With the US and Australia, the Kyoto holdouts, looking increasingly likely to join a framework agreement after 2012, the focus has shifted to persuading developing countries to take on a greater role. The main argument against developing economies imposing limits on emissions has been unchanged throughout: that to do so would place unacceptable restraints on economic growth.
China has reiterated this argument time and again, while pointing out that it is boosting investment in low-carbon renewable energy on a massive scale. India prefers to emphasize that its per capita carbon emissions are a fraction of the developed world's. According to Carbon Planet, India emits around 1.3 metric tons per capita, compared to 24.09 mt in the US.
Instead, developing countries have talked up the need for additional technology and financial resources to help them pursue economic development in a more climate-friendly fashion. At the same time, developing nations chide the industrialized world for even considering targets for developing countries before putting their own houses in order.
"The international community should first extend the first commitment of the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012; all Annex B countries should accede to the protocol and fully implement their commitments," Pakistani environment minister Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat said in September.
The resistance to mandatory cuts from both the developing world and the US, where President George Bush has supported technology research but not emissions caps, has helped sustain a minority view that countries should be allowed to take what action they want against climate change.
The US administration has long been critical of what it calls Kyoto's "top-down" and "one-size-fits-all" approach. Bush told a climate meeting in Washington in late September that a new international agreement on climate change should allow countries to design separate strategies reflecting their individual energy usage, economic needs and state of development.
"Each nation must decide for itself the right mix of tools and technologies," Bush said.
The various discussions held at numerous international fora have, however, produced one important result: they have effectively ended the Bush administration's efforts to try to build an alternative focal point for the post-2012 climate debate. At the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm, Germany last summer, Bush agreed to a joint statement, which has been re-emphasized frequently since then, that committed to using the UN as the forum to reach a new global warming pact.
The annual Conference of Parties to the UNFCC and the Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol the COP/MOP met in Bali in December, and set the stage for the negotiating process over a post-Kyoto agreement.
While the UNFCCC meeting in 2005 was all about formalizing the rules of emissions trading and launching the market, and 2006's conference was mainly procedural in nature, the 2007 meeting was almost entirely forward-looking. The Bali conference will heard the report of the two-year "dialogue on long-term cooperative action to address climate change by enhancing implementation of the convention," a discussion group that includes the US and Australia.
The conference also hosted a further meeting of the "Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol," a group that includes only those countries that ratified Kyoto.
These groups, which were established due to a lack of agreement on the next steps, are expected to feed their conclusions into the negotiation process, which itself must produce a result no later than 2009, estimated UNFCCC head Yvo de Boer. With the Kyoto compliance period ending on December 31, 2012, governments need a two-year period to ratify the successor agreement and to prepare for its implementation.
Read more on the credit impact of climate change.
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