Isramart : APEC leaders kill Copenhagen treaty hopes

Isramart news:
The clearest sign yet that Copenhagen won’t produce its intended goal, a new legally-binding agreement on climate change, has emerged from a meeting of key leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore on the weekend.

Leaders including US President Obama and China’s President Hu Jintao have accepted a plan for a two-stage process to reach a new global agreement which would leave the details for a binding treaty until 2010 or later. The suggestion came from the prime minister of Denmark, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who flew to Singapore to make a personal appeal to APEC leaders in order to save the Copenhagen talks he will host from outright failure.

Rasmussen said that it was now too late to secure a detailed legally-binding agreement. His plan calls for nations to make specific and politically-binding pledges on emissions targets, and commit to completing a legally-binding treaty afterward. “The Copenhagen Agreement should finally mandate continued legal negotiations and set a deadline for their conclusion,” Reuters reports Rasmussen saying.

The APEC summit was significant for Copenhagen because it brought the leaders of key emitter nations together, rather than their negotiators, so close to the December climate conference itself. Obama, Hu and the leaders of Japan, Russia, Canada, Australia and Mexico were among 19 member nation leaders present at their annual meeting.

“There was an assessment by the leaders that it was unrealistic to expect a full internationally legally-binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days,” US negotiator Michael Froman said.

The focus remains on the two crucial climate players, Obama and Hu, this week with the US President now heading for Beijing for bilateral talks with his counterpart. Climate change commitments are on the agenda.

The question now is, if not a binding legal agreement, what sort of in-principle political agreement can be reached in Copenhagen? The challenge still remains to bridge the gap between developed and developing nations over emissions targets up to 2020 and how much financing developed nations are prepared to put on the table to help their less-developed and more vulnerable cousins.

Given the lack of progress on these issues over recent years, even a political agreement that resolves them would make Copenhagen a success. UK climate change secretary Ed Miliband told the BBC that he’s optimistic that world leaders will reach such an agreement. “Despite it being tough, I’m actually quite optimistic. Substantive commitments that leaders make is what matters now. If we have to lock lawyers in a room for a few months afterwards to turn that into a legal form, that’s okay.”

The two-stage timetable for an agreement does help resolve the problem that the US Congress won’t be able to pass a climate bill and lock in policy in time for the meeting. By the time a final treaty is being thrashed out next year the bill could be passed. And it might be helped along by the fact that concrete emissions obligations from China and India might then be on the table, easing opposition from Republicans in the US.

But as yet, there is nothing in this new timetable and process that cuts to the heart of the global stand off; that neither the US Congress nor the White House is proposing anything like the 25-40 per cent emissions cuts for 2020 that are being demanded by developing nations and the main UN climate science body, the IPCC.