Emerging nations pledge to go “extra mile” for climate deal

Indonesia, South Africa, India and China have delivered a consistent message urging developed countries to honour their existing commitments under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and sign up for a new commitment period after 2012 to keep the world moving forward. (FILE PHOTO)

MIKE DE SOUZA
Postmedia News

DURBAN, South Africa — Major emerging economies attempted to present a united front Tuesday at international climate change negotiations, offering to go the “extra mile” in concessions to convince their counterparts to salvage the legally-binding Kyoto treaty and eventually achieve a more comprehensive deal.

“We are engaged fully in that negotiation in trying to bridge gaps and bridge positions in order to make this [successful negotiation] possible,” said Brazil’s climate change negotiator, Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado. “That’s in the context of walking the extra mile.”

The news conference, featuring Machado and his counterparts from the so-called BASIC countries of South Africa, India and China, delivered a consistent message urging developed countries to honour their existing commitments under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and sign up for a new commitment period after 2012 to keep the world moving forward.

Canada has already indicated it wouldn’t meet its Kyoto commitments, and has joined Japan in Russia in opposing targets for a new commitment period.

But Machado stressed that his own country was making progress on issues such as deforestation and would implement its existing commitments made in the last two years of climate negotiations.

China’s lead negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, also dismissed rumours spreading around the conference that India wasn’t supporting the group’s support and commitment toward a binding deal. Xie joked that a friend had told him there were “more rumours in the Durban convention centre than rooms.”

Indian Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan also repeated a common message from the four leaders, based on founding principles of existing climate change agreements, that developed countries have caused a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and should take the lead on cleaning it up.

“Developing countries should not be asked to make a payment, every time an existing obligation becomes due on the part of developed countries,” she said.

Meantime, the lead negotiator for the United States, Todd Stern, said at a separate news conference that the ideal goal at the Durban conference is not to achieve a binding deal, but rather to lay the foundation for future “arrangements” based on commitments at last year’s summit in Cancun.

“We can lay the foundation for international climate change arrangements for a long time to come,” he said.

Opening up the high-level session of the conference, featuring national statements from each of the 194 parties to the United Nations climate change treaty, South African President Jacob Zuma urged negotiators to deliver a comprehensive plan to help different regions of the world cope with the impacts of climate change, which is having the greatest impact on the poorest countries in his continent.

“The time has come for the world to move away from analysis, study and research, to identifying practical adaptation actions that can be implemented on the ground,” said Zuma. “There can be no dispute that research and analysis are important aspects of adaptation actions. However, we now need more practical action.”

Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent was scheduled to speak to reporters about his own government’s contribution to the climate-related problems in the developing world.