US backs timetable for global climate deal at Warsaw talks

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/22/us-timetable-global-climate-deal-warsaw-talks

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The US has thrown its weight firmly behind the push for a clear timetable towards a global deal on climate change, in a move that may help break the deadlock at the United Nations talks in Warsaw.

A clear timeline setting out when countries should make public their targets on greenhouse gas emissions, and how those targets should be assessed by other participants, has been a major sticking point in the final hours of the long-running talks.

Many countries see such a programme as essential to ensure that a global agreement can be signed in Paris in late 2015, which is the goal of these negotiations. But as the talks entered their final hours on Friday, there was still no consensus on the issue.

Todd Stern, the US special envoy for climate change, told journalists the US wanted an agreed timeline, and that countries should aim to set national targets no later than the first quarter of 2015, which is when the US aims to have its new targets.

He said: "The new draft [text on this part of the talks] is in our judgment an improvement on the previous one. It still does not do all the things it needs to do: there could be stronger language indication an effective timeline to drive forward, to give greater clarity about what initial commitment should be put forward … so that everyone from the press, thinktanks, civil society can review and analyse the process. There are still some things we and other countries are pushing to see [in the text] as it comes along. But it's still a step forward."

He set out the US position: "We would lean to having commitments in the first quarter of 2015 – that is not hard and fast, but a rule of thumb."

Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate commissioner, said there was an increasing "traction" for such an outcome, and that major developing and developed countries backed it. She said: "Constructive countries from all continents, including the US, now fight with us for a stepwise approach to Paris [involving the two steps of setting national targets and having them assessed]. This includes homework: coming forward well before Paris with intended pledges, to have an informed discussion on the combined efforts."

The EU believes that without a clear work programme coming out of Warsaw, countries that are less enthusiastic about a global agreement will be able to delay the setting and assessment of national targets. Such a delay could derail an agreement, and a failure to come up with a solid deal in Paris would be a disaster for the long-running UN negotiations.

China has been the biggest country opposing such a move. The Chinese government has long resisted anything that smacks of international oversight of its domestic emissions goals. Other countries including India, Venezuela and other members of the "like-minded group", some of whom have a history of obstructing the talks, are also opposed.

In another strand of the fortnight-long talks, the highly contentious issue of "loss and damage", by which developing countries stricken by the effects of severe weather would receive assistance, was moving towards a possible compromise.

Some developing countries are insisting that a new institution needs to be set up to collect and administer such funds. Stern said the US was willing to see "a mechanism, an arrangement, an entity" but he made it clear that this should come under the existing arrangements for helping poor countries to adapt to the effects of climate change.

This is very different from the "compensation" that some developing countries are insisting on from rich countries, because of the effects of their emissions, but developed country governments do not want to admit legal liability for climate change, in part because emissions from emerging economies are rapidly overtaking those of the already industrialised world.

Developing countries may accept this compromise as it would allow them to receive funding when disaster strikes, though the amount is still unknown.

Ed Davey, the UK's energy and climate secretary, said he was hopeful of a compromise: "I think we will be able to reconcile these views."

Elsewhere in the talks, an agreement was forged on the "measurement, reporting and verification" of emissions. This has been a long-running issue, as some developing countries including China have been wary that it could be interpreted as international control over their domestic emissions. However, they have received assurances that their sovereignty will not be threatened by such monitoring. A similar mechanism has also been agreed for the future of Redd, a scheme for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

On the vexed question of finance for poor countries to move to a greener economy and adapt to climate change, progress was also made. Vulnerable nations have been promised $100bn a year in finance by 2020, and while some have insisted that all of this must come from the public purse of developed countries, most accept that a large proportion of it will come from the private sector. A new "green climate fund" is expected to start operating next year to channel funds to areas where they are needed.

Davey said the key question that will be debated in the next two years is how to account for the private sector contribution. He argued that where public money is used as seed capital, or loans, or another form of leverage to encourage private capital investment, that should be counted towards the $100bn. The OECD is currently working on methods of accounting for this.

As the talks looked set to continue into the night, many participants were saying that some progress had been made. Davey said: "We did not come to Warsaw expecting to sign a treaty – we expected to make modest progress on the building blocks, the foundations, the nuts and bolts [of a new global agreement] and that is what we are on course to achieve."

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