CANCUN, Mexico, (Reuters) – China accused some developed nations yesterday at U.N. climate talks of seeking to kill the Kyoto Protocol pact to curb global warming in a damaging standoff with Japan, Russia and Canada.
Venezuela and Bolivia also branded some rich countries “unacceptable” for distancing themselves from the Kyoto agreement, stepping up sparring before ministers arrive for next week’s climax of the Nov. 29-Dec. 10 talks in the Mexican beach resort of Cancun.
Developing countries favor an extension of the 1997 Protocol, which obliges only developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions until 2012, while many rich nations prefer a new agreement that includes emerging economies led by China.
Some countries “even want to kill the Kyoto Protocol, to end the Kyoto Protocol,” Huang Huikang, a special representative for climate change negotiations at China’s foreign ministry, told reporters. “This is a very worrying movement.”
The future of the 1997 Kyoto pact was the main hurdle at the 194-nation talks that are seeking to agree a modest package of measures to slow global warming, said Huang.
Ambitions are low after the 2009 Copenhagen summit failed to agree on a binding U.N. treaty.
The U.N.’s climate chief said Kyoto backers and opponents were poles apart and called for compromise on a deal to help slow what the U.N. panel of climate experts says will be more floods, droughts, desertification and rising ocean levels.
“It is of course a position that is 180 degrees opposite,” said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. climate body, naming reluctant Kyoto members Canada, Russia and Japan in contrast to Venezuela and Bolivia.
“I don’t think that it will be possible to guarantee a second commitment period here in Cancun. I know for sure that Cancun cannot obliterate the possibility,” she said.
Japan’s forthright reiteration in Cancun of its position had been “in sporting terms, unnecessary roughness,” Fernando Tudela, deputy environment minister of Mexico, told Reuters, adding the Kyoto impasse was the biggest stumbling block.
A Japanese negotiator, Akira Yamada, sitting beside Huang at a news conference said — “Kyoto killing is a kind of propaganda wording. Japan does not want to kill Kyoto.”
