At a crossroads

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

At a crossroads

(Sunday 14 December 2008)

TOM SHARMAN

At the UN: TOM SHARMAN reviews the Poznan climate talks.

ON THURSDAY, Britain's Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said that we were at a "crossroads moment on climate change" between the world deciding that it was "too hard" to act or choosing to deal with the problem.

Yet, all too often, the parallel negotiations in Poznan and Brussels have felt more like an episode of the classic TV show Crossroads, with wobbles all round and sets falling apart.


The UN talks in Poland ended in the early hours of Saturday morning with an agreement on getting the global adaptation fund up and running in a way that developing countries wanted.


Miliband's top negotiators took part in the final late-night discussions. They had spent most of the previous fortnight desperately trying to block developing countries' attempts to give the adaptation fund's board more power.


But they ultimately failed to prevent the body from gaining "legal capacity," meaning that the countries most vulnerable to climate change can get the money that they are entitled to without jumping through a series of bureaucratic hoops.


Although the arguments raged on what looked like a technicality, this was really about contrasting world views as to how best to help poor countries adapt to climate change.


Britain's view is that the World Bank is the best institution to handle most of the climate change account given that it is already active in most of the countries of the developing world.


But many developing countries hate the World Bank. They point out that the countries that have reduced poverty the most in recent years, China, India and Vietnam, have done so largely by ignoring the World Bank's free-market approach.


Instead, they favour setting up new institutions in which they have a much bigger say on how the money is spent. They see the adaptation fund as an important precedent.


There are also practical reasons for opposing the World Bank's role. Tuvalu, for example, does not have a relationship with the Washington-based body, so it is unclear how it would have been able to get the money which it is entitled to if the adaptation fund board had remained weak.


Yet the fund still remains short of cash. No deal was reached in Poznan to help close the gap between the $86 billion that the UN says is needed and the 43 million euros that the adaptation fund currently has to spend.


Hours earlier, European leaders reached agreement on their climate and energy package in Brussels.


One year ago, the EU committed itself to a unilateral greenhouse gas cut of 20 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020, rising to 30 per cent in the event of a global deal.


But Germany, Italy and a number of east European countries managed to wriggle out of making substantial emissions reductions.


Special pleading from Europe's dirtiest industries gave them a wide range of exemptions, meaning that the actual domestic cuts could be as little as 4 per cent.


Twelve months remain before a new global deal on climate change is due to be finalised.


As Raman Mehta from ActionAid India put it, "the rich countries of the world came to Poznan with empty hands and empty minds."


They are going to have to do a lot better in 2009. The EU will have to rebuild its shredded credibility and Barack Obama must hit the ground running to get the US on board.


There is still time to reach a decent agreement in Copenhagen next year, but Poznan and Brussels have made the mountain to climb that much steeper.

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