Modest progress at Africa climate meeting[fr][de] 

"Countries have made it very clear that issue of forests needs to be part of a Copenhagen deal," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in a 27 August press statement.

Delegates did not agree to any specific framework on forest protection, nor were any new funds committed to tackling the destruction of rainforests and other key ecosystems credited with storing CO2, the gas most commonly associated with global warming.

Nonetheless, and despite environmental groups' concerns (see EurActiv 22/08/08), there was a "general sense" that any future climate change deal would need to take deforestation into account, according to one UN official close to the talks.

Goodbye sector deals?

In contrast, separate emissions reductions agreements between heavily-polluting industry sectors like steel and cement could be kept out of such a deal, the official said. Japan, backed by the US and Canada, is in favour of including legally-binding international sectoral agreements within the scope of a global climate change regime. 

But talks nearly collapsed when Tokyo pushed its case during an April meeting of the UNFCCC in Bangkok. Developing states are concerned that such deals will simply serve as a 'backdoor' for developed states to avoid binding emissions targets and that the deals could be used as an excuse for imposing additional levies on products from more polluting developing economies. 

These fears appear to have been allayed, however, after a working group session on the issue "provided more clarity", with views converging that "such approaches should not lead to binding commitments for developing countries and that it is up to a country to decide if it wants to put sectoral policies in place or not," the UNFCCC press release said. 

It remains unclear, however, as to whether sectoral deals will remain entirely off the agenda of future UNFCCC talks given their potential for considerable emissions reductions and transferring clean technologies to developing states, according to the official. A number of developed-state parties to the UNFCCC are also in favour of moving towards sectoral approaches within the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allowes rich states to finance clean development projects in poor countries in exchange for emission reduction credits, the official said.