On Thursday morning, moments after the African nations complained that the U. N. climate change negotiations were going nowhere fast, U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared in a press briefing room announcing that the United States would contribute to a $100 billion international fund starting in 2020— as long as “all major nations” commit their emissions reductions to a binding agreement and submit those reductions to transparent verification.
By “all major nations,” she meant China, which has balked at any kind of outside verification of its climate change mitigation efforts.
With this nearly last-minute declaration, the United States changed the Copenhagen dynamic. For most of the two week conference, as the developing nations and European countries talked about setting up a global fund that would help developing economies contend with climate change, American officials were quiet about money, trying to change the discussion by focusing on China’s refusal to place its announced emissions limits within an international agreement and to accept monitoring and verification of its pledged emissions limits.
U.S. delegation members acknowledged to some of the environmentalists present at the conference that a refusal by the United States to make a specific commitment to long-term funding could be perceived as the conference’s deal-killer.
China’s special envoy for climate change, Yu Qingtai, told Reuters Thursday “Copenhagen is too important to fail,” signaling that perhaps China had decided to help pull the negotiations back from the brink of failure as well.
Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said after these two developments played out: “It seems likely that the world could take a major -- if not final -- step forward in the next 48 hours.”
There are still plenty of issues at play besides the U.S.-China face-off — requested deeper emissions cuts from major emitters, a firm agreement on a limit for the expected global temperature rise, the legal nature of any agreement that comes out of Copenhagen or that is forged down the road. But the tussle between the two economic powers was clogging the conference.
If the American initiative prompts any Chinese movement, there could be space for the summit to produce some sort of imperfect deal.
The U. N. climate conference agreed also on Thursday on the procedure for further negotiations. Delegates decided to continue the climate talks in two tracks, one on the Kyoto Protocol, another on the Climate Change Convention.
The decision came after the Danish Presidency of the conference had consultations on procedure with the delegates, starting Wednesday afternoon.
The developing countries, represented by Group of 77, have in particular expressed fears that the developed countries would “kill the Kyoto Protocol” in Copenhagen. The G-77 backed the new proposal on procedure.
The conference also agreed to establish a contact group between the two negotiation tracks, headed by the Danish Minister Connie Hedegaard. Negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol began on Wednesday afternoon.
The Danish Prime Minister and President of the conference, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, asked the groups to work on a short deadline.
Watch the NCR Ecology channel and the NCR Today group blog for updates on the Copenhagen climate conference.
Rich Heffern is an NCR staff writer. His email: rheffern@ncronline.org.
