Canada, Russia and Japan remain under intense pressure to soften their opposition to the Kyoto Protocol as negotiators seek to find compromises on key sticking points heading into the final day of the Cancun climate summit.
In a news conference on Thursday evening, Brazil's chief negotiator – who is chairing the Kyoto working group – said developing countries remain adamant that richer countries commit to make new emission targets under Kyoto after the current ones expire at the end of 2012.
“Definitely, the second commitment period is a must in the outcome [of the Cancun summit], so we are looking for ways and means to make that happen,” Brazil's Luiz Figueiredo said.
Along with Japanese and Russian officials, Canada's Environment Minister John Baird has said Kyoto should be replaced by a treaty modelled after the Copenhagen political accord reached last year that would required binding commitments from all major emitters, not just industrialized countries.
After the Brazil news conference, Mr. Baird's spokesman, Bill Rodgers, said the minister has been clear on Canada's position. “I have nothing to add,” he said.
Negotiators from 193 countries were making an 11th-hour effort on Thursday night to wring success from a two-week climate summit that was billed as a major step towards achieving a new international treaty, but has been dogged by mistrust and recriminations.
Officials were expecting to work through the night to find compromises on seemingly intractable but fundamental issues including the future of Kyoto, the form and ambition of emission-reduction targets for both rich and developing countries, and the developed world's willingness to finance and transfer technology to poor nations to help them confront climate change.
In his address to the summit on Thursday, Mr. Baird did not mention the Kyoto Protocol, but instead endorsed the Copenhagen agreement, under which Canada agreed to a far less ambitious target than it accepted in the 1997 Kyoto treaty, which the United States never ratified.
“The Copenhagen Accord was a significant breakthrough in the international climate-change dialogue, laying the foundation for a post-2012 international climate change agreement that includes commitments from all major emitters,” Mr. Baird said. “Success in the fight against global warming will only come with everyone aboard, everyone with an oar in the water and everyone rowing together.”
Earlier in the day, Canada's chief negotiator, Guy St. Jacques, suggested that negotiators put the Kyoto issue aside to focus on more immediate priorities.
Developing countries are battling to save the Kyoto accord, saying it contains crucial principles that recognize the historic responsibility of developed countries for emitting the lion's share of greenhouse gases now in the atmosphere.
But Mr. Baird dismissed such concerns as “sidecar issues” that merely block progress towards a comprehensive agreement that would require all states to take action and to submit to international verification of their plans.
Together, the United States and China make up 40 per cent of the world's annual emissions of greenhouse gases, and neither is bound by Kyoto to cut emissions, or even reduce the pace of growth, in China's case. The two emissions giants – along with most other major countries – have submitted “voluntary” targets under the Copenhagen accord, but are bickering at this year's conference over how to formalize them.
Leaders warned that failure at Cancun would be a major setback in the common effort to limit the increase in average temperatures to 2 degrees or less to avert the most catastrophic impacts of global warming. And that it would seriously erode confidence in the United Nations climate process.
“The world is waiting for good news and progress to emerge from these negotiations,” said South African President Jacob Zuma, whose country will be host of the 2011 summit, where countries hope to conclude a binding and comprehensive deal.
“We dare not delay. The climate is changing and regions such as Africa and the small island states are becoming more vulnerable to devastating impacts.”
Confidence in the international process is already fragile, given that success requires agreement from all 193 United Nations countries – from competing economic powerhouses like the United States and China to aggressively anti-capitalist governments like Bolivia. Evo Morales, Bolivia's President and the darling of the anti-globalization global left, has stalked the meeting like an angry, hectoring critic of compromise.
