Figueres Says UN
Will Set
‘Pillars’ of
Climate Deal
By Ben Sills and
Ewa Krukowska
(Bloomberg)
Christiana
Figueres, the
Costa Rican
revolutionary’s
daughter who
becomes the top
United Nations
climate official
in July, said
envoys will form
“pillars” of an
agreement to
tackle global
warming at a
summit in
December.
The meetings,
set to take
place in Cancun,
Mexico, “will
provide very
clear progress”
while falling
short of drawing
up a final
treaty, she said
in an interview
in Cologne,
Germany.
Figueres said
negotiators will
“deliver on some
of the elements”
in the 2009
Copenhagen
Accord that
represent
“pillars” for an
eventual a
global
agreement.
At the
Copenhagen
talks, a
stalemate
between
industrialized
and developing
nations ended
only when richer
nations agreed
to raise funds
for poorer
countries to
limit the
effects of
climate change.
More than 100
nations signed
the non-binding
accord, which
calls for $100
billion a year
by 2020 and
includes a vow
to limit the
global
temperature
increase to 2
degrees Celsius
(3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit) from
pre-industrial
times.
Delegates are
gathering today
in Bonn,
Germany,
meanwhile, to
begin about two
weeks of
negotiations
that will focus
on how to
incorporate the
Copenhagen
Accord into the
draft of a
global agreement
to reduce
greenhouse-gas
emissions.
A group known as
the ALBA
countries that
includes Bolivia
and Venezuela
criticized the
Copenhagen deal,
saying they were
cut out of
negotiations and
that the goals
didn’t go far
enough.
“I share many of
their concerns,”
Figueres, 53,
said May 28.
“Many of their
concerns are
very legitimate
and shared not
just by the
immediate
members of the
ALBA countries
but actually by
quite a few
countries around
the world.”
Investors Lack
Entitlement
Figueres, who
becomes
executive
secretary of the
UN Framework
Convention on
Climate Change
in about two
months, last
week said she
was confident
negotiators will
establish a
framework for
extending the
carbon market
beyond 2012.
Without a new
agreement,
emissions limits
for more than 35
countries will
end in that year
under the Kyoto
treaty, the 1997
accord that set
a framework for
today’s
emissions
trading.
Investors in
emissions
permits have “no
entitlement” to
the carbon
market, she
said, because
its existence is
dependent on
governments
including it in
a new treaty.
“That is a harsh
reality,” she
said. “There is
no entitlement
to the market,
because it stems
from a political
agreement that
is as yet in the
making.”
Nationalized
Banks
Figueres’s
father, Jose,
served three
times as
president of
Costa Rica,
after leading an
armed uprising
in 1948. He
established a
democratic
constitution
which granted
all citizens the
right to vote,
abolished the
army and
nationalized the
banking system,
as well as
supplied arms to
Fidel Castro’s
campaign against
the Batista
government in
Cuba. Her
brother was
Costa Rica’s
president from
1994 to 1998.
“My father was a
fervent believer
that nobody has
a monopoly on
the truth and
that is very,
very true in
climate
negotiations,”
she said.
Figueres’s
background may
change the
dynamic of
negotiations
that snagged on
tension between
Latin American
countries such
as Bolivia and
Venezuela and
the U.S., said
Sonia Medina,
founding partner
of Venture Green
International, a
carbon
consulting
company based in
New York and
London. The
outgoing climate
chief, Yvo de
Boer, is from
the Netherlands.
His successor
was a member of
Costa Rica’s
negotiating team
since 1995 and
in 2007
represented
Latin America
and the
Caribbean on the
executive board
of the Clean
Development
Mechanism. The
CDM is a UN
program that
allows companies
in the
developing world
to sell their
emission
reductions to
the
industrialized
world. |
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