INTERVIEW: EU's climate chief looks to US to balance BASICs

Mar 3, 2010, 13:50 GMT

Brussels - The European Union and the United States must work more closely together on climate change to counterbalance the weight of Brazil, China, India and South Africa, the EU's new climate action commissioner said ahead of her first official visit to the US.

The EU is anxious to restore its influence in world climate-change negotiations, after it was largely overshadowed by the US and the so- called BASIC countries in global talks in Copenhagen in December.

'One reason to go to Washington ... is to say that we think it's very important now, with the BASIC countries allying themselves and saying that they will coordinate their positions prior to any international meeting, that developed countries get together,' Connie Hedegaard told the German Press Agency dpa in an exclusive interview.

In particular, developed states must discuss how they are to put into practice current pledges on climate funding to poorer states and how they should deliver the necessary greenhouse-gas cuts, she said.

As Denmark's minister for climate change, Hedegaard hosted and chaired much of the Copenhagen meeting, before being sworn in as EU climate action commissioner on February 10.

She is now planning to make Washington the venue for her first official visit, expected on March 16, as part of the EU's long-term attempt to find new leverage in world climate talks.

'I am not going to Washington because I believe that they will just say OK, let's do it: it's also to find out what are the possibilities, what is the thinking behind the scene?' she said.

One of the US' main objections to a binding global climate-change deal among developed countries has long been the question of how China - the US' main global rival - would be bound to it. But Hedegaard said that that calculation was starting to shift.

'The fear in the US of the competition from China, (is) that if they do something they would put a burden on American business ... I can hear that even among Republicans they start to say that it's maybe the other way round, maybe it will harm our economy more if we don't do it,' she said.

Hedegaard also acknowledged that developed states will have to find some way to convince China to level off its emissions before the current estimated date of 2035.

 'It is a mathematical fact that if you wait until 2035 for China to peak, it will be very difficult to reach the (climate) target. And we should say: you agreed in Copenhagen to the target. We all have a shared responsibility. We cannot achieve it without substantial concessions as concerns the peak year from big emerging economies.'

And she called on EU member states to find a more effective way of dealing internationally, after their pre-set negotiating stance proved too inflexible to use in real-life talks in Copenhagen.

In international diplomacy, 'suddenly the room just wants to do something different. How can we then be able to tackle these situations without having to go back and say, 'The rest of the world didn't agree with us, what do we do now'?' Hedegaard asked.

But to start with, the EU's eyes are turned on Washington, where US President Barack Obama's plans for climate-change legislation have come under intense pressure following the Democrats' shock loss of their Senate super-majority in January.

'I believe it's rather crucial that they can come up with some sort of legislation prior to their summer recess, because after their summer recess there is a risk that it's the midterm election campaign and then the attention is somewhere else,' Hedegaard said.

'I believe that more people in Washington realise that it is necessary, but sometimes politicians know what is necessary but for some political reason it's not the right time,' she said.