By Xinhua
Honolulu : The UN representatives attending the US-sponsored international climate change conference were trying to push for curbs on greenhouse gas emissions by major polluters, an official said.
The two-day conference, known as the Major Economics Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change, was held behind closed doors as representatives were debating on ways to prevent climate change without stopping development.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, urged participants to focus more on agreeing on curbs to greenhouse gas emissions by major polluters if the talks were to produce a plan this year, the official said.
“The talks have got a quite broad agenda at the moment…I think it would be useful if they can zero in quickly on limits on emissions,” the UN top climate change official said in remarks published before the meeting began.
The US President George W. Bush initiated the talks last year in the hope of developing a “long-term global goal to reduce greenhouse gases”, including “ambitious mid-term national targets” by the end of 2008.
The Honolulu meeting serves as a follow up to a first round of US-hosted climate change talks among major economies in September last year in Washington.
The Bush administration invited leaders of the world’s biggest economies to the Honolulu meeting to discuss climate change, hoping to show the world it really does want to do more to address the global warming.
The meeting was designed to get participating countries to agree to “binding market-based and voluntary measures” to save the world from climate catastrophe.
Issues to be discussed are “a long-term global goal for greenhouse gas reduction that’s consistent with economic development objectives”, according to James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
The Honolulu meeting is aimed at spurring UN negotiations for an international climate agreement by 2009 so a pact will be ready when the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
De Boer, representing the UN at the meeting, stressed that time was short to come up with a plan and said delegates to the Hawaii meeting need to take the lead.
“It’s important to bear in mind that the most vulnerable communities in the poorest countries, those who have contributed nothing to climate change, will be the worst affected by its impacts,” de Boer told delegates before negotiations began.
“I’m convinced it can be done, but only if all forces pull together and the major economies represented in this room have to take the lead among those forces.”
But as the US is still resisting a global agreement on specific emissions reductions from all developed nations, the UN emission-curbing goal was put in doubt, one conference source told Xinhua.
A column in the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper also voiced doubt about the Bush administration’s commitment to combating global warming.
“If the US finally drops its blinders and agrees to dramatic cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions, this meeting could be a defining moment in history. Or this meeting could be another non-event, or worse, a cynical diversion,” said the column.