Climate talks wind up and move on - August 29, 2008
The United Nation's latest climate talks wrapped up in Ghana this week with participants citing particular progress on reducing emissions from deforestation and heavy industry (AP, Reuters).
The negotiations come in advance of the main UN climate conference in Poznan later this year. The iterative nature of the process appears to have worn out some of the major news outlets, but there was no shortage of wire coverage.
Participants in Accra focused in large part on deforestation and a pathway towards "sectoral" agreements that could be used to promote action in developing countries. Under this logic, countries that cannot immediately take on hard targets for emissions reductions - due to the scale of current growth or the need to develop basic energy services for their citizens - might be able to fully modernize their industrial sectors (cement, steel, glass, etc.).
This approach would do more than reduce emissions in the developing countries. Indeed, the adoption of some kind of international standards would help ensure that tighter pollution controls in, say, Europe, doesn't shift even more heavy manufacturing into countries like China (a double whammy that drives emissions up even faster and makes eventual reductions even harder).
All of these discussions are ultimately laying the groundwork toward an eventual agreement that many hope will be reached in Copenhagen in 2009. But don't hold your breath: The talks might well bleed into 2010, given the upcoming leadership change in the US and the plethora of issues that remain to be settled.
