Earth Equity News

New Round of Climate Talks Begin This Week in Bonn. The Canadian Press, June 2, 2008. "Climate change experts from around the world will [gather in Bonn this week] to discuss the nuts and bolts of a new global warming agreement designed to take effect after 2012. The meeting builds on [the] accord reached last December [in] Bali... The two-week conference, drawing some 2,000 delegates from more than 160 countries and dozens of agencies, begins [today]. The Bali conference agreed to conclude a new climate change treaty by December 2009. Another conference four months later in Bangkok adopted a negotiating timetable. In Bonn, 'the real work is now only beginning,' says [top U.N. climate official] Yvo de Boer... 'It's unlikely we are going to make lot of progress this year because we need strong signals from the U.S., and that's not going happen until the election,' said Ian Fry, the delegate from the tiny Pacific country of Tuvalu. But time is pressing. The basic outline of the post-Kyoto agreement should be ready by next summer to prepare for the critical December conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the new pact should be adopted... That allows... just six months after the next U.S. president takes office to negotiate a complex, multifaceted and hugely expensive treaty. Delegates in Bonn will begin work on how to help developing countries adapt to anticipated changes in their climate, on transferring new technologies to help them avoid hefty carbon emissions as they expand their economies, and on how to raise the trillions of dollars required over the next decades to curb climate change. Each objective faces a multitude of obstacles."