U.N. climate negotiations stall

200 nations hit snag over poor countries’ aid, carbon markets

A bagpipe player accompanies a British delegation Friday during the Madrid climate talks to promote the next climate gathering, which is to be held in Glasgow, Scotland. More photos are available at arkansasonline.com/1214climate/

A bagpipe player accompanies a British delegation Friday during the Madrid climate talks to promote the next climate gathering, which is to be held in Glasgow, Scotland. More photos are available at arkansasonline.com/1214climate/


MADRID -- Officials from almost 200 countries hunkered down for another night of talks late Friday as a U.N. climate meeting in Madrid went into overtime without agreement on key issues.

Chile, which is chairing the talks, said negotiators would continue working on two fronts trying to get deals on aid for poor countries affected by climate change and international carbon markets.

"Today is the day when we must show the world that we are capable of delivering the agreements that are needed to tackle the unprecedented challenge before us," Chilean official Andres Landerretche told a roomful of reporters in the Spanish capital after two weeks of talks.

Landerretche said there was "some optimism" but added that the Paris agreement's so-called Article 6, which sets the rules for trading in emissions vouchers, "requires more work in order to come to a cleaner text."

"We're going to remain in the premises as long as it takes," Landerretche said. "And that could take well into the night or early hours of tomorrow."

European Union countries and others have said they would prefer not to finalize rules on international carbon markets rather than to approve ones that could undermine efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

"We are all looking for a compromise," Frans Timmermans, the European Commission's top official in charge of climate issues, said earlier Friday. "But there is no way, no way, we could accept a compromise that jeopardizes environmental integrity. Just no way."

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Another topic still on the table concerns financial support for poor countries that suffer the effects of climate change, from stronger storms to droughts and sea level rise.

In 2013, countries agreed on a tentative system to channel such aid, known as the Warsaw International Mechanism, or WIM. But some rich countries, particularly the United States, have resisted attempts to hold them formally accountable for the impact their greenhouse gas emissions have on the climate, prompting criticism from developing nations.

"The U.S. government is the largest humanitarian donor in the world," a State Department official said Friday. "The WIM should be a constructive space to catalyze action on the wide range of loss and damage issues."

"A divisive conversation on blame and liability helps no one," said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the ongoing negotiations.

President Donald Trump has formally triggered the United States' withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate accord, a process that will be completed Nov. 4, 2020 -- a day after the next U.S. presidential election.

The move means the United States, the world's second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China, will be excluded from many of the negotiations at next November's climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

Scientists have calculated that global emissions have to drop 7.6% annually, starting next year, if the Paris accord's goal of keeping global warming at 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century is to be achieved.

EU AND NUCLEAR ENERGY

European Union leaders agreed Friday that nuclear energy will be part of the bloc's solution to making its economy carbon neutral by 2050, allowing them to win the support of two coal-dependent countries.

The conclusion was hailed by environmental advocates, who say that the world's largest emitters must rapidly curtail their fossil fuel reliance to stave off deeper climate change catastrophe.

EU heads of state and government agreed that nuclear energy will be recognized as a way to fight climate change as part of a deal that endorsed the climate target. While Poland did not immediately agree to the plan, the concessions on nuclear energy were enough for the Czech Republic and Hungary to give their approval.

The two nations had the support of France, which relies on nuclear power for 60% of its electricity. They managed to break the resistance of skeptical countries, including Luxembourg, Austria and Germany, to get a clear reference to nuclear power in the meeting's conclusions.

"Nuclear energy is clean energy," Czech Prime minister Andrej Babis said. "I don't know why people have a problem with this."

Poland, one of the bloc's biggest emitters that relies heavily on coal for its electricity production, was the sole holdout on the deal set out by new EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in her "European Green Deal" program.

One aspect of the plan calls for a fund that would send billions of dollars to countries that are the most reliant on fossil fuels, including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

According to Reuters, Poland has demanded certain guarantees about the scale of the financing. Other Eastern European countries signed on to the net-zero 2050 target after securing the right to invest in nuclear energy.

Timmermans called the EU decision an "important step" and one "that I hope will be followed by many of our partners across the world. But you can only get there if you start now. We can't lose sight of the fact that we need to act now, if we want ultimately to be there in 2050. And acting now is creating and implementing concrete plans and concrete steps."

Information for this article was contributed by Aritz Parra, Frank Jordans, Samuel Petrequin and Angela Charlton of The Associated Press and by Chico Harlan and Brady Dennis of The Washington Post.

A Section on 12/14/2019

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