By IPS Correspondents
BONN, May 16 2006 (IPS)

Senior government officials from 165 countries have agreed to further strengthen international cooperation to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases and to respond to climate change impacts.

But there was no agreement on how to achieve that objective.

In a two-day ‘dialogue on long-term cooperative action to address climate change’ that concluded in Bonn Tuesday, the delegates discussed a wide range of approaches to enhance implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

These included incentives for developing countries to mitigate climate change, ensuring cooperation on research and development and the transfer of cleaner technologies.

Among the countries insisting on international cooperation in technology transfer was China. While agreeing that the market does play an important role in addressing the issue of climate change, China warned that the role of the market in technology transfer should not be overestimated.

“We believe that governments play a more important role in this regard,” a senior Chinese government official said. The positions taken by various national delegates were later made available on the UNFCCC website.

“Positive incentives for technology transfer could take the form of long-term concessionary loans through multilateral channels for deployment of technologies that emit low greenhouse gases,” a South African delegate said.

Several other countries such as Brazil and India also stressed the role of technology transfer in tackling climate change impact and enabling sustainable development.

“Efforts undertaken by developing countries to reduce emissions in different sectors within their territories can only be characterised as voluntary and, therefore, cannot be linked or associated with goals, targets or timeframes,” said a Brazil government official.

He echoed the views of countries such as India and China which are opposed to repeated attempts by industrialised countries to oblige them to reduce their emissions, much against the spirit of the Kyoto Protocol that envisages binding commitments by industrialised countries.

Several delegates also expressed strong support for the role of the carbon market and the need to find new ways to involve the private sector in climate protection.

The carbon market is in fact experiencing exponential growth, says the UN Climate Change Secretariat. In all 180 Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects have been registered by the UNFCCC secretariat, with 570 more in the pipeline.

The secretariat estimates overall emission reduction potential of the CDM pipeline at over 940 million tonnes, roughly equivalent to the combined emissions of Britain and Spain in 2003 – with the threshold of 1 billion within reach.

“There is now a strong consensus on the need to reduce emissions to protect the global climate. Much emphasis has been put on the promotion of economic incentives to promote action to reduce emissions – for both industrialised and developing countries,” acting head of the UNFCCC secretariat Richard Kinley said.

Canadian minister for the environment Rona Ambrose agreed when she pointed out that there was strong consensus among governments on the fact that humanity had a serious problem. Canada hosted the 11th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Kyoto Protocol last year in Montreal.

“In Canada’s Arctic region, the changes noted by the Inuit community – such as melting permafrost, changes in sea ice and the arrival of new migratory animal species – has raised the need to address adaptation measures,” Ambrose said.

The round of discussions in the form of a ‘dialogue on long-term cooperative action to address climate change by enhancing implementation of the Convention’ was facilitated by Howard Bamsey of Australia and Sandea de Wet of South Africa.

The dialogue workshop was the first of a series of four meetings involving all 189 contracting parties to the UNFCCC. The series will conclude at the end of 2007. The next such meeting will be held in November 2006 in Nairobi. The Kenyan government has agreed to host COP 12.

Another important round of talks involving the parties to the Kyoto Protocol begins Wednesday (May 17) in Bonn and ends May 25.

The focus of what is being called the ‘ad hoc working group on further commitments for Annex I parties under the Kyoto Protocol’ will be on further measures to be taken by industrialised countries for the period after 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends.

Excerpt: