Technologies needed by developing countries to grapple with climate change will increasingly come from private companies and venture capital, the United States told a key global warming conference Tuesday.
On the second day of a two-week convention, the U.S. delegation laid out a position that ran counter to the general drift of the 162-nation meeting. Most delegations see governments and regulatory agencies as playing the key roles in reducing the world's greenhouse gas emissions and helping poor countries cope with the effects of climate change.
"There's a lot of money out there, and most of the action is going to be in the private sector," the chief U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson told The Associated Press.
"The issue is, how do you direct those financial flows" by giving incentives to low-carbon investments, Watson said in an interview after the U.S. presentation. "But it depends on what the customer wants, and how to set up those incentives."
The conflicting approaches, which have plagued climate talks for years, underscore how difficult it will be to reach a new agreement to succeed the first phase of the Kyoto accord, which ends in 2012.
Kyoto, which the United States signed but failed to ratify, requires 37 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, but places no reduction obligation on developing countries.
Kyoto "essentially divided the world into two camps," Watson said. Since then, "the world has changed" and the old categories were no longer relevant.
U.S. delegate Elmer Holt presented a series of statistics to the conference that he said showed a dramatic shift in the global economy since climate change negotiations began in the early 1990s, culminating in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
He cited a list of barriers to investing in developing countries, ranging from excessive bureaucracy, corruption, instability and poor legal or economic frameworks.
Other delegations questioned Holt closely. How can it be assured that money will flow "on its own" to climate-friendly investments? China asked. What advice do you have for small countries, where profits would be small? Costa Rica wanted to know. What about statistics that show more historical trends? asked Egypt, a reference to claims by developing countries that emissions from the industrialized world for more than a century created the global warming problem.
Kaisa Kosonen, a climate campaigner for the Greenpeace environment group, called the U.S. presentation "disappointing," even though the positions were unsurprising. "It doesn't recognize the role of industrialized countries to help developing countries," she said.
The Bonn meeting is the first to deal with the details of a post-Kyoto agreement, and builds on a breakthrough agreement in Bali, Indonesia, last December that the basic architecture of Kyoto would be kept in any new accord.
Delegates say the accord must be approved at a major convention in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009 so it can be ratified in time for a seamless transition from Kyoto in 2012.
Talks in Germany are focusing on technology transfers, helping poor countries adapt to changing climates and financing. Another meeting scheduled for August in Accra, Ghana, will deal with reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and on how to deal with specific industries or sectors. A larger meeting in Poznan, Poland, in December likely will approve some arrangements and begin working on the text of the new accord.
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On the Net:
U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change: http://unfccc.int/2860.php
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