'Breakthrough' in climate talks hailed
30/10/2009 - 11:45:52A “breakthrough” in climate change talks was declared today as EU leaders named the price of tackling carbon emissions.
Subject to formal endorsement in summit conclusions being prepared in Brussels, Europe has agreed to make a conditional offer to the rest of the world at global environment negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the financial cost should not be included in the EU’s proposed package of ambitious climate change targets – at least not until other nations signal their readiness to pay their share.
But the summit text puts a €100bn-a-year price on curbing global warming by 2020, of which annual public funding is estimated at €22-50bn)
The EU’s combined share of that would be between €7-10bn a year by 2020.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had wanted a narrower range of €30-40bn as the global public funding estimate to keeping global warming below a two degree rise, but, to bring Ms Merkel on board, he accepted the need for a looser range of figures.
“I think that this is a breakthrough that takes us forward to Copenhagen and makes a Copenhagen agreement possible.” said Mr Brown.
“Europe is making three conditional offers – money on the table, saying we will do everything we can to make a climate change agreement happen, and help for developing countries into that agreement.
“Now we want other countries to respond to what we’re doing.
“I think developing countries can now say they are ready to cut their emissions substantially over the next few years.”
Additional figures added to the EU offer today call for global pre-2013 spending on climate change of €5-7bn.
The breakthrough came after poorer EU member states, led by Poland, received assurances their share of the EU financial burden on climate change would be adjusted in line with their ability to pay, instead of simply assessed on national pollution levels.
That, coupled with Germany’s U-turn on rejecting any talk of figures before the Copenhagen gathering, gave Mr Brown room to push his case that the EU’s leadership role in Copenhagen would be undermined if the member states baulked at backing their climate change challenges with at least “conditional” spending pledges.
The summit conclusions will set out Europe’s long-standing pledge to cut CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels. That is a “unilateral” target the EU will stick to even if the rest of the world cannot agree to match it at Copenhagen.
A tougher EU target of cutting emissions by 30% by 2020 is contingent on the everyone else agreeing to do the same.
Europe’s leaders also confirmed emissions from planes and ships are included in the plan, with targets of cutting aviation emissions by 10% by 2020 compared with 2005 levels, and 20% cuts across the maritime sector.
The EU is also pushing the boundaries in its climate change package by challenging the rest of the world to join Europe in setting a long-term target of cutting overall carbon emissions by as much as 80-95% by 2050 compared to 1990.
<-- BACK TO STORY