Q+A: How do we get from Kyoto to Copenhagen?

Wed Sep 23, 2009 10:24am EDT

(Reuters) - Environment Ministers from about 190 nations gather in the Danish capital at the end of the year to try and agree to a broader global pact to fight climate change.

The aim is to build on the existing Kyoto Protocol by ensuring rich nations sign up to deeper emissions cuts while offering greater assistance to developing countries to help them curb greenhouse gas pollution as well.

Following are some questions and answers about the U.N.-led negotiations:

WHAT IS KYOTO?

The Kyoto Protocol is an international environmental treaty aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. More than 180 countries have ratified the treaty.

Only 37 industrialized countries, however, have agreed to targets to reduce emissions by 2008-12, under a principle that richer countries are mostly to blame. The targets range from an 8 percent cut from 1990 levels for the European Union to a 10 percent rise for Iceland.

The United States, long the world's biggest source of emissions, but now surpassed by China, came out against the pact in 2001. While the Obama administration is too late to sign up to Kyoto, it wants to return emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a cut of 14 percent from 2007 levels.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Two more rounds of formal negotiations are scheduled before the December 7-18 talks in Copenhagen: September 28 to October 9 in Bangkok; and Nov 2-6 in Barcelona.

In addition, G20 leaders meet in Pittsburgh on Thursday and Friday to discuss how rich nations can fund steps by poorer countries to deal with climate change and to curb their greenhouse gas emissions.

The outcome of the G20 meeting will help guide negotiations during the two-week Bangkok talks, where more than 2,000 delegates will be trying to shorten a draft negotiating text that will lay out broader global actions to fight change from 2013.

The text will essentially be the document that will replace the Kyoto Protocol, whose first phase ends in 2012.

WHAT DOES THE TEXT LOOK LIKE?

The text has grown in the past few months despite efforts to trim it to around 30 pages. It still contains many options and some blanks, covering actions or pledges by nations to curb emissions and underscoring divisions over how to share the burden in cutting planet-warming greenhouse gases output.

WHAT'S IN THE TEXT?

There are two main working groups, which are both trying to refine the draft text.

The first group has a clear mandate to negotiate industrialized nations' mid-term targets (to 2020), and how to reach those targets, such as through carbon trading. That document is shorter and less contentious.

The second group, held under the parent U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) pact to allow the United States to fully take part, deals with nations' actions to fight climate change to 2050.

These include funding for climate change adaptation, mitigation, financing and transfer of clean-energy technology to developing nations, along with the issue of targets.

The two draft texts may come together in Copenhagen, with one final document emerging on a new climate pact.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN A COPENHAGEN AGREEMENT?

Expect rich nations to make deeper emissions cuts by 2020 than under the current Kyoto Protocol.

Also, expect improved funding mechanisms to pay for climate change adaptation and mitigation in poorer nations, more effective transfer of affordable clean-energy technology and formal support for a scheme to pay developing nations to preserve rainforests in return for carbon credits or other incentives.

Do not expect developing nations to agree to legally binding emissions cuts. Instead, China, India and others are expected to agree on a range of nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs), that can be supported with finance and technology, such as China's pledge to set a carbon intensity target for 2020.

There are strong expectations that developing nations must pledge to take such steps in any Copenhagen text, thereby making the agreed outcome more effective than the Kyoto Protocol.

WHY DO WE CARE?

Mankind has added enough greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to raise temperatures to a dangerous level and emissions are set to keep rising, particularly from poorer nations for at least the short term.

We're already committed to what scientists believe will be serious impacts from rising temperatures such as more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas. The purpose of a post-Kyoto deal is to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Scientists agree that by 2050, the world must have at least halved its emissions to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

(Source: UNFCCC, The Climate Group)

(Writing by David Fogarty and Alister Doyle; Editing by Jonathon Burch)