Oct 8, 2009, 10:27 GMT
Bangkok - Oil-rich countries have had their own ax to grind at the ongoing United Nations climate talks in Bangkok, where the focus is on finalizing an agreement to cut world carbon emissions, the head of the Saudi Arabian delegation said Thursday.
'We are the economically vulnerable countries as a result of any agreement,' said Mohammad Al Sabban, head of the Saudi Arabian negotiating team attending the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that wind up Friday.
'You cannot come here and say the way to do it is reducing dependency on oil, because that means you will transfer the burden to developing countries, especially those that are highly dependent on the exportation of oil,' Al Sabban said.
The UNFCCC talks aim at hashing out a negotiating text for a Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December that will, hopefully, ink a new climate deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
The deal, if it happens, should include a commitment by the industrialized countries to drastically reduce their carbon emissions by 2020 in order to keep to global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees celsius, the threshold for avoiding an environmental disaster.
To meet this goal there must be an estimated 10 trillion dollars worth of investments in clean and efficient energies by the industrialized countries, which would lead to a substantial move away from oil-dependency, according to a recent report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The IEA predicts that with the right outcome in Copenhagen, oil consumption will peak in 2030, earning the oil-exporting countries an estimated 23 trillion dollars, a fourfold increase over what they earned between 1985 and 2007.
After 2030, oil consumption is expected to decline worldwide, predicts the IEA.
Saudi Arabia is worried about that long-distant future.
'We don't have any other natural resources,' Al Sabban said. 'We are trying to diversify our economy but this will take time and what will we do when we see our income deteriorating as a result of the policies being undertaken by developed countries? he added.
At the Bangkok talks the Saudi delegation has been pushing hard for compensation clauses for itself and other oil-producing countries, a manoeuvre that has prompted accusations of a more sinister ulterior motive.
'They are using this issue, not to get compensation, but to prolong the process,' said Wael Hmaidan, executive director of IndyACT, a non-government organization. 'The main purpose behind this is obstructionism. For them a planet that doesn't depend on oil means a planet that doesn't depend on Saudi Arabia.'
Saudi Arabia has played a dubious role in past climate change talks, although it is a member of the Kyoto Protocol and attended the Bali climate talks of 2007.
'Under US president (George W) Bush, it was a triangle between the US, Australia and Saudi Arabia that played the most destructive role in the negotiations,' said Christop Bals, policy director of GermanWatch, another climate-related NGO.
GermanWatch and IndyACT on Thursday accused Saudi Arabia of trying to undermine the unified position of the G77, a group of developing nations, on climate change discussions. But a G77 spokesman strongly denied the suggestion.
'The truth is that Saudi Arabia is a committed member of G77, fighting for a perspective that many developing countries have accepted,' said Lumumba Di-Ping, Sudan ambassador to the UN and deputy chair to the G77 in Bangkok.
'This is divide and rule. What is true is that all developed countries are discarding the Kyoto Protocol, so they had to create a story (about Saudi Arabia)' Di-Ping said.
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