China holds firm on climate change talks

China is holding firm to its original stance on global climate talks amid intensified United Nations calls yesterday for governments to shelve differences and seek common ground in the last major negotiations before a key year-end summit. Countries remained deeply divided over which negotiating party held the key to breaking the deadlocked talks on the first day of a week-long meeting that opened in Tianjin and is aimed at laying the groundwork for the negotiating text at a summit starting in Cancun, Mexico, on November 29. China has been widely portrayed as the key culprit behind the failure at the much-anticipated Copenhagen summit last year and the Tianjin meeting is viewed by many as Beijing's effort to repair its tainted image. Speaking at the opening session, State Councillor Dai Bingguo said China had shouldered its share of the effort to deal with global warming and it was time for developed nations to take the lead in making steep emission cuts and helping developing nations with funding and green technology. China has long resisted pressure to commit to mandatory carbon targets and accept monitoring and verification of domestic emission- reduction campaigns, saying that poverty and underdevelopment remained the nation's top challenges. Dai indicated that China had little room for key concessions, which analysts said were essential to move the stalled talks forward. 'You may have been impressed by Tianjin, Beijing and Shanghai, but please bear in mind that China's development is very imbalanced and vast areas in central and western region remain poor,' Dai said. Dai and Xie Zhenhua , China's top climate official, reiterated the famous 'common but differentiated principle' - an increasingly contentious clause enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol, which helped China, the world's top producer of greenhouse gases, shun binding carbon caps. Rich nations view it as a gross injustice. The European Union's chief delegate, Artur Runge-Metzger, said emerging economies, such as China and India, should be held responsible to do their share. UN climate chief Christiana Figueres also called yesterday for more flexibility from major powers, including China and the United States. 'It is absolutely indispensable that China show leadership, accompanied by all other countries, to be flexible in order to be able to reach the compromises that are necessary before Cancun,' Figueres said. Despite their differences, negotiators appear to have agreed that no binding deal on curbing the greenhouse gases that cause global warming is likely in Tianjin or Cancun. 'There is a broad agreement among countries meeting in Tianjin that they are not pursuing a legally binding agreement in Cancun,' Figueres told delegates from more than 170 countries yesterday. The US negotiator at the Tianjin talks, Jonathan Pershing, said: 'This week is, to some extent, going to be an indicator of how far forward we can go.' However, Figueres said in a speech at the opening session that a concrete outcome in Cancun was urgently needed to rebuild trust and restore the faith and ability of parties to take the process forward. 'As governments, you can continue to stand still or move forward. 'Now is the time to make that choice,' she said. 'If you want a tangible outcome in December, now is the time to clarify what could constitute an achievable and politically balanced package for Cancun, and what could be subject to further work after Cancun.' She said countries should work to confirm their consensus on 'small but important specifics of a future pact', which could deliver strong results in the short term as well as set the stage for long-term commitments to address climate change effectively. The focus of the Tianjin meeting has turned to finding areas of agreement on essential components, including financing and transfer of clean technology and ways of reducing deforestation, according to negotiators. One of possible agreements this year is financing pledged by developed nations at Copenhagen. Most of the US$30 billion in climate funding that rich countries had pledged for poor nations over three years by 2012 - rising to a total of US$100 billion a year by 2020 - was ready, EU delegates said. The shift came amid warnings that the long-stalled climate talks are losing legitimacy and public support without a tangible outcome in sight. 'If Cancun does not produce such a solid outcome - taking the fight against climate change forward - then I think it risks becoming irrelevant in the eyes of the rest of the world,' Runge-Metzger said. However, Xie said that despite disagreements on transparency, emission targets and other issues, the talks in Tianjin could still be meaningful if the parties could figure out the future direction of the talks. 'It now looks like the differences are quite large, but there's some hope of achieving consensus on some issues,' he said Figueres praised Beijing for hosting the Tianjin meeting and its commitment to inter-governmental negotiations under the United Nations.