Mexico next stop to salvage UN climate talks

COPENHAGEN, (Reuters) – The world will find it hard  to get U.N.-led climate talks back on track in Mexico in 2010  after an unambitious deal agreed in Copenhagen set no firm  deadline for a legally binding treaty.

Mexico will host the next annual U.N. ministerial talks from  Nov. 29 to Dec. 10, 2010 to build on a “Copenhagen Accord” that  seeks to limit temperatures rising to no more than 2 Celsius  above those recorded in pre-industrial times. But it does not  spell out how to achieve that goal.

For months, the United Nations had insisted the Copenhagen  talks, culminating with a summit of 120 world leaders on Friday,  had to be a “turning point” in slowing climate change with  nation-by-nation pledges of curbs in greenhouse gas emissions.

On Saturday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged  the deal — led by the United States and China and which leaves  blanks for national commitments — fell short of hopes but was  “an important beginning.”

A shift to Mexico, which sees itself as half-way between  rich and poor nations, could help negotiations that almost  collapsed amid allegations by Sudan and Venezuela that host  Denmark were biased in favour of the interests of the rich.

Mexico “can much better…fill this very difficult task of  building bridges,” said Kim Carstensen, head of the global  climate initiative of the WWF environmental group.

U.N. documents adopted in Copenhagen say results of work by  key U.N. groups on ways to slow global warming are to be  presented “for adoption” in Mexico — but dropped demands by  many nations that texts should be a “legally binding treaty”.
Many nations want the Mexico meeting brought forward.

“There’s a big risk that we have lost momentum,” one senior  delegate said of the fight to limit emissions to avert predicted  sandstorms, more powerful cyclones, species extinctions,  droughts, mudslides and rising ocean levels.

OBAMA PRAISES ACCORD
President Barack Obama hailed the deal, originally worked  out with China and other leading emerging economies and backed  by most other states, as a historic step and promised to build  on “momentum that we established in Copenhagen”.

China and the United States are the top emitters of  greenhouse gases. So far the schedule does not reflect urgency.

The next planned U.N. climate meeting is a regular  half-yearly session among officials in Bonn, from May 31 to June  11. By comparison, in 2009 there were three sets of talks in  Bonn and other sessions in Bangkok and Barcelona before  Copenhagen.

Apart from recognising a 2 C temperature ceiling, Saturday’s  decision supported a “goal” for a $100 billion annual fund by  2020 to help poor countries fight climate change, with a  quick-start $10 billion a year from 2010-12.

The deal was not formally adopted by all nations due to  opposition by a handful of developing nations who said it  ignored the real needs of the poor.  Some analysts said the U.S. and China deal could brighten  prospects for action by the U.S. Senate to cap carbon emissions  in 2010. The United States is the only major industrialised  nation with no carbon cap.

“It sets the stage for action in the Senate, where one of  the major barriers has been lack of transparency for commitments  by China,” wrote Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural  Resources Defense Council. “Now we have that, it can not be an  excuse for our Senators not to act.”
A problem for Copenhagen was a lack of other looming  deadlines. The first period of the existing Kyoto Protocol,  which binds all nations except the United States to cut  emissions, runs until Dec. 31, 2012.

Even so, businesses and carbon markets are clamouring for  certainty about the extent of legally binding cuts beyond 2013,  to help assess risks, for instance, of building a high-polluting  coal-fired power plant or a cleaner but more costly wind farm.
Copenhagen did not produce many promises but all major  nations have set emissions targets for 2020 since the talks were  launched in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007. Many of these were ranges  of cuts, conditional on a strong deal in Copenhagen.

Under the “Copenhagen Accord”, a first deadline is for  backers to submit plans for curbing greenhouse gas emissions by  Jan. 31, 2010 to the United Nations.
“There are big uncertainties about what countries will  promise. Will they still give ranges or a fixed number? What  will Japan do?” said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned  Scientists.
The European Union has promised a cut of 20 percent from  1990 levels by 2020, or 30 percent if all others act. Japan has  been targeting a cut of 25 percent by 2020, assuming a strong  Copenhagen deal, without an explicit fallback number.

Obama has given a provisional pledge of a 17 percent cut  from 2005 levels — which is 4 percent below 1990.

And the toughest climate “deadline” is likely to be 2015 —  the year world emissions would have to peak to give a good  chance of limiting global warming to 2 Celsius, according to the  U.N.’s panel of climate scientists.

A leaked document by the U.N. Climate Secretariat last week  showed current emissions pledges put the world on track for a 3  Celsius rise in temperatures — not 2.