PREVIEW: Can Durban rescue climate talks?

By Pat Reber Nov 21, 2011, 13:30 GMT

Washington - The Kyoto Protocol on climate change expires at the end of 2012, with no extension in sight unless the European Union gets commitments from the two countries that together emit about 40 per cent of all greenhouse gasses - the United States and China.

Negotiators will meet November 28-December 9 in Durban, South Africa, on the Indian Ocean coast, for the 17th annual United Nations climate talks. South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane calls the Durban talks 'the end of the line for some of these pressing climate-change issues.'

'We cannot delay,' she said recently.

After the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen meeting and the minimal results of Cancun in 2010, experts are hoping to at least nail down a 100-billion-dollar Green Climate Fund and spell out other Cancun agreements on reforestation, clean technology and transparency in measuring carbon emissions.

But the talks are overshadowed by the long-standing US-China stalemate, the economic crisis in Europe and the uncertainty of elections and leadership changes in the United States and China in 2012.

The US, which signed but never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, still insists that its economic rival China and other emerging economies must make binding commitments to lower greenhouse gasses blamed for global warming. And China still insists that developing countries should retain the exemptions granted in the 1997 Kyoto agreement - and that the US should get on board with binding pledges.

'One has to be realistic. It's not really expected that Durban will come to very conclusive agreements on the new regime,' Claire Parker, senior advisor to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN ), told dpa.

Scientists say that to avoid surging sea levels and deadly drought, temperatures must rise no more than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by 2100, a goal that was confirmed in Cancun.

Yet carbon emissions were at a record high in 2010, and experts expect temperatures to rise at least 4 degrees by the end of the century, even if current reduction pledges are met. Within 30 to 40 years, for example, the Arctic Ocean will be nearly ice free in the summer, the Norway-based Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) projected earlier this year.

Global climate-change policy is at a crossroads in Durban.

One path leads to an extension of the existing Kyoto treaty. Another one leads to a broader mandate that all countries, rich and poor, enter into a new round of talks about legal commitments.

South Africa's chief negotiator, Alf Wills, does not expect legally binding outcomes, which he called 'a very false measure of success' in Durban. He told the Johannesburg Star newspaper that a decision about proposals for a 'new instrument to replace Kyoto ... is some way down the track.'

The prospects are also slim for a Kyoto extension, observers say. Russia, Canada and Japan have already said they won't sign up. That leaves only the European Union and perhaps Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand and Norway to wrangle binding pledges from the US and China for future talks.

EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard noted the arrangement would cover only 16 per cent of global emissions.

'This is clearly not good enough. We need commitments also from the other big emitters,' she said recently.

For some observers, a path that goes around Kyoto - or absorbs it - and builds on the Green Climate Fund and other external agreements from Cancun, holds greater hope. Negotiators in 2010 also brought the voluntary pledges from more than 100 countries made in 2009 into the climate umbrella organization, The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The question for Durban is whether more than 190 countries can agree on a mandate to start talks on a new deal, pegged to the next set of scientific findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due in 2015.

That could take 'several years' of talks, yet would still be the most optimistic outcome for Durban, Alden Meyer of the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists, told dpa. He noted that the United States sees such a mandate as 'unrealistic.'

At a minimum, observers hope that Durban will solidify Cancun's Green Climate Fund to generate 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to help poorer countries adapt to warming and use low-emission technology. But even that hung by a thread as the United States and Saudi Arabia objected to a consensus proposal for the Durban talks.

The World Bank's Andrew Steer, who administers a 4-billion-dollar annual Climate Investment Fund, was more upbeat. He said good progress has been made on climate change. In 2010 alone, 200 billion dollars was invested in renewable energy and low-carbon transport in the developing world, he said.

'We want a global deal ... but we shouldn't all go to Durban and get depressed if there's not a global deal,' Steer told dpa. 'We think that Durban can play a role in moving a few important things forward, and also in changing attitudes and behaviour and that's really what it's all about.'