LONDON (AlertNet) - Negotiations in Copenhagen aimed at producing a new global climate treaty are unlikely to result in a Â?complete agreement, signed, sealed and deliveredÂ? in December, a global legislative pressure group warned Tuesday.
But if enough pressure can be exerted on leaders and legislators in coming weeks to Â?make everyone feel they canÂ?t afford to be part of a failed deal,Â? then at least a framework agreement will likely emerge, officials of the London-based group said.
"?There is a risk of failure,Â? admitted Lord Michael Jay, a member of Britain's House of Lords who helped guide climate negotiations under former Prime Minister Tony Blair and now serves as vice chair of the Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment, or GLOBE.
But Â?I think everyone wants there to be a deal,Â? he said. Â?The question is how you reach it.Â?
Jay's organisation, which lobbies and attempts to coordinate the work of legislators around the world on environmental policy, is trying behind the scenes to hammer out some of the major roadblocks to a Copenhagen agreement, and to ensure national legislators follow up any deal with domestic policy to ensure emission reduction and financial commitment targets are met.
Such follow-up has been a major weakness of the expiring Kyoto Protocol, which the new climate agreement is designed to replace. The United States Senate, for instance, failed to ratify the 1997 treaty despite President Bill Clinton having signed it.
Other nations that ratified the agreement have failed to meet their emission reduction targets, in part because the treaty has no functioning enforcement mechanism.
To be effective, any new deal will need effective enforcement, supporting domestic legislation, binding targets for emissions reductions and adequate funding to support developing nations in their efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change, members of the legislative lobby group said.
Agreements on adaptation funding, in particular, are Â?absolutely essentialÂ? to ensuring developing countries sign on to any new climate deal in December and agree to emissions reductions of their own, said Adam Matthews, secretary general of the organization, which counts top legislators from China, Brazil, India and Indonesia among its members.
Adaptation, once considered a secondary consideration behind achieving emissions cuts, is now "?a primary issue,"? Matthews said. To the rest of the world, Â?adaptation (funding) is an indicator of the commitment of the major economies."?
The legislators pointed to promising signs of progress as the Copenhagen meeting approaches. China, while still demanding 40 percent emission reductions from developed countries, increasingly sees a link between an effective global climate deal and its own long-term economic and political stability, said Terry Townshend, director of policy for the group.
That suggests that China, now the worldÂ's largest producer of greenhouse gases, is unlikely to try to block progress at the talks in December, Jay said.
The United States, long seen as a major roadblock to efforts to reach an effective climate deal, also now is pushing along domestic legislation that lays the groundwork for emission cuts and a carbon trading system. Whether that translates into promises of binding emission cuts depends in part on whether China can be persuaded to promise its own cuts, experts say.
The dark horse at the Copenhagen talks may be Russia, legislators said. The country in many ways stands to benefit from climate change, as land in a warming Siberia becomes more productive for agriculture and as warming opens the way for oil and gas exploration in a larger region.
Russia also has benefitted from the 1990 baseline set for judging carbon emissions cuts.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 sent Russia'?s emissions plunging, and today it is one of the few countries that emits less carbon dioxide than it did in 1990, though that change has little to do with efforts to combat climate change.
As the key climate negotiations approach, "?Russia is a real unknown,"? Townshend said.
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