Commenting on the conclusion of the UN climate talks in Bangkok – the first round of negotiations since the major UN climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, last December – Friends of the Earth’s Senior International Climate Campaigner Asad Rehman said:

“Yet again rich countries are ducking and weaving around the issue of legally binding targets to cut their emissions while the planet hurtles towards climate catastrophe.

“Now that Japan and Russia have officially abandoned the Kyoto Protocol it’s becoming increasingly clear that the world’s wealthiest nations - who have done most to cause global climate change - are merely paying lip service to tackling it.

“But there is still time to act - the EU must now show real global leadership by declaring its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and agreeing to cut its emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020."

Context

Negotiations in Bangkok are the first round of climate talks since the close of the last major UN climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, last December, which Friends of the Earth believes concluded with a weak and ineffective outcome, but one which provided a “small and fragile lifeline” for success at the next major summit in South Africa this December.

The talks in Bangkok have seen rich countries stall on pledging concrete emissions reductions targets.

Japan and Russia have even publicly renounced the Kyoto Protocol – the legally binding instrument agreed in 1997 which, for the first time, obligated rich countries to cut their emissions in line with the latest science.

Despite being responsible for causing climate change through emitting most of the greenhouse gas emissions currently in the atmosphere, developed countries are shouldering only 35 per cent of the total emissions cuts on the table, with developing countries shouldering the bulk of them (65 per cent).

Taking the lower end of the range of emissions cuts on the table – currently totalling 6.6 gigatonnes – developing countries would take on 3.6 Gt of reductions whilst rich countries would be responsible for just 1.9 Gt of the total (the remainder being made up of carbon offsets, which do nothing to cut emissions at source and, Friends of the Earth believes, enable rich countries to avoid cutting their emissions in line with their responsibility to do so as the main causers of climate change).

Analysis of current emission reduction pledges on the table has suggested that they would lead to long-term warming of up to five degrees – a catastrophic outcome which would result in billions of people losing their homes and livelihoods.

Negotiations over the next year

There has been considerable disagreement over how negotiations should progress over the next year – with the US suggesting that the talks should focus solely on the agreement in Cancun. Developing countries have argued that this instead should be the bare minimum, and that substantive discussion must focus on the Bali Roadmap, a comprehensive action plan agreed on the Indonesian island in 2004 to ensure the world agrees a strong and fair agreement to tackle climate change.

Both groups have reached a compromise agreement with developing countries prevailing on a decision made to focus discussions in accordance with the Bali Roadmap, a welcome outcome which Friends of the Earth believes will increase the chances of progress at the next UN climate summit in South Africa this December.