(Reuters) - China's top climate negotiator said on Saturday although progress had been made in negotiations for a new accord to combat global warming, there was still some distance to go before a binding deal could be secured.

At a conference of ministers and environmental organizations in Beijing, Xie Zhenhua, also vice-chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission, said all sides needed to "strengthen trust" and "deepen cooperation" in order to achieve positive results at the next global climate change meeting in Cancun, Mexico at the end of this year.

"Climate change negotiations have already made gradual progress, but there is still a relatively long way to go to reach a legally binding agreement," Xie said.

He said many developed countries had already committed to reducing emissions after last year's United Nations summit in the Danish capital of Copenhagen but the key issue was still "converting political will into concrete action."

Negotiators from 194 nations will gather in Cancun at the end of the year to try to build on the Copenhagen accord signed last December with the ultimate aim still a legally-binding treaty that will set the tempo for global CO2 cuts over the next decade.

The main stumbling block has remained the issue of "common but differentiated responsibilities," a principle enshrined in the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol to recognize the fact that industrialized countries have been responsible for the bulk of the greenhouse emissions blamed for rising global temperatures.

Developing nations have not been obliged to set binding emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol, and critics -- particularly in the United States -- claim it gives countries like China a free ride and competitive advantage in world trade.

The first phase of Kyoto is set to expire at the end of 2012, and many have expressed doubt about the prospects of a new deal, especially after the efforts to secure a full and binding agreement at Copenhagen ended in failure.

REALISM

Ministers at the conference said lessons needed to be learned from Copenhagen before a new international accord could be reached by the end of next year, and the key issue was toning down expectations.

"What we are looking for is not a repetition of the same old mistake of putting everything together and expecting a full and comprehensive negotiated result, but actually something that is the only way you can proceed in these negotiations -- which is by incremental progress," said Tim Groser, New Zealand's minister in charge of climate change talks.

Michael Church, environment minister of Grenada, which represents the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), an association of nations vulnerable to rising sea levels, hurricanes and prolonged drought, also called for a more pragmatic approach -- but he suggested there was now too much pessimism as a result of last year's Copenhagen summit.

"What we need to do is to set ourselves some realistic goals and work toward satisfying those goals," he said on the sidelines of the conference. "Cancun is not the end of the world because already we have started talking about continuing negotiations the following year."

"In some quarters, you get the sentiment being expressed that there will be no deal -- it is like reaching a conclusion before you've started."

Groser said a more low-key approach to the negotiations was already yielding results.

"We now have a more politically mature atmosphere, and that is more likely to lead to progress than the razzle-dazzle, showbiz approach (of Copenhagen)," he said.

"Surrounding the delegates with film stars and 40,000 protesters was not conducive to progress."

Smaller nations like Grenada said the Copenhagen talks were scuppered when their bigger counterparts tried to "hijack the whole process" by imposing their own deal, but Church said attitudes had now changed noticeably, and the old conflict between developed and developing nations had eased.

"I have just come from the Petersburg dialogue (in Bonn, Germany) and I believe we have all learnt something from Copenhagen. I think if there is one positive thing that came out of Copenhagen it is emphasizing the need for trust.

"I sensed a different spirit -- a greater willingness to compromise," he said.

(By David Stanway; Editing by James Jukwey)

Source: Reuters

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BONN — The Kyoto Protocol is under threat and political leaders should no longer skirt core questions about its destiny, the UN's top climate official told environment ministers from around the world Monday.

"The question is on everybody's mind but, unfortunately, on nobody's lips: what, in all honesty, is the future of the Kyoto Protocol?," Yvo de Boer asked more than three dozen ministers gathered near Bonn to brainstorm on climate.

"It is your responsibility to take this thorny topic by the horn," said de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

After the failure of the Copenhagen summit to craft a successor, Kyoto remains the only enforceable global treaty requiring industrialised nations to cut carbon emissions.

Its current provisions run out in 2012.

Whether to tweak, bolster or bury the Protocol emerged as a red-hot issue last year, but was sidelined after the near collapse of the December conference.

Developing countries, which are exempted from its provisions, have made it abundantly clear that they wish to see the Protocol extended.

Some rich countries, especially those of the European Union, have said they remain open to this option.

"But under what conditions?" de Boer asked the ministers.

Framed in 1997 and put into force in 2005, Kyoto legally binds 37 so-called "Annex 1" industrialised countries to cut greenhouse gas output by a total of more than five percent before 2012, compared to 1990 levels.

The efforts demanded from each country vary. Europe has already unilaterally committed to cuts of 20 percent by 2020, and is debating whether to increase that offer to 30 percent.

The United States signed the protocol but never ratified it, objecting to the fact that it did not cover major emerging economies such as China, which has since become the world's top carbon polluter.

Under the Obama administration, this position has not wavered.

The fundamental question, the UN chief said, is what to use as a benchmark: the commitments other developing nations are willing to make, or the actions of the developing world.

De Boer doubted whether the EU and other Annex 1 nations will be willing to take on new commitments if equivalent US efforts are only written into national law.

"How would one explain to voters in some industrialised countries, for example, that they have an international, legally-binding commitment when others do not?" he said.

The presence of a double standard among rich nations -- international laws for some, national laws for others -- could erode the will of even the European Union, "and that in turn will mean the end of the Kyoto Protocol," he warned.

Continuing to ignore the issue will only lead to greater confrontation, he added.

The so-called Petersberg Climate Dialogue is the highest-level gathering of politicians on climate since Copenhagen. The two-and-a-half day closed door sessions ends tomorrow.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.

Source: AFP/Google

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CAPE TOWN (AFP) – Four major developing countries meeting in South Africa on Sunday called for a global, legally binding agreement on climate change to be finalised by next year at the latest.

Environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China met in Cape Town to discuss on how to speed up a process of finalising a global agreement that would require rich nations to cut carbon emissions and reduce global warming.

"Ministers felt that a legally binding outcome should be concluded at Cancun, Mexico in 2010, or at the latest in South Africa by 2011," ministers from the developing world's powerhouses said in a joint statement, referring to United Nations climate talks.

The Copenhagen meeting, held last year and aimed at thrashing out a new climate treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, was widely criticized for failing to produce a new treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

"Developing countries strongly support international legally binding agreements, as the lack of such agreements hurts developing countries more than developed countries," the statement said.

The ministers also called for developed nations to fast track the release of a 10-billion-dollar fund to help poor countries "to develop, test and demonstrate practical implementation approaches to both adaptation and mitigation."

Meanwhile, the environmental lobby group Greenpeace urged the ministers to seize climate leadership in the run-up to the next UN Climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, at the end of the year and help break the current deadlock in the climate negotiations.

"Greenpeace urges the governments gathered in Cape Town to take the opportunity to make a clear and unanimous call for a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal to avert catastrophic climate change," said Greenpeace Africa political advisor Themba Linden in a statement.

Source: AFP - Yahoo News

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(Reuters) - A long-awaited compromise bill to reduce U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming will be unveiled by a group of senators on April 26, sources said on Thursday.

The legislative language to be sketched out in 11 days, according to government and environmental sources, is being drafted by Democratic Senator John Kerry, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman.

Backers of the environmental bill hope the unveiling will pave the way for the full Senate to debate and pass a measure in June or July if the compromise attracts enough support from a group of moderate Republicans and Democrats.

Republican Senator Judd Gregg told Reuters he was "committed to getting something that addresses our energy needs in a constructive and comprehensive way." He added he did not know yet whether he would support the bill being developed.

President Barack Obama has made climate change one of his top priorities and took steps recently to show Republicans he was serious, including expanding federal aid for building nuclear power facilities and allowing more domestic offshore oil drilling -- initiatives to be included in the Senate compromise.

The White House is also eager to show the rest of the world the United States is ready to take a leadership role on global warming, including to help kick-start stalled international efforts to tackle the problem.

Despite vocal climate change skeptics in the United States, leading scientific groups have been hoping the United States, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China, would take action.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported on Thursday the world's combined land and ocean surface temperatures in March were the hottest on record.

Once the senators formally sketch out their bill, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid will decide the next steps in a year crowded with competing legislative priorities and congressional elections in November.

The bill could face stiff opposition from lawmakers in states with economies heavily dependent on oil and coal.

Lou Hayden, a policy expert at the American Petroleum Institute, said his group would not support the bill unless it went through an economic analysis by the Energy Information Administration, an independent arm of the Energy Department.

The bill is already slated to be analyzed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Congressional Budget Office, which could take more than a month.

BILL MIGHT END STATE/REGIONAL CARBON TRADE PROGRAMS

Kerry, Lieberman and Graham have been working for months on a global warming compromise significantly different from a measure passed last year by the House of Representatives and a bill approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. It also takes many elements from those bills.

Like the House-passed bill and Obama administration policy, it would set a target of 17 percent reductions in smokestack emissions of carbon dioxide by 2020, from 2005 levels.

Point Carbon, an energy markets consulting service, estimated the anticipated Senate bill would result in U.S. gasoline prices rising an average of 27 cents a gallon from 2013 to 2020. The bill is expected to contain a fee on motor fuels.

On Wednesday, a Senate source told Reuters the legislation would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide emissions. It would also end state and regional carbon-trading programs, such as the one several Northeastern states participate in, to be replaced by a national carbon reduction policy.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, with 10 participating states from Vermont to Maryland, has raised over $582 million for state efficiency and climate programs, said Environment Northeast, a Boston research group.

Peter Shattuck, a carbon markets policy analyst there, said shutting the program could create concerns among the states over lost revenues.

A group of nine senators, mostly from Midwestern manufacturing states, urged Kerry, Graham and Lieberman in a letter on Thursday to take into account jobs in their states.

"Without such a plan, we are concerned that the legislation will ultimately be unsuccessful," Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and others wrote. (By Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington and Ros Krasny in Boston; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Source: Reuters

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