The U.S. and developing nations locked horns on climate finance U.N. talks in Durban Tuesday, casting doubt over the summit’s ability to reach agreement on a fund that will channel up to $100 billion annually by 2020 to help poor nations deal with climate change.
Negotiators ran into trouble in a session on the Green Climate Fund as U.S. negotiators questioned developing country delegates’ interpretation of how the fund should be run and sourced.
“At the moment it is looking very difficult, we may not reach an agreement here,” one delegate told Point Carbon News on condition of anonymity.
The main elements of the fund were agreed at U.N. talks in Cancun last year, and parties had spent most of 2011 hammering out the details needed to launch it.
However, at a meeting of Green Fund stakeholders in Cape Town earlier this month the U.S. raised a number of concerns about the draft design.
It claimed the draft would leave the U.N. with too much influence over the fund, and it also wanted the text to allow for developing countries to contribute funding, not only rich nations.
“We have to find a balance … but we should not find excuses,” Andre Correa do Lago, the Brazilian chief negotiator told a press conference in Durban Tuesday.
He said the talks had to lead to an agreement on where the money should come from, not only how the fund should be structured, as it would be of little use to have a fund that was only a “well structured empty shell”.
Developed nations have found the lion’s share of the $30 billion promised in fast-start finance for the 2010-2012 period, but plans on how to scale up funds to 10 times as much per year by the end of the decade remain sketchy.
“It is scandalous that the USA is attempting to railroad negotiators from putting into action a climate cash plan agreed in Cancun last year,” said Henry Malumo, Africa policy and campaigns manager with NGO Action Aid in a statement.
“The South African government has sent a very clear message on behalf of Africa and other poor nations today that it will not allow rich countries to sabotage plans for a Green Climate Fund,” he added.
NEW DEAL
Meanwhile, Brazil’s do Lago told journalists that the G77 and China group, one of the negotiating blocs at U.N. climate summits, was still debating internally how to approach the EU proposal to set a 2015 deadline for reaching an agreement on a new global climate treaty that involves all nations.
The EU is hoping to win backing for a new “roadmap”, and has said it may sign up to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol if the initiative gains momentum.
“One thing is what the EU is proposing, another is what we agree on,” do Lago said.
TECHNICAL GROUPS
Negotiators from 191 countries and the European Commission have now split into groups focusing on individual issues, hoping to clear up as many technical areas as possible before ministers arrive in South Africa next week for the high-level portion of the talks.
One issue was removed from the COP agenda Tuesday was whether new HFC 23 projects would be eligible for carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). It will not be addressed until next year’s summit in Qatar.
HFC 23 projects have generated 48 percent of all CDM credits that have been issued so far, but are controversial.
A number of observers and governments say they lack environmental integrity, and project hosts have been accused of producing more of the greenhouse gas for the sole reason that they are lucrative to destroy.
The EU has banned the use of HFC 23 credits in its emissions trading scheme from May 1, 2013 and they will not be eligible in the Australian ETS when it starts in 2015.
By Stian Reklev – stian.reklev@thomsonreuters.com
Durban