At Copenhagen: can Obama win another Nobel ?

At Copenhagen: can Obama win another Nobel ?
(Madan menon Thottasseri)
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Negotiators facing a Friday deadline hammered out an initial draft UN climate pact overnight that calls for a two degree Celsius cap on global temperatures and billions in aid for poor nations, sources said.

US President Barack Obama will join more than 120 other world leaders on the final day of the climate talks, designed to strike a deal to boost international efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions widely blamed for heating up the planet.

The draft still under discussion proposed limiting a rise in global average temperatures to within two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, the sources, who declined to be identified, said.
Small islands, called as low-lying countries worried about rising seas want a tougher target of 1.5 degrees. Temperatures have already risen half that level over the past century, the UN climate panel says.

Two sources said the draft pledged rich countries to donate $100 billion annually by 2020 to poor nations to help them adapt their economies and cope with climate change that threatens to bring chaotic weather.

Leaders from 26 rich and developing countries met into the early hours of Friday to try and overcome deep divisions that have plagued the negotiations since they were launched two years ago in Bali, Indonesia..

The draft agreement which may get changed did not currently mention carbon emissions reduction targets for industrialized nations, one source said. The two-week talks in Copenhagen have struggled to overcome deep differences over rich nations' targets to cut emissions, mostly from burning fossil fuels, climate funds and action by big developing countries to curb carbon pollution.

A major issue for rich nations will be of pressurizing China and India, the world's top and fourth-largest carbon emitters, to compromise and agree for outside scrutiny of pledged steps to curb their emissions.

Rasmussen hopes the leaders' meeting will yield a draft document that all 193 nations attending the UN talks could agree will form the basis of an eventual legally binding climate deal to expand or replace the existing Kyoto Protocol. The United Nations hopes this will be sealed next year.
Kyoto's first phase ends in 2012 and a key focus of the talks is finding a formula that captures stronger action by the United States, other rich nations and big developing countries to avoid dangerous climate change.

The United States never ratified Kyoto.

Obama is due to arrive on Friday and is expected to face pressure to pledge deeper emissions cuts. The United States is the world's number two emitter of greenhouse gases.
He is expected to meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of the talks, the largest ever climate summit.

Officials said the United States was making progress with China on outstanding issues but could not say whether a deal would result after Obama arrived.
One US official said there was progress on monitoring, reporting and verification requirements by China and other big developing countries on their emissions curbs. China has resisted such requirements.

The United States had helped the mood at the talks on Thursday by promising to back a $100 billion a year fund for poor nations from 2020. Such funds would be more than all current aid flows to poor nations, a UN official said, and in line with demands put forward for African nations. "That's very encouraging," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said of the US pledge.

Accord on finance is one part of a puzzle that also includes a host of other measures, such as saving rainforests, boosting carbon markets and stiffening global carbon emissions curbs. But any deal will have to be agreed by unanimity. Some small island states and African nations - most vulnerable to climate change - say they will not agree a weak deal.

"We are moving out of the valley of death. We are beginning to see the outlines of a compromise, helped by the US offer on finance," said Kim Carstensen, head of the WWF environmental group's global climate initiative.

When the Secretary of State – Hillary Clinton repeated the U.S. would cut emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, China reacted by confirming that its voluntary emissions target was nonnegotiable. China announced last month it would cut its “carbon intensity,” or the amount of emissions in relation to production, by 40 to 45 percent.

The European Union said Thursday that it will not raise its 20 percent cuts to 30 percent, as it has offered, unless it sees more ambitious actions from other countries, especially China.

The money announced by Clinton, to help poorer nations cope with climate change and develop clean—energy sources, was not guaranteed. The secretary of state said the U.S. agreement to an annual transfer of $100 billion in richer nations’ public and private funds to developing countries was contingent on reaching a broader agreement that covers the “transparency” of China’s measures to limit heat-trapping gases.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei told reporters Beijing had no legal obligation to verify its emissions actions, but was not afraid of supervision or responsibility.

“We will enhance and improve our national communication” to the U.N. on emissions, He said. The Chinese official indicated his country’s emissions-cutting actions would then be open to international scrutiny, saying China was willing to provide explanations and clarifications on its reports. Laureate

“The purpose is to improve transparency,” He said, adding that Beijing was ready to take part in “dialogue and cooperation that is not intrusive and doesn’t infringe on China’s sovereignty.”

Still the world is looking at the Nobel Winner to wrest some credible success from the negotiating process. And on Thursday, with almost 120 heads of state and government already in attendance, there were some signs that a meaningful political deal might be at hand, including a slight shift in China’s position and a pledge by the United States to help the poorest nations cope financially with global warming.

Top negotiators suspect that could prove a humiliating failure, because China and the United States, the world’s two largest emitters, remain deeply divided over a number of difficult problems. China, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, has brought the talks to a virtual standstill all week over this issue, which its leaders claim to be an affront to national sovereignty.

But the Chinese balkiness on the issue is matched in large measure by Obama’s own constraints. The Senate has not yet acted on a climate bill that the president needs to make good on his promises of emissions reductions and on the financial support that he has now promised the rest of the world.Many U.S experts believe that if the Chinese will not accept monitoring of emissions, then a deal is not worth doing.”

Obama is putting a measure of his and the nation’s prestige on the line by entering a debate with so much still unresolved. It was only 11 weeks ago that he left this same city empty-handed after pleading for Chicago to be selected as the site of the 2016 Olympics!

But the manipulation and brinksmanship that have characterized the final week of the talks is also a sign of their seriousness; never before have global leaders come so close to a meaningful agreement to reduce the greenhouse gases linked to warming the planet.