Fed: Hopes low as UN climate talks restart Friday

AAP General News (Australia)
04-07-2010
Fed: Hopes low as UN climate talks restart Friday

By Cathy Alexander

CANBERRA, April 7 AAP - A fresh attempt to clinch a world climate deal will begin on
Friday - but don't expect a result any time soon.

Nations will gather in Germany on Friday for the first UN climate talks since December's
disastrous Copenhagen summit.

Federal Climate Minister Penny Wong won't be going to Bonn as the talks are aimed mainly
at planning out how negotiations will proceed for the next few years. Australia will send
a delegation under senior climate bureaucrat Louise Hand.

Hopes that the Copenhagen summit would seal a deal to tackle global warming were dashed
due to a bitter split between rich and poor countries, widespread acrimony, and time-wasting
on procedural matters.

Now the optimists are hoping the next major UN climate summit in Mexico in late November
can yield an agreement.

But senior UN figures do not think a legally-binding treaty will be ready by then,
and some believe a deal won't be ready until next year or 2012.

Tony Mohr, climate campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the
three-day talks in Bonn would map out when major meetings would take place.

"I wouldn't be expecting breakthroughs at this meeting," he told AAP.

But he said the UN could use the meeting to set a deadline for a deal. The meeting
could also allow countries and blocs of countries to devise fresh strategies after Copenhagen.

Mr Mohr said progress on climate could be made through non-UN forums like the Major
Economies Forum, the G20 and APEC.

The push towards a new deal on climate has been hamstrung because poor countries think
rich ones - particularly the US - are not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But US President Barack Obama is himself hamstrung, with climate laws stalled in the Senate.

Australia is also without a major climate plan because the emissions trading scheme
has been blocked by the Senate. The federal government is sticking with its promise to
cut emissions by between 5 and 25 per cent by 2020, depending on what other countries
do.

The lack of progress internationally has taken the pressure off Australia to come up
with a scheme to achieve deep cuts to emissions.

AAP ca/sb/tr

KEYWORD: CLIMATE UN AUST

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