EU Plans for Accelerated Action at U.N. Climate Change Conference

November 28, 2008 // Published as a news service by IHS

The Poznań conference represents an important staging post in the international negotiations that were launched in Bali last December and are due to lead to the conclusion of the new agreement at the end of 2009 in Copenhagen.

"The financial crisis has underlined the folly of ignoring clear warning signs. With climate change, we cannot afford to repeat this mistake if we are to prevent dangerous and possibly catastrophic economic and social consequences in the coming decades," said Stavros Dimas, European Commission (EC) environment commissioner.

"Even if it is too early to expect major breakthroughs, the Poznań conference must shift gear from exploratory discussions to concrete negotiations and send a clear signal that the world is on track to conclude an ambitious climate treaty in Copenhagen a year from now."

Key EU objectives for a new global agreement
The future framework, which will cover the period after 2012 - when the targets for greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol will have expired - needs to have global participation to tackle climate change in a comprehensive and ambitious way.

Its 'shared vision' should be for developed countries to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions sharply by 2020 while helping developing countries, through technological and financial support, to develop along a low-carbon path and to adapt to the impacts of climate change, which are now inevitable.

The EU firmly believes that global warming must not exceed 2°C above pre-industrial levels since there is strong scientific evidence that the risk of irreversible and possibly catastrophic environmental changes will become far greater beyond this threshold.

Keeping within 2°C will require global emissions to peak by 2020 and then be at least halved from 1990 levels by 2050. To stop the rise in global emissions, developed countries will need to cut their collective emissions by 30% of 1990 levels by 2020 while developing nations, particularly the major emerging economies, should contain the growth in their emissions by keeping them 15% to 30% below projected 'business as usual' levels in 2020.

Priorities at the Poznań conference
The Poznań conference is an important opportunity to take stock of negotiations so far, step up their pace, make further progress and lay a solid basis for the final year of negotiations.

The key results the EU will be pressing for are:

• Agreement on a clear work program to guide the negotiations in 2009, including a possible extraordinary ministerial meeting around mid-year.
• Progress towards the adoption of a broad 'shared vision' for cooperative action, including targets for 2020 and 2050.
• A comprehensive review of how the Kyoto Protocol can be improved and strengthened. A decision on streamlining the management of the protocol's Clean Development Mechanism, an important channel of funding and technology for low-carbon development in developing countries, is possible and could be implemented immediately.
• A firm decision on how to make the protocol's Adaptation Fund for developing countries operational as quickly as possible by overcoming its teething problems.

The high-level segment of the conference will focus on developing the shared vision and how to finance the future agreement. It will be preceded on Dec. 8-9 by an international meeting of finance ministers in Warsaw.

With a global consensus already reached that the new treaty must tackle tropical deforestation - the source of some 20% of global emissions - the EC will be promoting its recent proposals to halve gross tropical deforestation by 2020 and halt global forest cover loss by 2030. It proposes, among other things, establishing a Global Forest Carbon Mechanism to help developing countries (see IP/08/1543).

EU climate and energy package
The EU has shown its leadership by committing to reduce its emissions by at least 20% of 1990 levels by 2020, and by up to 30% if other developed countries commit to comparable reductions under a new global agreement.

The package of climate and energy legislation proposed by the EC in January 2008 will take the EU much of the way towards achieving these targets. Negotiations on the package are entering their final stage and the package is on the agenda of the European Council of Ministers meeting on Dec. 11-12, which will coincide with the high-level conference in Poznań.

Background
The conference brings together the 192 parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which include the United States, and the 183 parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The European Community and all EU member states are parties to both.

Further information
For more information, see the web site for the U.N. Climate Change Conference 2008 and Climate change and the EU's response (MEMO/08/747).

Source: European Commission.