By Xinhua
Bangkok : The Bangkok Climate Change Talks ended after midnight Friday as delegates from developed and developing countries agreed on a work plan for future negotiations to reach a new pact by 2009 on global cooperation in coping with climate change after 2012.
Before the closing plenary session on Friday, developing countries held fierce debate and finally rejected Japan’s “sectoral approach,” which accusedly attempts to replace the national binding emissions cut imposed on developed countries under Kyoto Protocol with targets counted on the basis of industries and sectors in both developed and developing countries.
Talks within the two ad hoc working groups — one on further commitments for Annex-I Parties (a group of developed countries) under Kyoto Protocol (KP group), the other on Long-term Cooperative Action under the United Nations Framework on Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) (LCA group)– had respective focuses on what the developed countries must do and what the developing countries could do under a new agreement on climate change mitigation and adaptation (for LCA group).
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC secretariat who chaired the Bangkok talks, and two chairmen for the two working groups Luiz Mochado and Harald Dovland praised the comprehensiveness of the discussions at a news conference after the meetings.
Asked to comment on Japan’s sectoral approach, De Boer said every country, including Japan, had engaged themselves in the discussions and played “very constructive role.”
Mochado said Japan’s sectoral approach will be included in discussions in the next round of meeting, in the form of “workshop,” at which Japan could clarify to other parties the points on the proposal.
Dovland admitted that the concept of sectoral approach is not new in Convention, but Japan’s approach is more related to national target on emissions cut, which is a different concept from the one under the Convention.
The Dovland-chaired KP group ended its final session earlier Friday night, with Parties analyzing technologies and methods available for developed countries to meet further emission cut commitment after Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period 2008-2012 expires.
The key and tough issue of setting binding emission cut targets in the post-Kyoto pact for the so-called Annex 1 Parties to the Convention, or developed countries as more commonly understood, is left for further discussions after the real negotiation process starts at the end of this year.
The Mochado-chaired LCA group’s closing plenary meeting, which lasted well until midnight Friday, caught more attention especially from developed countries, after the parties were engaged in fierce discussions over Japan’s so-called “sectoral approach” on emission cut targets setting mechanism.
Japan has been pushing this sectoral approach very hard during the five-day LCA group session in Bangkok which has been tasked with drafting a work plan for future negotiation following the Bali Action Plan agreed at last December’s UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.
The basic concept of Japan’s sectoral approach is to set midterm national targets for “each major emitting country” by calculating emission reduction potential in each sector, such as power generation, transport, and other energy intensive industries with certain indicators.
Japan had wanted to push it to be included at the very first session of negotiation procedures after Bangkok, but the idea faced strong boycott from developing nations which finally threw it out of the main agenda.
The original “sectoral approach” is defined in the Convention as a method option for developed countries to meet target improving energy efficiency technology.
Discussions on the final draft of the work plan which continued beyond schedule on Thursday broke after midnight as Japan was pushing so hard on the issue and countries failed to reach consensus.
Su Wei, director-general of China’s Office of National Leading Group on Climate Change, told Xinhua that Japan’s sectoral approach in his understanding is actually attempting to transfer the responsibility of emission cut by developed countries as committed under the Convention and the Protocol, by using sectoral targets in individual industries in both developed and developing countries.
This attempt proves unpopular and hinders global cooperation infighting climate change, said Su.
Over 1,000 representatives from over 160 countries have attended the Bangkok Talks. The next session will be held in June in Bonn, Germany, followed with a few more meetings, before the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark by the end of 2009.
The expected new agreement will hopefully define new greenhouse gases (GHG) emission reduction commitments for industrialized countries after 2012, when the first commitment period 2008-2012 of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol expires.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, 38 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including the European Union (EU), the United States, and Japan, are subject to binding national targets on emission reduction by an average 5.2 percent by 2012 from the 1990 level.
Developing countries like China, India and least-developed countries, would take domestic actions to join global cooperation action in climate change mitigation and adaptation, by reducing emissions with technical and financing support by developed countries, but are not subject to binding emission cut targets, according to the Protocol.