UN climate talks in Mexico hang in balance

Hopes have been raised of a possible breakthrough at the UN climate summit in Cancun as key talks enter the decisive final stage.

A draft text, being considered by delegates, looks to bridge differences that could scupper the talks. Earlier, prospects for a deal appeared to be receding, with nations clashing on future emission commitments.

Japan and Russia were opposed to further cuts under the Kyoto Protocol - a major demand of developing countries. There were also divisions over a proposed fund to help poor nations deal with climate impacts.

The latest draft document makes reference to a "second commitment period" of the Kyoto Protocol - a period in which countries in the protocol would make further emission cuts - without mandating that it will happen. The issue has caused major divisions between developing countries and Japan and Russia. However, it still needs to be accepted by the plenary of the 190-nation gathering.

The money wrangle concerned the proposed "Green Fund" - a vehicle that would gather and distribute funds running to perhaps $100bn (£63bn) per year by 2020. During overnight discussions into Friday morning, the US, EU and Japan stuck to their line that the World Bank must administer the fund. For developing countries, this was unacceptable, as they viewed the bank as a western-run institution.

The latest development, in which the World Bank will be invited to run the fund for an initial three-year period, seems to have won the support of many delegates and observers attending the summit.

Brazilian negotiator Luiz Figueiredo said Japan and Russia "accept this language, while before they didn't accept it", the AFP news agency reported.

The UK's Climate Secretary Chris Huhne warned that there was a "real danger" that the annual talks could become a "zombie process" if there was not a successful outcome.

The Sudanese negotiator suggested that it was too early to judge whether the draft document would succeed in delivering a deal at the talks being held in the Mexican resort. "At the first cut it shows some promise. But whether it amounts to something adequate to address the challenge is something we have to look at," Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping told BBC News.

As to whether it allowed Japan and Russia wriggle-room not to commit to a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, he added: "That's a very serious question. We cannot have the [protocol] as an empty shell."

BBC environment correspondent Richard Black, reporting from the summit in Cancun, said the compromise text was a step forward but the talks were still likely to go down to the wire. "The new document is strong on acknowledging the scale of the problem, but does not commit parties to new measures to curb emissions," he observed. "It recognises that developed countries would need to cut their combined emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 in order to meet 1.5C or 2C targets - but does not say how it is to be done." He added that it "urged" Annex One countries (industrialised nations) to "raise the level of ambition" in order to meet the 25-40% threshold.

Some - especially the Latin American Alba bloc, spear-headed by Bolivia - also object to the Green Fund as currently conceived, because they believe western nations have a duty to pay up from the public purse, whereas the fund calls for money to be raised through levies on carbon trading, taxes on aviation, or other "innovative mechanisms".

Bolivia's hardline stance was not popular with all other developing countries, with Costa Rica saying the nation's delegation were "leading the process to delay the discussion".

Modest hopes for climate summit, as gas levels rise

"Keeping the show on the road" may be all governments can hope for at next week's UN climate talks, the UK admits.

Energy and Climate Secretary Chris Huhne said there was no chance of getting a legally binding deal at the summit in Cancun, Mexico.

The aim, he said, should be to get "within shouting distance".

Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released data showing that greenhouse gas levels continued their rise through 2009.

It follows publication of a scientific paper at the weekend suggesting that without new constraints, global carbon emissions will re-commence rising at 2-3% per year, following a brief lull caused by the recession.

And on Tuesday, the UN Environment Programme (Unep) said pledges that countries had made on constraining emissions were not enough to keep the global temperature rise within limits that most countries say they want - either 2C or 1.5C since pre-industrial times.

"We want to see progress [in Cancun] - we don't want to see a shambles that involves lots of name-calling," said Mr Huhne.

"If we don't get peaking of [global] emissions by 2020, the prospects for the people on the planet are looking pretty bleak, so we really do have to make progress on this."

Realistically, the government believes, progress could be made on issues such as reducing deforestation, financial pledges and bringing the unilateral carbon-cutting pledges that countries unveiled at Copenhagen into the UN framework so they can be properly analysed.

