dig deeply into its own coffers to help other countries combat climate change. (It also wants to hang onto its carbon-intensive coal-fired power stations as long as possible).
It will now be up to heads of state and government to resolve this impasse at their summit in Brussels next week. For without an EU commitment to provide aid for developing countries, where the scale of need was recently estimated by the World Bank at $100 billion (€66.7 billion) a year, its negotiating position would have feet of clay.
The agreed negotiating position for Copenhagen acknowledges that many developing countries are already making “strong and increasing efforts” to limit their emissions – without being legally required, as the EU is, to do so – and it considers that their proposals for action now need to be “further substantiated, encouraged and strengthened”.
EU environment ministers underlined that there is “considerable scope” to combine these mitigation actions with sustainable economic growth, especially in the advanced developing countries, and that an ambitious global deal “could bring significant financial flows to developing countries through a scaled-up carbon market”.
The text urges advanced developing countries – such as China and India – to “come forward . . . with proposals for ambitious mitigation actions as part of their contributions to the global effort”, to keep the increase in average global temperatures below two degrees.
Several advanced developing countries have already announced ambitious targets, notably Mexico and Indonesia, and the EU ministers said they were “convinced that . . . such actions combined could lead to reduced emissions by as much as 30 per cent or more below the currently predicted emissions growth rate by 2020”.
However, under the terms of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), it is up to developed countries to make the deepest cuts. And none have gone further than Norway, which has pledged a 40 per cent cut in its emissions by 2020.
This is way ahead of the EU’s unilateral pledge of a 20 per cent reduction in the same timeframe, although the negotiating text reiterates its offer to ratchet this up to 30 per cent – provided that other developed countries commit themselves to comparable cuts and that developing countries “contribute adequately” to the global effort.
The text also reiterates the EU’s view that global emission reduction targets for international aviation and maritime transport, consistent with meeting the two-degrees objective, should be incorporated into any Copenhagen deal – with 2011 set as the deadline for adopting measures to achieve the required cuts over time.
Significantly, it calls on all parties to the UNFCCC to embrace the two-degrees objective and agree to global emission reductions of at least 50 per cent, including a combined target of at least 80-95 per cent for developed countries by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels), and it says this should also be “subject to regular scientific review”.
Although the US has endorsed such ambitious targets, both in the G8 and the Major Economies Forum, US president Barack Obama’s negotiating team has repeatedly made it clear that all commitments should be voluntary and not subject to an international compliance regime – such as the Kyoto Protocol, which is political poison in Washington.
This puts the US at loggerheads with the EU negotiating position, which again emphasises the need for “a legally binding agreement for the period starting January 1st, 2013, that builds on the Kyoto Protocol and incorporates all its essentials” as part of any Copenhagen deal, with a “strong and effective compliance regime” to back it up.
The EU now wants the next round of climate talks in Barcelona early next month to focus on substantive issues, so that everything isn’t left till the last minute in Copenhagen. But with just 44 days to go until the UN conference opens in the Danish capital, negotiators on all sides are facing a tough and perhaps even insurmountable task.
Frank McDonald is Environment Editor