Developing countries' fear on emissions
October 25, 2024 - Financial Times
by John Aglionby in Bogor
Developing countries' fears that industrialised nations want to impose greenhouse gas emission cuts on them will be the biggest stumbling block at the United Nations climate change negotiations in December, officials warned after a pre-conference meeting of 37 governments.

Yvo de Boer, executive director of the UN climate change secretariat, said another sticking point was expected to be how incentives would be provided to help developing countries cut emissions.

However, he and ministers attending the informal meeting in Bogor, near Jakarta, expressed confidence that these issues would be surmounted when negotiators from 191 nations met in Bali in December to begin talks on a successor to the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.

The meeting agreed that negotiations for the new treaty should be wrapped up by the end of 2009.

Phil Woolas, Britain's environment minister, said he was particularly optimistic about the Bali talks after hearing a "significant shift" in China's policy at the meeting "when they talked about the desirability of developing countries making commitments" to reduce emissions.

"The Chinese said the pollution that's happening in China and [changing] rainfall means their energy policy is changing, and their desire to use clean technology is real," he told the Financial Times.

However, Mr de Boer said it was particularly "large developing countries" that believed "the goal is to impose targets on them which will hurt their economic growth and ability to eradicate poverty". China, India and Brazil have raised these concerns the most vociferously.

One developing-country delegate who asked not to be named said industrialised countries had made encouraging statements in Bogor. "But we are not yet certain about what they are going to demand when it comes to negotiations," the delegate said. "We are still suspicious."

Mr Woolas said the fear was unfounded. "The European Union is not seeking in any way to impose binding commitments on developing countries," he said. "We don't need to, it wouldn't be fair and it wouldn't work."

The US and Australia, the only two industrial countries not to ratify Kyoto, both expressed willingness at the Bogor meeting to take on commitments to cut emissions, Mr de Boer said.

However, he warned: "We still have to have a long discussion that will go long beyond Bali in terms of what commitments actually mean, what countries actually will do and whether that will be internationally legally binding."

Paula Dobriansky, US undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, said after the meeting: "I came away from this discussions feeling that there is a strong desire on behalf of all the participants for a Bali roadmap."