Climate conference close to agreement
BALI, Indonesia -- The European Union said Saturday it supported a compromise proposal on upcoming negotiations for a new global warming pact, bringing the contentious talks nearer to resolution.
Complete agreement, however, was stalled by objections by India and China to parts of the text, and the conference session with all delegates was briefly suspended.
The two-week conference has been marked by a fierce battle between the EU, which had argued for explicit goals for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and the United States, which said targets should be determined by two years of upcoming talks.
Humberto Rosa, a Portuguese environment official representing the EU, told delegates the proposal had been brokered in a "good cooperative atmosphere."
"It results from a compromise," said Rosa. "It was elaborated with the engagement of all the parties."
Talks on the document, which lays out the agenda for climate talks leading to a global warming pact taking effect at the end of 2012, had run through the night. Delegates were debating how far future negotiations should go in trying to cut emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
After closed-door talks, delegates reconvened in the morning to consider the compromise proposal. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was arriving later, either to announce the launching of the "Bali Roadmap" negotiations or to help break any lingering impasse.
The negotiating agenda set at Bali, and the results of two years of negotiations to follow, will help determine for decades to come how well the world can hold down its rising temperatures.
Delegates had sparred for days over the wording of the conference's main decision document. The most contentious point was the EU's push to set a goal of reducing industrial nations' emissions 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
Trying to break the deadlock, conference president and Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar proposed revised language dropping explicit mention of numbers while substituting a reference to a U.N. scientific report suggesting the 25-40 percent range of cuts.
Witoelar's proposal provided a basis for a long-expected compromise, producing a relatively vague mandate for the two years of negotiations. As worded, his draft "Bali Roadmap" would not guarantee any level of binding commitment by any nation.
On developing countries, including such big emitters as China and India, the draft would instruct negotiators to consider incentives and other means to encourage poorer nations to voluntarily curb growth in their emissions.
U.N. climate chief Yvo De Boer said worldwide public opinion was forcing the more than 180 national delegations to find a way to agree.
"I don't think any politician can afford to walk away from here," he told reporters. Asked if that included the United States, he responded, "Perhaps most of all the United States."
The U.S. has come under intense criticism in Bali, including from former Vice President Al Gore, over the Bush administration's opposition to mandatory emission cuts. But all parties acknowledged that negotiations cannot succeed without the involvement of the United States, the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases.
The task before the annual U.N. assembly was to launch negotiations on a plan to bring deeper emissions reductions. That plan is to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which requires 37 industrial nations to cut output of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
The United States is the only major industrial nation to reject Kyoto, arguing that it would hurt the U.S. economy and also that it exempted fast-growing economies like China and India.
Washington says it favors a voluntary approach to emission reductions, rather than internationally negotiated and legally binding commitments.
For years, the rest of the world has sought to bring the Americans into the framework of international mandates. At this point, however, many seem resigned to waiting for a change in White House leadership after next November's election.
In a series of landmark reports this year, the U.N.'s network of climate scientists warned of severe consequences -- from rising seas, droughts, severe weather, species extinction and other effects -- without sharp cutbacks in emissions of the industrial, transportation and agricultural gases blamed for warming.
To avoid the worst, the Nobel Prize-winning panel said, emissions should be reduced by 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
The Kyoto Protocol nations have accepted that goal, and the numbers were written into early versions of the Bali conference's draft decision statement -- not as a binding target, but as a suggestion in the document's preamble.
The U.S. delegation opposed inclusion of such numbers. American negotiator Harlan Watson said they would tend to "drive the negotiations in one direction."
Environmentalists accused the U.S. of trying to wreck future talks.
"The United States in particular is behaving like passengers in first class in a jumbo jet, thinking a catastrophe in economy class won't affect them," said Tony Juniper, a spokesman for a coalition of environmentalists at the conference. "If we go down, we go down together, and the United States needs to realize that very quickly."