Western countries are equally keen to pursue the place that private finance and the business sector can play in leading the transition to a low-carbon global society.

But the Secretary of State was downbeat about how much progress was possible given the legacy of last year's Copenhagen summit, the domestic concerns of a few key countries including the US and China, and the differing demands of various negotiating blocs.

"We're clearly not expecting a final agreement at Cancun; but our objective is to ensure we re-invigorate the whole UN climate convention (UNFCCC) process and manage to get a new sense of momentum, with the ambition of reaching full agreement [at the summit] in South Africa next year," he said.

However, even that may not be possible, officials acknowledged, unless important countries can find a way to reconcile their domestic political problems with the demands of other nations.

The US Senate is extremely unlikely to ratify any UN climate deal, meaning that prospects of the world's second largest greenhouse gas emitter signing up to anything that other countries would consider legally binding is remote.

US officials - and their Canadian counterparts - are now talking openly about the possibility of a "Plan B" if Cancun does not move in the direction they want.

Among developing nations, China in particular has railed against demands from the West - and from Japan - that it must agree measures enabling its carbon-constraining performance to be monitored and verified.

The UK was encouraged by a recent Indian proposal to put international verification under the auspices of the UN climate convention.

But the US appears to be growing as an obstacle, with campaigners acknowledging privately that the balance of power in Congress is likely to become even less favourable to carbon-cutting legislation after the next round of elections in 2012.

Warming and wetting

The WMO data, meanwhile, confirms that atmospheric concentrations of the three gases principally responsible for the man-made component of the greenhouse effect - carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide - all rose during 2009.

The agency highlighted the rise in methane emissions, which it says is probably due to higher than average emissions from wetlands around the Arctic and in the tropics, both related to weather conditions.

Heightened methane emission from wetlands and permafrost has regularly been touted as a potential amplifying factor in climate change, with warmer weather stimulating their release and so producing further warming.

"Greenhouse gas concentrations have reached record levels despite the economic slowdown," observed WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud. "Potential methane release from northern permafrost, and wetlands, under future climate change is of great concern, and is becoming a focus of intensive research and observations."

Alternative climate summit in Bolivia

Environmental activists, indigenous leaders and Hollywood celebrities are gathering in Bolivia ahead of a self-styled global people's conference on climate change starting Tuesday. Thousands of attendees intend to highlight the plight of the world's poorest who they argue were largely ignored at the official United Nations sponsored summit in Copenhagen last December.

Critics say that the deal will not avert catastrophe and the "People's World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights," which runs through Thursday, aims to draft new proposals for consideration at the next UN meeting in Mexico at the end of the year. Bolivia's UN ambassador, Pablo Solon, said the conference, which is expected to be attended by 18,000 people, is "the only way to get the climate change talks back on the track".

Developing nations have resisted a legally binding climate treaty, arguing that wealthy nations must bear the primary responsibility for climate change. Nearly 130 countries, including many of the world's poorest, will be represented at the Cochabamba conference, which symbolically reaches its climax on Earth Day. The conference will seek to refine proposals presented by Morales in Copenhagen that included the creation of a world tribunal for climate issues and a global referendum on environmental choices. Presidents Chavez and Morales were among the harshest critics of the December 2009 Copenhagen conference, arguing that developing countries were largely ignored in the debates. The conference begins the day after representatives from the world's leading economies gathered in Washington for a preparatory meeting ahead of the December UN summit in Cancun.

The US-led Major Economies Forum comprises 17 countries responsible for the bulk of global emissions and excludes smaller nations such as Sudan whose firebrand negotiators held up sessions at December's Copenhagen summit. Washington hopes the closed-door talks will allow key nations to quietly assess what they can achieve heading into the next major climate summit in December in Cancun.

Well, after the outcome of last year's summit in Copenhagen, let's see what will be achieved from this one. Heh. Hmmmmmm....