Climate talks a 'huge disappointment'

BY NAOMI ARNOLD

The Copenhagen climate change talks were a "huge disappointment" and frustrating for New Zealanders, Climate Change Minister and Nelson MP Nick Smith said today.

The two-week United Nations talks in Denmark involved 193 countries, including 110 leaders in the later stages.

Dr Smith said the conference became bogged down in procedural argument and avoided the core issues. There had been an expectation that world leaders attending would "sort it out", but this backfired as countries instead became more fixed in their positions.

The talks ended with a non-binding political statement called the Copenhagen Accord, which was drawn up by some of the world's biggest emitters – the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa – and then put to the 188 other nations.

A copy of the accord, posted on a UN website, said deep cuts in emissions were required, with "a view" to holding global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius.

Stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere was an ultimate objective.

New Zealand will have to submit its 2020 target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by February under the agreement hatched in Copenhagen.

Nelson Environment Centre climate and clean energy project manager Carolyn Hughes said the "stitched-together" 11th-hour agreement was inadequate.

"It's better than nothing, but it's neither binding on the parties involved and there's no targets within the accord," she said.

"What is really needed is an overarching agreement to include all countries, both industrialised and developing."

Dr Smith said the "last-ditch effort" put together by United States President Barack Obama was trying to pull something useful out of the conference but was "way short of what was required.

It didn't get us anywhere near finding a binding agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol".

However, Dr Smith said New Zealand was "one of the few" countries to come away with some progress.

Despite the talks failing to make progress on the "really substantive issues", the launch of the global alliance on research on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions was one of the "very few positive outcomes of the conference".

The forestry alliance means developed countries are committed to establishing a new fund "approaching" US$30 billion (NZ$42.1b) for 2010-2012, for forestry and investments through international institutions, as well as adaptation and mitigation.

The most vulnerable developing countries will get priority.

The goal was to lift the fund to US$100b a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries.

Ms Hughes said the global alliance was a useful initiative for New Zealand to be involved in.

"A large percentage of our emissions are from agriculture, methane and nitrous oxide that have a higher warming effect than carbon dioxide," she said. "If New Zealand can take some leadership in that it will really help our cause internationally."

Green Party MP Jeanette Fitzsimons, who attended the conference, labelled it a "tragedy for humanity" and "nothing but high-sounding words and rhetoric", while Labour Party climate change spokesman Charles Chauvel, who also attended the conference, said the deal could be built on.

Nelson Green teen Brittany Packer, who attended the conference as part of the New Zealand Youth Delegation, wrote on her conference blog that she was "scared" for the future of the planet.

"We must take further action. Individual and community action will lead to policy change. We must start on grassroots level and change our habits, change our systems and not wait for the systems to change us," she wrote.

Greenpeace political adviser Geoff Keey said the agreement had the potential of locking in the "low ambition" of developed countries. "It's made our job a lot harder."

Mr Keey singled out New Zealand for having a negative attitude during the conference, particularly over comments from Associate Climate Change Minister Tim Groser that developing countries were using "extremist tactics".

- With agencies

- © Fairfax NZ News