Further commitments needed to break negotiation deadlock

The UN climate change conference is not short of drafts, blueprints and proposals. However, economic pledges are sparse. A new blueprint, outlining three proposals for long-term climate aid, does not include any financial commitments.
Rie Jerichow - 15/12/2009 - A blueprint, released Tuesday in Copenhagen, outlines three options for long-term climate aid from developed to developing countries. However, none of the options include any financial commitments, Bloomberg reports.

"This is eyewash - it’s a paper tiger," Quamrul Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi envoy who coordinates the group of Least Developed Countries on finance issues, says in an interview in Copenhagen. "There is nothing in terms of long-term finance," he adds according to Bloomberg.

As of Tuesday, United Nations negotiators have failed to agree on the financial aid that the US, Japan and other developed nations will give to the developing world to cope with climate change, Bloomberg reports, referring to a draft document.

"The Copenhagen climate conference is in the grip of a serious deadlock," the Guardian concludes in a feature.\

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Forest negotiations are making headway

There is mounting agreement on rewarding tropical countries which slow deforestation under a new deal. This is the first issue where significant progress has been made in Copenhagen.
Rie Jerichow - 15/12/2009 - Negotiators in Copenhagen have made progress on two key issues for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation – also known as REDD – a forest policy group reports, according to mongabay.com.

"We needed two critical pieces of text to catapult into a world where developing nations could see real value for saving tropical forests," says John O. Niles, Director of the Tropical Forest Group.

"Forests and forest peoples worldwide need "early action" language to fast track financing to save forests immediately. And the agreement needs clarification that national forest reference emissions levels will be discussed and decided with concrete timelines. Both of these critical dimensions of a new global forest paradigm are now very much in play," he says according to mongabay.com.

This the one of the few areas where significant progress has been made in Copenhagen, says Cara Peace, Tropical Forest Group's Assistant Director for Policy in a statement.

"Saving tropical forests has positively catalyzed the climate change negotiations - it is the only beacon in an otherwise dark night," mongabay.com cites her as saying.

According to Reuters, the latest draft text also addressed several key issues on protecting the interests of indigenous people, but activists complain that is has been moved out of a legally binding part of the text.

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Australian PM warns of failure Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd urges developed as well as emerging economies to compromise and show more flexibility.

Rie Jerichow - 15/12/2009 - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Monday urged world leaders to be more flexible as a consensus looks difficult to achieve. Otherwise, the global climate summit is at risk of "failure", the Prime Minister told Sky News, according to Channel NewsAsia.

"I think... to land a strong agreement in Copenhagen we are going to have to see more compromise all round - from the big developed economies as well as the emerging economies... We've got a lot of work ahead of us," the Prime Minister said.

Rudd, who has been appointed a deal-brokering "friend of the chair" by the Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, has been forced to head to Copenhagen without parliamentary approval of his proposed carbon trade laws.

On Tuesday Rudd will meet with his Japanese counterpart Yukio Hatoyama as well as Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada as he makes a one-day stopover on his way to UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

Da UNFCCC