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Durban and the deniers
- As crucial climate talks begin in Durban, attention is focused on the likely role of the major country groupings.
- The outcome of the U.N. climate conference will be largely decided by the interplay of forces between the Basic (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) group formed two years ago, the EU, and the umbrella group of developed countries, led by the U.S. and comprising Russia, Japan, Canada, Australia and others who oppose legally binding climate commitments.
- For the first of these groups three issues are critical: the pressure on members to undertake binding obligations in the near future (which it opposes because of its developing world status); the fate of the Kyoto protocol, the world's only effective legal agreement on climate; and the performance of the developed states of the global north regarding their pledges to finance the south's climate actions.
- India's and Brazil's emissions are low, and comparable to those of the world's poorest countries.
- But the global north, responsible for 75 per cent of accumulated CO {-2} emissions, has made far less substantial pledges than the south, which is least responsible for climate change but whose people are the most at risk.
- The EU has linked it to another hypersensitive issue on which Durban could founder, the Kyoto protocol. This imposed a modest five per cent emissions cut on the north.
- The EU initially played a positive role in the climate talks but has since turned conservative. It says it will support a second commitment only if the Durban summit agrees binding cuts for the emerging economies.
- Japan, Canada, France, Spain, Australia and the Netherlands will probably miss their Kyoto targets, some by as much as 30 per cent. Others claim Kyoto compliance by buying carbon credits.
- The EU can play a valuable role if it neutralises the U.S. and brings other ditherers on board while starting talks on future obligations for the emerging economies.
