Nations Heading to Durban Climate Talks Remain Deeply Divided

U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres lauded a climate change meeting in Panama as "good progress" this weekend, even as environmental activists warned that the world's only structure for curbing greenhouse gas emissions appears about to crumble.

The next time diplomats meet, it will be in Durban, South Africa, in December for the year's final climate change summit. There, countries must finally decide what they have put off for several years: the future of the Kyoto Protocol.

"South Africa is the tipping point in terms of the future of the climate regime," said Tasneem Essop, international climate policy advocate for the World Wildlife Fund in South Africa.

The 1997 treaty requires carbon emission cuts from industrialized countries, and the first phase of the agreement ends in 2012. Developing countries are adamant that a second commitment period is non-negotiable. Moreover, they insist any follow-up should closely hew to the original agreement: Wealthy countries must agree unilaterally to cut steeper emissions, and poorer ones would cut carbon voluntarily after financial assistance from the rich.

"Much as some rich countries like to repeat that discussing scenarios that they oppose is not 'realistic' or 'practical,' they must recognize that there is no point in insisting on a solution outside of the Kyoto Protocol when 132 parties have strongly declared that they can only accept a second commitment period as a meaningful outcome," Jorge Argüello of Argentina, speaking for the G-77 group of developing countries, said in a statement.

Does Kyoto treaty end or not?

Japan, Canada and the Russian Federation have made it equally clear that such an agreement is a pipe dream. No new treaty is possible, they say, unless all major economies -- including the United States and China -- agree to the same legal terms.

Positioning itself in the middle is the European Union, which has left the door open to a second commitment period. Under a proposal the European Union has been floating, it would agree to a second phase only if it were linked to a solid agreement detailing out how and when other countries' pledges would be placed into a legally binding agreement.

Figueres on Friday lauded the European Union for helping to launch "constructive discussions" and said "governments are exploring those middle-ground solutions that would allow them to go forward with a second commitment period."

Yet the United States, which is not a party to Kyoto but as the world's largest historic carbon emitter is central to the future of the climate regime, appears to be putting the kibosh on such a compromise.

Speaking at a wrap-up press conference in Panama, U.S. Deputy Envoy Jonathan Pershing acknowledged that "the uncertainty over a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol is a source of anxiety for many parties." But in describing the E.U. proposal, Pershing said, "We do not believe that conditions are ripe in Durban for a legally binding agreement."

He noted that the United States can only consider an agreement that applies with equal force to all the major economies; binds major developing countries to commitments that are not dependent on funding; and eliminates or redefines the categories that have for 20 years treated emerging powerhouses like India and China in the same manner as poverty-stricken African nations.

U.S. sees no 'meeting of the minds'

"We do not see a meeting of the minds on these issues," Pershing said. "We do not want to launch negotiations on an agreement we would not be able to join."

While diplomats praised one another for emerging this week with negotiating text to take to Durban, they also hit another roadblock on money.

Wealthy countries have vowed to deliver $100 billion annually by 2020 for poor and vulnerable nations to adapt to climate impacts and develop low-carbon economies. Countries have been in the process of establishing the architecture of a Green Climate Fund, agreed to at last year's climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, to distribute a portion of that money. But last week, the focus turned to the dollars themselves, and from where they would come.

Developing countries are largely insistent that the money come from public coffers in the United States, European countries, Australia, Japan and other wealthy nations. Many argue that the money essentially is compensation to poor countries for the environmental harm industrialized ones caused by emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for decades. That's not, however, the way the United States and others see it -- and they insist developing countries should have no say in where the money they get comes from.

"Our agreement in Cancun was that it was up to developed countries how best to raise this money," Pershing said.

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