Prospects dull on carbon reduction but fact that negotiations continue offers hope

Joining negotiators from more than 190 countries, many journalists spent Nov 22 in Warsaw's magnificent National Stadium waiting for the outcome of two weeks of climate change negotiations.

Some slept on chairs in the media center, some sat on the floor in corridors or leaned against walls, and some just waited patiently outside negotiation rooms for announcements. We all thought the final night of talks would yield some positive results.

But it took longer than anticipated. After midnight, when I learned there was no immediate progress, I moved to a quiet meeting room in the China pavilion. I lay down on a row of three chairs and updated my observations on social media.

Finally, early on the next night, the talks ended. Had they brought substantial progress? This is the question many were asking.

Having carefully read dozens of documents, filled with cliches, technical terms and ambiguous expressions, I found no major breakthroughs had been achieved, despite all the extra effort at this annual UN event.

"All are unsatisfied with the outcome but all have accepted them," said Xie Zhenhua, head of China's climate change delegation.

I checked the statements of other major delegations. Nearly everybody had expressed the same sentiment.

Many negotiators saw the Warsaw conference as a transition for further talks, which have already lasted more than two decades and had produced the famous Kyoto Protocol in 1997, requiring industrial countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while offering technical and financial support to poor countries.

So far, the commitments that developed countries have made through to 2020 have been modest, given that the climate threat is caused mainly by the greenhouse gases of developed and industrialized nations.

One person who follows me on my micro blog and on WeChat asked me to use plain language to express the main theme of the talks. I thought awhile and put it this way:

The heated disagreement is between creditors, which are developing countries, and debtors, which are industrial countries. China has played a role in helping the developing countries have more say in the process.

To keep the global temperature increase to within 2 degrees this century, the rich countries are obligated to support the poor countries by implementing low-carbon development. The figures are telling: About 70 percent of greenhouse gases in the past 200 years are from those rich countries.

Interestingly enough, one academic study from Sweden has already found that in recent years 70 percent of carbon reduction efforts have come from developing countries, not rich ones.

The public and the NGOs have expressed mounting disappointment over the rich countries' slow progress in offering finances and their breaking of carbon reduction promises.

Currently, the international community has an overall plan of carbon control by 2020, with the rich countries pledging to mobilize $100 billion annually from 2014 to 2020 to support the poor countries in climate mitigation and adaptation. No concrete steps on the target have been achieved, even though 2013 is nearly over.

The negotiators are already looking beyond 2020 because they have a pressing timetable to achieve a global deal in cutting carbon emissions from 2020 to 2030 when the countries meet for the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015.

Returning to their own countries with those targets and timetables, the negotiators urgently need to summon up political consensus at home before they head to further technical sessions and talks, including the conference in Lima, Peru next year.

The political and economic geography has experienced faster change since the 2008-09 financial crisis, with emerging economies developing more economic clout. Many multilateral mechanisms have suffered from deadlock due to a lack of global leadership and political stubbornness.

But the fact that the marathon negotiations are continuing is a good sign. We have to sit down to debate, to quarrel, and finally, to comprise.

In this spirit, the road to Paris should be satisfying, though we were not satisfied in Warsaw.

The author is chief correspondent of China Daily based in Brussel. Contact the writer at fujing@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily European Weekly 11/29/2013 page12)