Is looking at the negotiations as rich helping poor, and policy pushing action out of date?
BARCELONA, Nov 4 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - While companies and citizens find ways to cope with climate change on the ground and push governments to swap fossil fuels for clean energy, officials negotiating a U.N. deal to curb global warming often appear stuck in a time warp, experts say.
At final talks before a Paris summit due to agree the new deal, South Africa's top climate diplomat Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko told journalists climate change was a day-to-day reality for developing states - "a matter of life or death" for some.
Yet the discussions in Bonn seemed far off dealing with the impacts of worsening extreme weather and rising seas as an urgent threat, tripping up over procedural rows and the precise wording of a 51-page draft text to be taken to Paris.
Mxakato-Diseko, who chairs a key group of 134 developing states at the climate talks, insisted success in Paris next month would hinge on industrialised countries committing more public money to help poorer nations adapt to growing climate stresses and adopt renewable energy.
But some climate change experts - and developed-country negotiators - see this as an old-fashioned view of the world.
Insisting that rich governments alone pay to fix the consequences of their historically high carbon pollution symbolises what a European Union official described as "very rigid and somewhat outdated rhetoric", dividing the world according to income levels in the early 1990s, when the bedrock U.N. convention on climate change was crafted.
"To be effective, the new agreement must reflect today's reality and evolve as the world does," said Elina Bardram, head of the European Commission team, at the October talks in Bonn.
That reality, experts say, means recognising that all countries, rich and poor, need to play a part in curbing planet-warming emissions by moving away from dirty energy sources and protecting their people from climate change impacts.
With China now the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases, and India fourth after the United States and the European Union, efforts by major emerging economies to develop in a greener way are a centrepiece of the new accord now being stitched together.
Whatever is agreed at the Paris conference starting on Nov. 30, the six-year process leading up to it has resulted in 155 governments submitting national climate action plans for the coming decades - including 114 developing countries.
That in itself is a huge achievement, analysts say.
"The world has changed significantly, and Paris will be a recognition of that," said Saleemul Huq, director of the Dhaka-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD).
Developing nations have made a big concession by putting forward plans to use more solar, wind and water power and to conserve forests, but there is a limit to how far they can shoulder more of the burden of curbing climate change, he added.
An analysis of the national climate action plans, released last week by the U.N. climate change secretariat, found that a quarter of the emissions reductions pledged are conditional on receiving financial and technical support to make them happen.
"(Developing nations) are saying 'We'll do something, and if we get more money we will do even more, and so it's about how much money are you going to give us?'," said Huq.
BARRIERS BREAK DOWN
But people working on renewable energy projects - from Africa to Latin America - have a different take, said Monica Araya, a former climate negotiator for Costa Rica and founder of sustainable development strategy group Nivela.
"If you talk to citizens, entrepreneurs or investors in renewables, or people working on energy efficiency in cities, the conversation is all about the country we want to build... the cooperation we need, the collaborations we want," she said.
A citizens' platform she set up called Costa Rica Limpia is pushing for cleaner forms of public transport, to improve quality of life and decarbonise the economy further.
In other fast-developing places like China, a key reason governments have begun to crack down on dirty industries and step up efforts to rein in emissions is public dissatisfaction over air pollution, she noted.
Meanwhile, expertise in preventing floods or building solar power systems is increasingly being shared across borders in the southern hemisphere, as well as between the north and south - along with funding to put those ideas into practice.
China, for example, recently promised ¥20 billion ($3.1 billion) to establish a fund that will assist developing countries in combating climate change.
And some developing nations, including Peru and Colombia, have made contributions to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, which will finance efforts to adapt to and curb climate change in poorer countries.
Such moves have begun to break down the traditional division between rich donor governments and recipient states, but the rhetoric in the negotiating rooms often fails to reflect this, experts say.
PARIS POLITICS
Until wealthy governments clarify how they will make good on a promise to mobilise $100 billion a year in climate change funding for vulnerable nations by 2020 - and how it will be scaled up after that - the G77 and China group of developing countries is expected to continue using finance as a bargaining chip at the U.N. talks.
"For Paris, you can almost guarantee that this is going to be an end game," said Athena Ronquillo-Ballesteros, a finance expert with the World Resources Institute.
Wrangling is likely over the definition of which countries should - or could - provide climate finance, and to which vulnerable states.
Even developing nations that are willing to put money on the table don't want to be bound by the same accounting and reporting rules as their richer counterparts, experts noted.
The complex U.N. process and the tough challenge of getting some 195 countries to agree on limiting environmental damage - for which some are more responsible than others - mean negotiators, many of them government officials, will be unable to get the job finished in Paris themselves.
More than 80 world leaders are due to attend the opening, to give the talks political impetus. And in the second week, ministers will arrive to hammer out anticipated sticking points such as finance and a mechanism for addressing "loss and damage" from climate change, such as displacement due to rising seas.
"I don't believe (an accord in) Paris will be the result of the negotiators' willingness," said Araya. "I think (it) will be the product of a broader equation."
Part of the equation is that since the last failed attempt to reach a climate deal in 2009, most countries - rich and poor - have suffered some tragedy or harm from extreme weather, which will boost political drive in Paris, she added.
The French capital will also be the setting for thousands of ordinary people marching to demand greater action on climate change, as well as hundreds of businesses, non-governmental groups and city officials showcasing their efforts to slow global warming and deal with its impacts around the world.
"The negotiations won't be the only game in town," said ICCCAD's Huq.
(Reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Laurie Goering. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)
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