UN climate talks bogged down, need impetus

GENEVA,  (Reuters) – Talks on a U.N. climate pact have  become bogged down like “walking in wet sand” but a U.N. summit  this month could give impetus for a deal due in December, the  head of a key U.N. negotiating group said yesterday.

Michael Zammit Cutajar, who chairs a group of 190 nations  working on the planned climate pact due to be sealed in  Copenhagen on Dec. 18, said a draft text was still 200 pages or  more long despite efforts to cut back at a U.N. meeting in  mid-August.

“I think we’re walking through wet sand. There’s masses of  text,” Zammit Cutajar told Reuters on the sidelines of a World  Climate Conference in Geneva, a separate U.N. initiative trying  to find ways to improve information about the climate.

He said that a draft climate treaty in October 1997, two  months before the existing Kyoto Protocol was agreed, was around  30 pages long. “That’s something people can get their brain  around. At 200 pages no one will read the whole thing.”

“We are in a much more difficult negotiation than Kyoto,” he  said, adding that a Copenhagen accord “can’t be just a political  declaration.” The text outlines ideas ranging from taxes on  aviation to ways to invest in forests to help soak up carbon.

Still, he saw chances for a change of gear, especially when  U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hosts a summit of world  leaders about global warming in New York on Sept. 22.

“The New York summit…could get the big political bosses to  tell their guys ‘start moving’,” said Zammit Cutajar, who is  from Malta. Among other meetings, leaders of the Group of 20  will meet in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24-25.

In the U.N. climate talks, Zammit Cutajar’s group is looking  at how to widen the fight against climate change beyond the  Kyoto Protocol, which binds only industrialised countries to  limit greenhouse gas emissions until 2012.

Countries such as China and India want the rich to promise  deep reductions in emissions by 2020 and say their own priority  has to be on ending poverty. Rich nations want assurances that  developing nations will sign up for more climate action.

The next round of climate talks is in Bangkok from Sept. 28  to Oct. 9, followed by a week in Barcelona from Nov. 2-6 with  the Copenhagen meeting, gathering environment ministers from  around the world, from Dec. 7-18.

Zammit Cutajar said he agreed with an assessment in  mid-August by Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change  Secretariat, that a Copenhagen deal would not be reached unless  the pace of talks accelerated.

“Obviously there are a lot of tactics here, people will play  their cards later rather than sooner. But they have to start,”  he said.

He also said that nations could make progress without  addressing core points like how much money developed nations  should provide to help developing countries cope with more  wildfires, floods, desertification, disease or rising seas.

“There are so many questions around money other than the  sum: where are you going to get it from…who is going to manage  it…who will be eligible for it?” he said.