Next round of UN climate talks opens in Bangkok
Updated
Another round of UN sponsored climate change talks has kicked off, this time in the Thai capital Bangkok. The talks follow on from last week's meeting in New York, and have brought together delegates from 180 countries. They'll continue work on finalising a draft text ahead of the crucial Copenhagen summit in December. That meeting is intended to produce a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, when it expires in 2012. Negotiations this week will try to get firm commitments from wealthy countries on the extent they're willing to pay to help poorer nations get access to clean technology and energy.
Presenter: Claudette Werden
Speakers: Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; Nick Rowley, Kinesis Climate Change Organisation; Josh Carmody, Fund Manager of the Asian Development Bank's Asia Pacific Carbon Fund
CARMODY
ROWLEY
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WERDEN: Despite plenty of political rhetoric, the last few years of climate change negotiations have been bogged down by an unwillingness of many countries, including the world's big polluters, to commit to firm emissions targets . And there've also been problems clarifying just how much financial help will be needed from richer countries to help poor countries make their economies cleaner and greener, without slowing development. But the United Nations Climate Change Chief Yvo de Boer warns time is running out.
DE BOER: The negotiating agenda for the Copenhagen process makes it very clear that developing country action to limit the growth of their emissions depends on financial support being made available, so without financial support there's not going to be an agreement in Copenhagen.
WERDEN: The Asian Development Bank's climate change spokesman Josh Carmody says the scale of investment required to make developing countries greener is beyond the means of governments to raise through taxation. He believes public funding would be better spent in leveraging private investment in clean energy initiatives.
WERDEN: Nick Rowley, the climate advisor to Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair, says the physical reality of extreme weather conditions including droughts and floods is pushing developing countries towards accepting a climate change deal
WERDEN: Mr Rowley who now advises both business and government on greenhouse emission reduction says at its heart, the global climate problem is a question around human development, the challenge of creating economic growth with less carbon growth. But the UN's Climate Change Chief Yvo de Boer says wealthy countries won't open their chequebooks unless developing countries agree to caps, or clear limits, on overall emissions - a move resisted so far by emerging economies like India and China.
BOER: Without caps on emissions, it's going to be difficult for rich countries to mobilise financial resources, so really the financing and the emissions reduction issues are very intimately linked.
