A United States-led plan to let all countries set their own goals for fighting climate change is gaining grudging support at United Nations talks, even though the current level of pledges is far too low to limit rising temperatures substantially.
The approach, being discussed this week at 160-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks in Bonn, Germany, would mean abandoning the blueprint of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
Reuters Newsagency reports that agreement set central goals for industrialised countries to cut emissions by 2012 and then let each work out national implementation.
Attempts to agree a successor to Kyoto have foundered above all on a failure to agree on the contribution that developing countries should make to curbing the industrial emissions responsible for global warming, greenhouse gases.
The next ministerial conference to try to reach a deal is scheduled for Paris in 2015.
Reuters reports the US, recently overtaken by China as the world’s biggest carbon polluter, never ratified Kyoto because it set no binding emissions cuts for rapidly growing economies such as China and India.
US President Barack Obama’s administration now says each nation should define its “contribution” to a new UN accord, a weaker word than past US demands for national “commitments”.
Elliot Diringer, executive director of a Washington-based think-tank, the Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions, said there was “a growing acceptance of nationally defined approaches, with a big ‘but'”.
Trigg Talley, head of the US delegation, noted that the agreement “will need to be applicable to all”.
Reuters reports even if all countries agree to participate, all sides say the initial national promises will be insufficient to rein in greenhouse gases.
Those emissions are rising by about three per cent a year even though economic growth is weak in many regions.
Under the US plan, contributions might be submitted six months before the Paris summit, giving some time for a non-binding review to strengthen plans.
The pact is due to enter into force from 2020.
Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said it was already clear that promised emissions cuts would fall short of the level needed to prevent the global temperature rising more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.
Temperatures are already up by about 0.8 degree Celsius.
“The challenge for the 2015 agreement is precisely to bridge that gap,” she said.
“The process is not on track with respect to the demands of science.”
International scientists say it is highly likely that high levels of greenhouse gases are already changing the climate and that it is at least 90 per cent probable that human activities are the main cause.
In Geneva, the World Meteorological Organisation said that 2012 was the ninth warmest year since records began in the 19th century.
Many emerging nations are still holding out in Bonn for binding common targets, especially for rich countries.
Reuters reports securing a bigger role by the US might mean accepting a relatively weak accord in 2015.
Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute think-tank said the negotiation process was a “dance”.
“People want to make sure the US is in, but many are deeply worried about what that may mean,” she said.
The United States and China did agree last month to work more closely together on climate change, saying they hoped it would inspire action by others.
Many delegates welcomed the plan, but said the two emitters have not led in the past.
by rising sea levels, said pledges so far were “woefully inadequate”.
Japan, Canada and Russia have dropped out of the Kyoto accord this year, leaving a dwindling core of countries led by the European Union and Australia.
