Consensus at Copenhagen unlikely

By Li Jing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-23 08:11

The Copenhagen climate negotiations are likely to end with a "political framework", while leaving detailed emission reduction targets open for further discussion, according to a report released yesterday by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The academy, one of the country's leading think tanks, also offered a list for negotiators on what China should or should not commit to regarding greenhouse gas emissions.

"A possible outcome of the Copenhagen summit is that the international community agrees on a common belief to protect the global climate, for instance, controlling the temperature rise to less than two degrees centigrade," said Pan Jiahua, one of the authors of the report.

"But the expected consensus on who should reduce how much is not likely to be reached, as some developed countries are trying to throw away the Bali Roadmap with less than 50 days left before Copenhagen," Pan said.

Lu Xuedu, deputy director of the National Climate Center, said the proposal offered by some developed countries at the recent Bangkok climate talks to kill the Kyoto Protocol "was purposely setting up impediments for the negotiations as they do not want the legally binding responsibility."

Negotiations have been going on for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 and requests industrialized countries to make quantified commitments to cut emissions of greenhouse gases that are stoking global warming. The Bali Roadmap was agreed by all parties in 2007, laying out a timetable and framework for a deal in Copenhagen.

Developed countries have requested developing nations, including China and India, to make similar commitments to reduce carbon emissions, but developing countries insist that rich countries should first make deep cuts in emissions and provide financial and technological support.

"The Copenhagen summit will not be an end for the negotiations. The real fight starts after that," said Yi Xianliang, an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who is also a member of the Chinese delegation.

The report also said that China, with its growing population and low level of industrialization and urbanization, cannot afford to make a legally binding commitment for a reduction target of carbon emissions, nor an accurate peak time for its greenhouse gas emissions.

But China can still make a voluntary commitment, such as the carbon intensity reduction mentioned in President Hu Jintao's speech delivered to the UN climate summit last month in New York, said the report.

It also proposed that China should accept a carbon emission reduction target on the condition that developed countries provide quantifiable technological and financial aids.