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Bangkok (AFP) April 8, 2011 Rich and poor nations agreed Friday on a roadmap for UN climate talks this year, but only after long-running feuds flared over a wide range of actions they must take to combat global warming. The four days of talks eventually achieved their main goal of sorting out an agenda for the rest of the year's negotiations, which will lay the foundations for agreements at an annual UN climate summit in South Africa in November. But delegates were forced into heated debate as poor countries demanded a greater focus on long-term actions rich countries must take, particularly over cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for global warming. "We are content this strikes the right balance, we are disappointed it took so long to agree," Hungarian climate envoy Jozsef Feiler, representing the European Union, told fellow delegates after the roadmap was formally approved. Many delegates came to Bangkok with a sense of cautious optimism after rich and poor nations made a series of compromises to achieve breakthroughs at the last annual summit in the Mexican resort city of Cancun in December. But the Cancun agreements focused mainly on the easiest steps to be taken, after an effort 12 months earlier in Copenhagen to achieve a much more wide-ranging accord saw the UN climate process almost collapse. The harder issues immediately flared again when the Bangkok meeting started on Tuesday, with poor nations demanding rich ones agree to a second round of legally binding emission reduction commitments under an updated Kyoto Protocol. The first round of commitments are due to expire at the end of 2012, but some richer countries including Japan have said they will not sign up to a second phase because major polluters the United States and China refuse to. Developing countries, including China, did not have to commit to cutting emissions as part of the Kyoto Protocol and most of them maintain this should remain the case. The United States never ratified the Kyoto Protocol because developing countries were excluded from making commitments, and it has said repeatedly it has no intention of signing under these circumstances. Throughout the Bangkok talks, the United States and some of the rich countries pushed to have the focus for this year's negotiations primarily on pushing forward the more modest agreements achieved in Cancun last year. However poorer nations say that, if only the Cancun agreements are put into action by the end of 2012, rich nations will not have to agree on legally binding emission cuts and the Kyoto Protocol will have largely fizzled out. In the end, the compromise roadmap ensured a heavy focus on the Cancun agreements for the year but also on ways to look at more long-term and comprehensive ways to tackle global warming. "Progress has been slow," deputy US envoy for climate change Jonathan Pershing told reporters after the agreement was reached. "We, along with many other countries, are concerned parties are debating whether to move our agenda forward or rehash and revisit issues we could not agree to in Cancun." The Cancun agreements saw all nations pledge "urgent action" to keep temperatures from rising no more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, but without making binding commitments. A Green Climate Fund was also established that aims to channel $100 billion annually by 2020 from rich countries to help poor nations cope with climate change. But the Cancun agreements left aside big picture issues such as when global emissions should peak and how exactly to achieve the emissions cuts. "This year will be more difficult... the power struggle is back," France's ambassador for climate change negotiations, Serge Lepeltier, told AFP. The talks in Bangkok will be followed by other rounds in Germany, before the annual summit in Durban, South Africa.
earlier related report "Our overall sense is things are moving slow, too slow for Europe's taste. And we cannot achieve what we need to achieve before the end of this year with this speed," EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said. "Too often too much time is spent on how to proceed," she told reporters on a visit to Washington. "What we need is to come down to the content side of this and that is urgent." The four-day session in Bangkok, which was marked by feuds between wealthy and developing countries, eventually achieved its goal of setting an agenda leading up to an annual UN climate conference in South Africa in November. But the Bangkok talks largely put aside big picture issues on how nations will cut their greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. Hedegaard said it was critical to move soon on cutting emissions, pointing out that national pledges have not come close to the UN-led goal of containing global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit). "What people sometimes forget is that there is a time factor when we talk about the climate. It actually does matter whether we start acting globally sooner or later," she said. The European Union has championed international action on climate change, including through its "cap-and-trade" system that restricts carbon emissions but allows businesses to trade in credits. Before Washington, Hedegaard visited California, which is launching the first cap-and-trade system in the United States. The effort by the largest US state marks a sharp contrast with skepticism over climate change in the US Congress. Hedegaard said she agreed with Governor Jerry Brown to keep in touch so that the EU and California systems may eventually be linkable. "California is not just a very huge American state, it's also the seventh or eighth largest economy of the world. So of course it's a rather strong signal if it gets done," Hedegaard said. A bill supported by President Barack Obama to set up a nationwide cap-and-trade system died last year in the Senate, with the rival Republican Party arguing that it would be too costly. Hedegaard met in Washington with lawmakers from both parties as well as officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, which Obama has tasked with regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Hedegaard said she was fully aware of the political realities in Washington but hoped the United States could move forward. "It is very hard to understand that in this country it would not be possible to make a policy on, for instance, how to address energy efficiency, because the potential is just that big," she said.
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