FACTBOX: How to judge success, failure at U.N. climate talks
(Reuters) - Talks on a new U.N. climate deal are bogged down before a December 7-18 meeting of 190 nations in Copenhagen -- the following lays out how to judge success or failure.
Negotiators will meet in Barcelona, Spain, from November 2 to November 6 for their last session before Copenhagen
Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, says there are four "political essentials" for a deal even though it will be impossible to agree a legally binding treaty in Copenhagen and some details will be left for 2010.
1) DEVELOPED COUNTRIES -- "Ambitious" targets for each nation to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in 2007 that developed nations would have to cut emissions by between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avert the worst of climate change. So far, planned cuts average 11 to 15 percent -- the Secretariat calls these "woefully short" of the IPCC range.
A U.S. Senate committee will aim to pass a carbon cutting bill in early November, but full U.S. legislation is unlikely by Copenhagen.
2) DEVELOPING NATIONS -- "Nationally appropriate mitigation actions" by developing nations. Such actions, slowing the rise of emissions rather than demanding absolute cuts, could include making more use of renewable energy such as wind or solar power; more efficient coal power plants; and better building insulation.
3) CASH AND TECHNOLOGY -- Agreement on ways to raise "new, additional and predictable financial resources and technology." It says the cash needed both to curb emissions and help people adapt to changes such as droughts or floods could total $250 billion per year in 2020. The Secretariat also wants developed nations to come up with at least $10 billion in Copenhagen to kick-start a deal.
4) INSTITUTIONS -- "An effective institutional framework with governance structures that address the needs of developing countries." Copenhagen needs to work out the nuts and bolts of how to share out new funds and technologies.
RECENT VIEWS
* The European Union agreed on October 30 to three conditional offers of cash for developing nations. "I think this is a breakthrough that ... makes a Copenhagen agreement possible," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.
* Jairam Ramesh, India's minister of state for environment, cautioned on October 16: "We may not get the perfect agreement. This is Copenhagen 1.0. You may have Copenhagen 2.0 a couple of months later.".
* "The real negotiations will be after Copenhagen," said Yi Xianliang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official. "Copenhagen will be a starting point, not an ending point."
* "We are still keeping ambitious expectations and targets," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on October 28
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DEADLINES?
About 190 nations pledged in Bali in December 2007 to agree a new U.N. deal within two years after scientists said action was urgently needed to avert desertification, flooding, heatwaves and rising sea levels.
The first period of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, which binds industrialized nations, except the United States, to cut emissions, runs out at the end of 2012. The idea is that a deal in 2009 gives good time for all parliaments to ratify a deal.
Recession is doing part of the job already -- world carbon dioxide emissions are set to fall 2.6 percent this year because of a fall in industrial activity.
(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
