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If the U.N. climate negotiations seem to increasingly resemble the perpetually mired World Trade Organization talks, there's good reason: There's a lot of money at stake. A new climate deal could set the ground rules for the "largest distribution of resour
If the U.N. climate negotiations seem to increasingly resemble the perpetually mired World Trade Organization talks, there's good reason: There's a lot of money at stake.
A new climate deal could set the ground rules for the "largest distribution of resources in modern history," said Kate Horner, an expert on forest protection and trade policy with Friends of the Earth, a U.S.-based network of environmental groups.
So how much money is at stake? Economists and aid groups say developing nations will need at least $100 billion a year by 2050 to help them curb carbon emissions and adapt to already inevitable effects of climate change. Richer nations are being asked to provide much of that, from their own budgets and from various still-to-be-established international mechanisms.
It's not hard to understand, then, why so many of the nearly 200 nations participating in the U.N.-organized climate talks seem often more focused on securing their future economic position than on actually reaching a deal.
"There are very high stakes at this point," noted Horner, who spoke at a conference on forest protection at Chatham House in London last week.
But if the U.N. process is to produce a new international climate treaty, beyond the limited accord signed at Copenhagen, then a change in the rules may be needed. The alternative may be talks that continue to fall deeper into the kind of political sludge that has paralyzed the latest round of World Trade Organization negotiations, started back in 2001.
The kind of change needed is a simple switch from consensus decision making to majority rule, Horner said. While achieving that might prove excruciatingly difficult, it is possible and could be the clearest route to getting the talks moving again.
That's important, despite the new Copenhagen Accord, signed by the U.S., Brazil, China, India and South Africa and "noted" by much of the rest of the world.
Why? The new accord is "fundamentally an agreement outside the U.N. process," she said. To be widely effective, and to ultimately bring in a broader range of countries, it needs to be implemented within the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the basic international treaty aimed at curbing carbon emissions.
That means that keeping the troubled U.N. negotiations alive and moving is crucial, said Herman Rosa Chavez, El Salvador's environmental minister, at the recent conference in London.
"I strongly believe that while the U.N. process is difficult, even flawed, it is the only thing we have that can guarantee we will move forward in a way in that rules will be strong and we will have a strong governance scheme that will help us confront this serious problem" of climate change, he said.
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