Negotiations make headway but tough tasks ahead

By Li Xing and Sun Xiaohua (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-12-13 13:58

Copenhagen: Stronger political will plus busier work in search of solutions by more minister-level officials is now needed to drive the negotiations forward, President of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) Connie Hedegaard and top UN climate official Yve de Boer told the press in the early evening on Saturday.

Half-way through the talks, substantial advances were made in adaptation, technology transfer and the use of forest to assimilate emissions.

Earlier last week, negotiations almost ran into a dead end on Thursday when storms built up with new demands from small island countries and strong criticisms over the leaked Danish text.

But things turned around on Friday when the chairs of two working groups tabled drafts of the core documents of the conference – the Long-Term cooperative Action and the Amendments to the Kyoto Protocol, to make sure that talks started to "go to deeper layers", Hedegaard told the press.

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Negotiations continued on for hours on Saturday, which Hedegaard called "productive".

However, she cautioned that "There are still very many challenges and many unsolved problems … We still have daunting tasks in front of us over the next few days."

To drive the process forward, "we need the engagement of the ministers to see stronger commitment from industrialized countries, to see significant engagement from developing nations and to have on the table the finance to make that developing countries’ engagement possible and to allow those countries to adapt to the impact of climate change," de Boer said.

"We will need the focus of the ministers over the coming days to ensure that we get the next level of process and next level of ambition to help safeguard the leaders can deliver what the people outside (the tens of thousands of demonstrators outside the conference venue) are calling for," de Boer said.

With hurdles ahead, de Boer said he believes the nations would be able to come out of the conference with a set of decisions that "launch immediate actions on adaptation, mitigation, technology, finance, capacity building and forests – the set of decisions that formulate ambitious industrialized country targets and broad developing nation engagement on the basis of financial support – that is something we can proudly walk away Copenhagen with."

But it would probably take another 12 months before the nations would be able "to capitalize what come out of Copenhagen and turn it into strong legal texts," de Boer said.

Chinese negotiators also see tough work ahead.

While the media seem to have field days about differences between China and the US, Hedegaard said that "I can think of no time at any of the six COPs I attended where the involvement and discussions between China and the US and the way they contribute here at the COP have been more constructive."

"We are not there yet, and there are differences in opinions. The thing is we should not underestimate that they are both here; they are engaging; and they are making their voices very much heard; and they are very clear as to where their positions are; and these are good settings for discussion," Hedegaard said.

"China is calling the US to do more; and the US is calling China to do more," de Boer said. "And I hope in the coming days, everyone will be calling everyone to do more."

Some small island countries continue to demand to consider their proposals for tougher emission cuts targets in the documents for both developed and developing nations.