Ottawa meeting attempt to salvage climate talks
Copyright © 2000 Globe Interactive
December 5, 2000
Brussels — Top government officials from the United States and the European Union will meet in Canada on Wednesday to try to salvage a deal on curbing global warming, an EU official said on Monday.
The two-day meeting will be the first between the two sides since United Nations-sponsored talks to set a global strategy on cutting "greenhouse gas" emissions collapsed spectacularly last month.
If the Ottawa session brings the two sides closer, it could pave the way for a ministerial-level meeting that could take place in Oslo early next week, the EU official said.
Huge differences between the United States and the EU on how to implement a 1997 UN climate pact agreed in Kyoto, Japan, scuppered a deal when some 180 countries met at a two-week conference in The Hague last month.
The biggest stumbling block was the U.S. position, shared by Canada, that countries should be allowed to offset the carbon dioxide soaked up by their forests and farmlands against the pollution reduction targets agreed in Kyoto.
The EU accused the United States and its negotiating allies including Japan and Canada of trying to undermine the Kyoto targets. The 15-country bloc rejected a last-minute compromise that would have allowed limited use of such "carbon sinks."
Getting an agreement on sinks will be the key to agreement in Ottawa, the EU official said. The other main "crunch point" will be the EU's insistence that countries make a large part of their emissions cuts through domestic action, rather than by buying emissions-reduction credits from other countries.
At Kyoto, developed countries agreed to cut emissions of the gases, which scientists say trap heat inside Earth's atmosphere and cause extreme disruption of weather patterns.
Governments were supposed to set detailed rules for how this target — to reduce emissions by 5 per cent of 1990 levels by 2008-2012 — should be achieved.
Owing to the deadlock, the talks were officially "suspended" in the hope that a deal could be achieved by the first half of 2001.Canada and Japan, which are partners of the United States in the so-called "umbrella group" of countries seeking maximum flexibility for implementing Kyoto, will attend the Ottawa meeting.
The EU will be represented by its executive commission and the governments of France, Sweden, Britain and Germany, the official said.
All sides have said they want to reach a deal as quickly as possible, not least because of the prospect of a Republican U.S. president — George W. Bush — who is known to be less favourable to Kyoto than his Democratic rival, Al Gore.
Any deal between the umbrella group and the EU will still have to be accepted by the developing nations, which, although they do not have emissions-reductions targets, are likely to be hardest hit by climate change.
The G77 group of developing countries said in The Hague that any deal would have to include an aid package to help them cope with rising sea levels, floods and droughts that they fear will result from global warming.