China rejected scrutiny of efforts to limit carbon emissions, a key tool that the US says is necessary as more than 190 countries work to devise a new deal to fight climate change.
Chinese negotiators sought yesterday at a climate conference in Lima, Peru to delete provisions in a draft text that would have paved the way for other countries and non-governmental organisations to submit questions about its carbon-reduction plans, according to environmental groups that are official observers to the talks. The carbon pledges are to be included in a global deal that would be sealed next year and start from 2020.
US lead climate envoy Todd Stern this week told reporters in Washington that all national pledges should be subject to scrutiny by other countries, saying “the sunshine is intended to prod countries to be as ambitious as possible” in limiting carbon emissions. The US and China last month jointly announced efforts they plan to make under a new climate deal that nations seek to reach next year.
“The spirit of constructive cooperation of the US-China agreement seems to have come to a full stop,” Liz Gallagher, senior adviser to the policy analyst E3G said today in an interview in Lima, where two weeks of United Nations climate talks began on Monday.
Chinese negotiator Su Wei didn’t immediately reply to an e-mail seeking comment.
‘Hard lines’
“This is exactly the kind of risk that we face when hard lines are taken by parties,” Tasneem Essop, a spokeswoman on climate policy for the environmental group WWF International told reporters in Lima. “It’s early days, we know that it is typical of negotiations so we do hope that parties will soften their lines.”
Essop said her remarks referred to all nations, and she also criticized what she called a “slash-and-burn” exercise by the US, European Union, Australia, Canada and New Zealand to remove any reference to a review of the commitments they’ve made to cut emissions before 2020.
