Climate talks failed in raising commitment levels: Bolivia
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The third round of UN climate negotiations in 2010 were unsuccessful in raising the levels of commitment of developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Bolivian ambassador to the UN said Wednesday.
The lack of progress in the negotiations is "something that we must be very worried about," Pablo Solon told reporters at a press conference here regarding the negotiations that came to a close last week in Bonn, Germany.
The Bonn UN Climate Change Conference -- held on Aug. 2-6 -- included the participation of representatives from 178 governments and aims to prepare the outcomes of the Conference of Parties (COP) that is set to take place in Cancun, Mexico later this year.
Despite the reluctance of developed countries to advance their efforts to curb emissions, Solon indicated some positive developments.
"I think the Bonn conference was a step forward in bringing back the process of negotiations to the UN," he said.
Two ad hoc working groups -- the Long-term Cooperative Action ( AWG-LGA) and the group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) -- presented in Bonn a draft text to facilitate further negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
"We now have a text that reflects the positions of the different parties, of the different states and that is something positive," said Solon.
The text includes a possible set of draft decisions for Cancun, including impacts of agriculture on emissions, carbon markets, greenhouse gases, and the effects on different countries of moving to a low-emissions future.
However, the talks remained divisive, as competing proposals have failed in achieving any agreement between states to define a common target for curbing emissions.
"We don't understand why it was so important, so urgent to come to an agreement in Copenhagen, and now the same political leaders are saying that in Cancun the most realistic thing to do is to post-pone a full agreement," Solon said.
In the Copenhagen Accord last December, developed countries pledged 10 billion U.S. dollars per year to help developing countries combat climate change in the next three years, and committed to boosting aid to 100 billion U.S. dollars annually by 2020.
"If (drafting an agreement) was so important in Copenhagen last year, now it is even more important," said Solon, citing the recent devastation in Russia and Pakistan from extreme drought and flooding.
Scientists estimate that the current voluntary commitments to cut emission agreed to in Copenhagen, could lead to a rise in global temperature of 3.5 to 4.0 degrees Celsius -- far above the 2 degrees "red line" for the earth.
Efforts to limit temperature increases to below 2 degrees Celsius will "not be possible to achieve with the current pledges that developed countries have made in the Copenhagen Accord," Solon said.
