Europese Commissie waarschuwt dat de doelstellingen voor het terug dringen van C02 niet ver genoeg gaan (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has warned that the offers of carbon emission reduction targets made so far by developed countries may not be enough to reach a global deal that will set the planet on a path away from dangerous climate change.
Environment commissioner Stavros Dimas i told a Brussels audience on Thursday (7 May) that apart from the EU, rich country targets were insufficiently ambitious.
"I urge ...developed countries to take another look at their own targets," he said, "and to consider increasing their level of ambition so that our collective efforts will add up to the 30 percent reduction that is needed."
"The offers on the table so far risk falling short."
The commissioner was speaking at a briefing in Brussels outlining the commission's view of the state of play on national positions ahead of the upcoming UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December
Asked whether he expects there to be a global deal reached in December, the commissioner replied: "I'm not optimistic. I'm not pessimistic. I'm determined."
The European Union for its part is committed to a reduction in CO2 emissions of 20 percent on 1990 levels by 2020. However, some two thirds of this target will not be realised in Europe itself, but in the developing world via carbon offsets.
The 20 percent target would nevertheless increase to a 30 percent reduction if at the Copenhagen meeting other developed countries also make a similar commitment.
He cheered the new American administration's commitment to a reduction target of 80 percent on 1990 levels by 2050, noting that the EU also has adopted this figure as a target.
"But we have to see what will be achieved as mid-term targets," he cautioned, saying the new US pledge to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 "means easy reductions now and hard reductions after 2020."
"Governments have a habit of setting ambitious targets that their successors have to meet," he said.
Developing world must commit to reductions too
The commissioner also emphasised that for any deal to be reached in Copenhagen, the developing world - in particular the better-off emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil - would have to commit to significant carbon reductions as well.
"Even if the developed world cuts its emissions to zero, we will lose the battle against climate change unless developing countries - and particularly the major emerging economies – also mitigate their rapid emissions growth."
Recognising that northern industrialised nations are responsible for 75 percent of global warming, these countries have committed to making the bulk of CO2 reductions.
At the same time, the commission does want the developing world to commit to CO2 reductions of between 15 and 30 percent below 'business-as-usual' levels.
The expected grand bargain in Denmark would be that if the EU and US stump up significant chunks of cash for cutting emissions and climate adaptation, leading developing countries will commit to considerable CO2 reductions in return.
Fierce haggling over such a pact between north and south has already begun and the inability of the EU or the US to deliver any precise figures of monies they would be willing to commit to climate finance for the global south is a sore spot.
"It is no exaggeration to say that [climate finance] is the issue that will make or break the Copenhagen agreement," said the commissioner, who conceded that industrialised countries have not really stepped up to the plate.
However, the commissioner said that some of the climate finance funds from the EU would have to come from existing development aid allocations.
"[Climate finance to developing countries] will have to be both brand new funds and existing development monies," he said. "But mostly it should be new."
He added that Europe already makes funds available for climate finance through the UN Adaptation Fund, which is bankrolled largely by the EU.
But in order to receive any funds, the EU executive wants developing countries to draw up and implement "national low carbon development strategies," setting out mitigation actions for different sectors of the economy.
A mechanism that would monitor and verify that emissions have indeed been made would be established under the umbrella of the UN, which would then disperse climate finance funds from the developed world.
CDM reform
The commissioner also said that he wants to see "substantial reform" of the Clean Development Mechanism - the scheme through which rich countries pay the global south to make their carbon reductions for them.
The CDM has been widely criticised as not delivering genuine carbon reductions. According to David Victor, a leading carbon trade analyst at Stanford University, as many as two thirds of the approved CDM projects are not backed by real pollution reductions.
The CDM must be changed so that it credits only those projects that deliver real additional reductions and that go beyond low cost options, the commissioner said. This would be achieved by changing the mechanism from offering carbon credits on a project-by-project basis to a sectoral basis, whereby credits are issued when a whole sector reduces emissions.
Once the CDM is changed in this way, then it can be the channel through which, according to Mr Dimas, "one third or more" of climate finance is delivered to the developing world.
Paper reductions
However, Oscar Reyes, of Carbon Trade Watch, an Amsterdam-based green NGO, warned that as problematic as CDM currently is, switching to a sectoral approach "is even worse in terms of environmental integrity."
He told EUobserver that under a sectoral approach, a baseline level of emissions is set based on current best practice in a particular industry, then those firms that beat this best practice are awarded emissions credits.
The problem, he said, is that the figures on which these baselines are set come from the companies themselves or their national governments, which both have an incentive to inflate their stated current level of emissions so that large reductions are easier to make.
"The sectoral approach will result in paper reductions and not actual reductions. This can then be used to provide credits that can be sold back to the EU or US to offset quite real emissions."
The real aim of introducing a sectoral approach, said Mr Reyes, was expanding the offset market in order to increase Europe's ability to make reductions overseas instead of domestically.
"This potentially could flood the market with dodgy carbon credits with even fewer checks and collapse the price of carbon still further," he explained.