Tiempo Climate Newswatch

"Once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change," promised Barack Obama, United States president-elect. He was speaking in a taped message at the opening of a climate summit organized by governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger. Obama repeated his goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020 and a further 80 per cent by 2050.

Schwarzenegger has partnerships established with seven Western states and four Canadian provinces to develop regional cap-and-trade systems. He is also exploring links with states in the northeast United States and has agreements to combat climate change in place with the United Kingdom and with Australian state Victoria. At the summit, agreements to limit deforestation were signed with Brazil and Indonesia. In the final declaration, summit delegates pledged to work together on climate issues. China's representative at the meeting, Gao Guangsheng, signed the declaration as an "honorary witness."

The Coalition of Rainforest Nations is calling for the establishment of a single body to coordinate the use of carbon trading in limiting deforestation as part of a post-Kyoto climate agreement. "There is money floating around... but countries don't know where to put it. There are various ideas, often not coordinated and that is very confusing," said Federica Bietta of the New York-based coalition.

A number of proposals aimed at reducing deforestation or land degradation under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD) initiative will be presented at the forthcoming climate treaty negotiations. There are concerns that bringing forest carbon credits into existing carbon trading systems may undermine pricing structures by making available cheap offsets. As an alternative, the European Commission would like to see some carbon trading proceeds set aside for use in projects that tackle deforestation.

The Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has released the latest greenhouse gas emissions figures. Over the period 1990-2006, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry, the industrialized nations ( Annex I nations) have decreased their total emissions by five per cent. This masks, though, an overall rise of ten per cent in Annex I nations outside the economies-in-transition (EIT) category. Economic collapse in the 1990s saw a dramatic decline in EIT emissions, amounting to 37 per cent over 1990-2006 despite a seven per cent increase over the period 2000-2006. The Annex I nations reporting the greatest emissions rise since the baseline year 1990 were Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Australia, Greece and New Zealand.

Proposals regarding the shape of a post-Kyoto climate agreement made by countries and observer organizations have been published prior to the next round of climate treaty negotiations, which starts December 1st. The European Union and New Zealand propose that global emissions should peak within the next 10 to 15 years. The Maldives wants the growth in carbon levels to end by 2015. The United States' position, set by the outgoing Bush administration, calls for a revamp of the country groupings under the climate treaty based on "recent advances in scientific knowledge and changing social and economic situation in the world" and wants "aspirational" rather than binding long-term goals.