CLIMATE: Gridlock in Durban as talks start final week

News
December 5, 2011

E&E News Lisa Friedman and Jean Chemnick, E&E reporters DURBAN, South Africa -- As the U.N. climate talks draw into their second week, negotiations appear to be precisely where the old hands say they should be: at a standstill. China claimed center stage as diplomats and journalists tried to parse new hints that the country would be willing, under certain conditions, to accept legally binding carbon emission targets. Ministers, meanwhile, have started to trickle into the International Convention Centre to, many hope, make tough decisions their negotiators have so far been unable to agree on. "Nobody knows what the endgame is. It's anybody's guess right now," said Philip Weech, director of the Bahamas Environment Science & Technology Commission and a member of the negotiating team. "Things are in crude form right now," Bangladesh Environment Minister Hasan Mahmud added. "It will take shape, I think, within the ministry-level meetings." Fundamentally, the future of the Kyoto Protocol remains in doubt. The first phase of the treaty expires this year, and the European Union is looking for ways to keep it alive, since at least three countries do not expect to enter targets for a second phase of the agreement. The European Union will join a second period of Kyoto as long as major emitters, including the United States and China, agree to discuss a broad agreement that would legally bind all major emitters. Xie Zhenhua, China's vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, said yesterday that China could consider that proposal. But he also laid out five conditions, many of which are rooted in the Kyoto model -- that is, developing countries act only with financial assistance from the rich. He also indicated China would want to wait until after a 2015 review of developed countries' efforts to curb emissions. U.S. envoy Todd Stern continued to cast doubt on whether China's rhetoric matched the buzz it had created. He said that while the United States "does not have any conceptual problem with the notion of a legally binding agreement," in order to begin talks it must be assured that any new treaty will treat industrialized and major emerging economies by the same legal standards. He rejected elements that would require some countries to curb emissions only if given financial help or technology. "What I think right now is, I don't think conditions are ripe" for a mandate to a legally binding agreement, Stern said. "I don't think they are ready for complete legal parity, no conditionality. I don't think they're ready for that." Others, though, praised the Chinese position. "We are pleased," said South African International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who is leading the conference. "What is pleasing is that we are beginning to see cards coming on the table with the very first day of the arrival of the minister so that they can start in all honesty dealing with the specific difficult political questions. "This is not the end," Nkoana-Mashabane said. "It is China laying the cards on the table, and I'm sure other countries will lay their cards on the table, and then the negotiations get escalated." Stephen Eule, vice president of climate and energy with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Stern is right to act cautiously in addressing a legally binding regime. "The political realities in the U.S. more or less dictate that position," Eule said. "I don't think that they want to get caught in a position where they are out ahead of Congress." But Jake Schmidt, international policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, cautioned the United States against dismissing China's statements too easily. "When a country hints, you run quickly at them and try to lock them down and move them as much as possible," he said. "If China is bluffing, then we should try to call them on it as soon as possible. If it is new and different, we better move on it very quick." At the same time, he noted, "You often can't get to a country's real bottom line until the final hours of the negotiation." See the full article here.