Copenhagen dash for Groser as climate talks falter

Climate Change Negotiations Minister Tim Groser heads to Copenhagen next week for a last-ditch meeting of climate change ministers.

This meeting comes just three weeks ahead of the December 7-18 global summit in the Danish capital, a summit which will seek a new world treaty to combat global warming.

Describing the diplomatic efforts to get consensus at Copenhagen as "a mess", Groser is echoing most key participants in expecting there will be, at best, no more than a politically but not legally binding agreement on the next steps. "That's not because we can't move forward, but that the current way of negotiating is bogged down in a false dichotomy between the developed and developing countries."

International media reports following last week's final round of formal pre-Copenhagen negotiations, in Barcelona, suggest little progress was made. The European Union did put a price tag of up to US$148 million on the annual cost to the developed world of assisting developing economies adjust to climate change.

That's barely one-third of the upper limit of the G77 + China bid to have developed economies pledge US$200b-US$400b annually to the transition costs to a low-carbon economy in developing countries.

While international efforts are faltering, Groser says there is increasing action at a domestic level throughout the developed and developing worlds.

While the EU had been the only industrialised area to make serious progress on climate change action since the signing of the Kyoto protocol in 1997, recent action in the US, Australia, and New Zealand to introduce local climate change mitigation policies were part of a wave of global activity. "The developed world is finally into it and the developing world is starting to take this seriously, but those two worlds are far apart at the moment."

Groser hopes the Copenhagen meeting of 25 to 30 climate change ministers "can build from progress at the domestic level to some type of step at Copenhagen".

Particularly important is the bi-lateral negotiation between the United States and China out of the public eye, Groser says.

"Any agreement (at Copenhagen) must be based on an understanding between those two."

BUSINESSWIRE