First steps towards a better Kyoto Protocol; climate change talks begin in Bangkok

The long process of drawing up a replacement for the Kyoto climate change pact started today, with the first formal talks initiated in Thailand.

This new pact is expected to address the common human purpose to defeat global warming with greater effect than its predecessor, which had been infamously rejected by the George Bush administration. This time, the agreement is expected to be agreed upon by more nations than ever before, including the US, who had been pilloried for their earlier intransigence.

UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon remarked on the global significance of these talks when he remarked, ''The world is waiting for a solution that is long term and economically viable'', while speaking to the 1,100 delegates from 163 nations gathered in Bangkok through a video message.

Background to the talks
The week-long meeting results from a breakthrough agreement in Bali, Indonesia, last year to start negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which only binds 37 rich nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of five percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

UN climate experts want the new pact to be more encompassing by including other nations in the ambit of responsibility, although there is wide disagreement about how to share the burden between rich nations, led by the United States, and developing countries such as India and China. In fact, a lot of that disagreement had spilled over at the Bali conference.

In our earlier article on the Bali conference and the resultant Bali Roadmap to find an acceptable replacement to the Kyoto Protocol, we had described the conference in the following words – ''Amidst loads of global posturing, some common ground, and a few acrimonious arguments, participants of the UNFCC conference adopted a general framework of steps to work towards a binding agreement at the next global summit scheduled for 2009 in Denmark. This framework has been popularly titled the ''Bali Roadmap''.'' (See: Bali Roadmap – Giving direction to an endangered world)

The new agreement will also aim to work out how big industries, such as power generators, airlines and steelmakers will play their part in tackling rising emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. Climate experts contend that such greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next decade and then fall drastically if the world is to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

Expectations from Bangkok
No major decisions are likely from the meeting in Bangkok, which are intended mainly to establish a timetable for more talks culminating in a United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen at the end of next year. Delegates said Monday's talks would be merely procedural. Chief US climate negotiator Harlan Watson told reporters before the opening ceremony that they considered the talks to be ''a process-oriented meeting''.

However, this does not diminish their importance in the context of a sustained global effort to address this issue, which itself has only been recently recognized at the level of national governments. Hence, environmental groups are keeping a close eye on Bangkok for signs of sustained commitment by rich and poor countries alike towards this problem.

''It's the first test of whether the goodwill and good intentions that were present in Bali are still there when get down to the hard negotiations,'' said Angela Anderson of the Washington-based Pew Environment Group.

Some concerns remain
UN climate change chief Yvo de Boer had earlier commented on the difficulty of reaching a global agreement on the replacement for Kyoto, saying it would be the ''most complex international agreement that history has ever seen'', suggesting talks would be tough and tortuous but possible if the work was tackled in ''bite-sized chunks''.

However, negotiators can take heart from the fact that at least the human element in global warming has now been globally recognized with last year's landmark acceptance at UN climate panel talks that humans are almost certainly to blame for changes to the weather system that will bring higher sea levels and more heat waves, droughts and storms.

Will the US co-operate this time?
Environmental groups are especially concerned about US participation, considering that the current administration is set to vacate office. Of course, it was the same government that had earlier derailed the healing process by rejecting the Kyoto Protocol earlier, the only developed nation to do so.

Even its close ally, the UK, changed its earlier stance when Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister from Tony Blair. The US has softened its stance since then.

In a statement, activist group Greenpeace said, ''The USA needs to ratify Kyoto. If they do not, they should not be allowed a voice in the discussions on future commitments under the Kyoto Protocol''.

The United Nations wants the new treaty to be in place by the end of 2009 to give companies and investors as much advance knowledge as possible of coming changes, and national parliaments time to ratify it before 2012, when Kyoto expires.