UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world yesterday to
agree to work out a new climate treaty by 2009 but said it might be
"too ambitious" to set goals for greenhouse gas cuts in Bali.
Washington is leading opposition at the meeting to any mention
of scientific evidence of a need for cuts in greenhouse gases of 25
to 40 percent by 2020 below 1990 levels as part of the guidelines
for negotiations.
"Realistically it may be too ambitious if delegations would be
expected to be able to agree on targets of greenhouse gas emission
reductions" in Bali, Ban said, echoing a view given by
Washington.
"Sometime down the road we will have to agree on them."
Still, he also said that all countries should respect a finding
by the UN climate panel that a range of 25-40 percent was needed to
avert the worst impacts of climate change. The range was still in
the draft text yesterday evening.
Ban said the overriding goal of the December 3-14 meeting was to
agree to launch negotiations on a pact to succeed the current Kyoto
Protocol.
He told more than 120 environment ministers that climate change
was the "moral challenge of our generation" and said there was a
"desperate urgency" to act to curb rising seas, floods, droughts,
famines and extinctions of wildlife.
"The time to act is now," Ban told the ministers, split over the
ground rules for agreeing to launch formal negotiations on a new
long-term global treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions,
expanding the 37-nation Kyoto pact to all countries.
"You need to set an agenda - a roadmap to a more secure climate
future, coupled with a tight timeline that produces a deal by
2009," he said. The United Nations wants a new pact adopted at a
meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009.
The United States, supported by Japan, Canada and Australia,
says that even a non-binding mention of a 25-to-40 percent range
could prejudge the outcome of negotiations.
(China Daily December 13, 2007)
