Category: News

The talks are meant to conclude in Copenhagen in December with a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. One battleground is between industrialized and developing countries on how to split the cost of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

“How are things looking in terms of that agreement? Worrying,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a carbon trading conference in Copenhagen.

“Countries have not come forward with specific proposals on how aspects of the Copenhagen agreement can work in practice,” he told Reuters, referring to “gaps” in a document meant to form the basis of a legal text.

Before the final session in Copenhagen senior officials from about 190 countries will negotiate that text at a series of meetings, the first held later this month in Bonn.

“I’m not concerned by the mood, about willingness to get the job done, I’m concerned by the amount of time that’s left to get the work done,” de Boer said, adding that recession had made it more difficult to ask finance ministers for help.

Industrialized countries are meant to agree to specific targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Japan, Ukraine, Switzerland and Russia still had not made offers.

“(A Copenhagen deal) has to include 2020 targets,” said de Boer. “Those numbers need to be ambitious otherwise we’re not close to what science tells us needs to be done.

De Boer said that U.S. President Barack Obama’s goal to bring U.S. greenhouse gases back to 1990 levels by 2020 was a “first good offer.” He declined to comment on what he thought would be a suitable U.S. goal.

Major emerging economies such as China and India were not expected to agree to concrete targets but rich countries want them to agree specific actions.

“We also need clarity on what major developing countries are willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions, and to get that I think finance is essential,” he told Reuters.

De Boer criticized EU finance ministers who appeared to lay conditions on financial help to the South — depending on what specific climate actions developing countries first proposed.

“This is not helpful in moving the world forwards to an agreement in Copenhagen,” he said, and urged EU leaders meeting in Brussels later this week to be more decisive.

“I think without clarity on finance from industrialized countries there will be no commitment from developing countries.”

From The Guardian

A “perfect storm” of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions, the UK government’s chief scientist warned last week.

In a major speech to environmental groups and politicians, Professor John Beddington, who took up the position of chief scientific adviser last year, said that the world is heading for major upheavals which are due to come to a head in 2030.

He told the government’s Sustainable Development UK conference in Westminster that the growing population and success in alleviating poverty in developing countries will trigger a surge in demand for food, water and energy over the next two decades, at a time when governments must also make major progress in combating climate change.

“We head into a perfect storm in 2030, because all of these things are operating on the same time frame,” Beddington told the Guardian.

“If we don’t address this, we can expect major destabilisation, an increase in rioting and potentially significant problems with international migration, as people move out to avoid food and water shortages,” he added.

Food prices for major crops such as wheat and maize have recently settled after a sharp rise last year when production failed to keep up with demand. But according to Beddington, global food reserves are so low – at 14% of annual consumption – a major drought or flood could see prices rapidly escalate again. The majority of the food reserve is grain that is in transit between shipping ports, he said.

“Our food reserves are at a 50-year low, but by 2030 we need to be producing 50% more food. At the same time, we will need 50% more energy, and 30% more fresh water.

“There are dramatic problems out there, particularly with water and food, but energy also, and they are all intimately connected,” Beddington said. “You can’t think about dealing with one without considering the others. We must deal with all of these together.”

Before taking over from Sir David King as chief scientist last year, Beddington was professor of applied population biology at Imperial College London. He is an expert on the sustainable use of renewable resources.

In Britain, a global food shortage would drive up import costs and make food more expensive. Some parts of the country are predicted to become less able to grow crops as higher temperatures become the norm. Most climate models suggest the south-east of England will be especially vulnerable to water shortages, particularly in the summer.

The speech will add to pressure on governments following last week’s climate change conference in Copenhagen, where scientists warned that the impact of global warming has been substantially underestimated by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The latest research suggests that sea level rises, glacier melting and the risk of forest fires are at, or beyond, what was considered the worst case scenario in 2007.

Beddington said that shifts in the climate will see northern Europe and other high-latitude regions become key centres for food production. Other more traditional farming nations will have to develop more advanced pesticides or more hardy crops to boost yields, he said. In some countries, almost half of all crops are lost to pests and disease before they are harvested. Substantial amounts of food are lost after haversting, too, because of insufficient storage facilities.

Beddington said a major technological push is needed to develop renewable energy supplies, boost crop yields and better utilise existing water supplies.

Looming water shortages in China have prompted officials to build 59 new reservoirs to catch meltwater from mountain glaciers, which will be circulated into the water supply.

Beddington will use the speech to urge Europe to involve independent scientists more directly in its policy making, using recent appointments by President Barack Obama in the US as an example of how senior scientists have been brought into the political fold. Shortly after taking office, Obama announced what many see as a “dream team” of scientists, including two Nobel laureates, to advise on science, energy and the environment.

Read Reuters story on UN Climate Chief comments

Related story from the UK Guardian.

By David Brunnstrom and Marcin Grajewski

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union member states hit by the global economic crisis urged the bloc Thursday not to promise the developing world more money to combat climate change than they can afford.

The comments could worry organizers of a conference in Copenhagen on finding a successor to the Kyoto protocol against global warming because its success hangs on whether enough money can be found to persuade poor nations to tackle the problem.

EU member states including Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary fear EU negotiators will commit them to providing more money than they can now afford because of the economic downturn.

“We should readjust the priorities,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev told reporters at a summit at which EU leaders were discussing the climate issue and looming recession.

“What really concerns EU citizens today is how jobs will be preserved and how we can keep Europe steady in this unprecedented crisis.”

Polish and Bulgarian officials said they wanted more precise details of how the burden would be shared before the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.

“Obviously the enthusiasm for having economic support for the climate package has not increased during the economic crisis,” said Cecilia Malmstrom, EU affairs minister of Sweden, which will hold the EU presidency during the Copenhagen talks.

“That is an issue that is of great concern to us.”

POOR COUNTRIES SEEK HELP

Poor countries blame industrialized nations for climate change and say they do not do enough to help the poor adapt to its impact, such as by creating drought- or flood-resistant crops, or helping build barriers to rising sea levels.

“The EU will have to pay the bill for its historical emissions — this means committing to provide at least 30 billion euros per year by 2020 to an international climate fund for developing countries,” said politician Rebecca Harms of the German Green group.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters informal discussions had focused on an annual EU contribution of between 20 billion euros and 40 billion.

He said Warsaw would oppose any attempt to divide that burden up according to countries’ emissions levels — a move that would hurt Poland as it relies on heavily-polluting coal.

The east European states fear a repeat of their problem last year when the EU committed to cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020. They recognized the potential impact on their economies too late to steer the debate.

Central and eastern Europe countries are trying to stop an evaporation of foreign funds that prompted Hungary and Latvia to seek a lifeline from the International Monetary Fund and contributed to social unrest.

Some experts see the Copenhagen conference as the last chance to keep global warming in check.

U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer this week criticized European finance ministers for not living up to promises made at the launch of the two-year process in Bali in 2007.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged his European counterparts not to put the brakes on funding.

“I would very much like to see the EU in the driver’s seat. We have to send a clear message that we are going to take on a fair share of the global financial burden,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander; Writing by Pete Harrison; Editing by Timothy Heritage)