Tag: climate change

Russia's new climate doctrine hints at Moscow's growing willingness to engage with the international community in fighting climate change, but EU observers are not pinning their hopes on ambitious commitments from their Eastern neighbour to aid the passage of a post-Kyoto climate treaty.

Despite the need to come up with a global climate deal by the end of the year in Copenhagen, diplomats involved in the negotiations are not making enough progress, India's special envoy on climate change, Shyam Saran, told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

Over 30 national proposals submitted to the UN in recent weeks have revealed that a significant divide must still be bridged between rich and poor countries if a new global climate agreement is to be concluded in December.

A new US commitment to tackle global warming outlined by President Barack Obama will be the focus of attention today (22 April) at a meeting of international environment ministers in Sicily.

A very important priority of China's relations with the EU is to vigorously promote co-operation in energy saving, emission reduction, environmental protection and new energy sources, writes Ambassador Song Zhe, head of the Mission of the People's Republic of China to the EU, in an essay published on the mission's webpage on 18 April.

The European Union is playing "tricks on the atmosphere" when it claims it will reduce its emissions by 20% by 2020, argues Stefan Singer, director for global energy policy at the WWF. Speaking to EurActiv in an interview, he explained how he had calculated that the EU’s own domestic emissions will in fact only amount to "4 to 5%".

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture could further help mitigate the impact of climate change, policy experts are arguing, calling for the sector to be put at the centre of ongoing UN climate talks. 

The world cannot afford to lock itself into a bad climate agreement for the next ten years, argues Anders Wijkman, a Swedish centre-right member of the European Parliament. Speaking to EurActiv in an interview, he said the UNFCCC should postpone agreeing a successor to the Kyoto Protocol should the preconditions for a good agreement not be met.

The EU's Council of Ministers yesterday (6 April) adopted the final legal texts of the energy and climate change package of legislation negotiated by member states in December last year.

The US must not do less than the EU to cut greenhouse gas emissions, said in an exclusive interview with EurActiv Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received the Nobel peace prize in 2007 together with former US vice-president Al Gore.

As hundreds of delegates gathered in Bonn on Sunday (29 March) for the first official round of UN talks in view of preparing the ground for a post-Kyoto climate deal in December, most experts concurred that a detailed agreement is unlikely to emerge by the end of the year.

Stavros Dimas, the EU's environment commissioner, says Europe is looking forward to seeing the details of US climate change legislation in order to assess whether it meets the "comparability test" with the EU. He spoke to EurActiv on the sidelines of this week's European Business Summit in Brussels.

Business leaders attending this week's World Water Forum called on the international community to acknowledge the link between water, energy and climate change, encouraging them to take these up in global climate negotiations that are expected to be concluded this December in Copenhagen.

An effective US climate policy is only feasible if the interests of coal-intensive Midwestern states are taken into account, US energy experts said in Brussels yesterday (17 March).

A high-level scientific climate conference concluding in Copenhagen yesterday (12 March) delivered a tough message on the social and economic costs of failing to address climate change to world leaders expected to hammer a post-Kyoto global deal in December.

The climate regime adopted at Kyoto have hindered sustainable development in Africa, argues Araya Asfaw, director of the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia,  in a March opinion paper for  the Science and Development Network (SDN), arguing that the rules of the game must change in Copenhagen.

Economic and finance ministers meeting in Brussels yesterday (10 March) failed to put figures on the table to finance climate change in the midst of global negotiations, despite the calls of over 300 protesters arrested for blocking the entrance of the Council building.

Poland is pushing EU economic and finance ministers to agree on how the industrialised world should divide the burden of financial assistance to developing countries to fight climate change.

Swedish EU Affairs Minister Cecilia Malmström unveiled the logo of her country's upcoming EU presidency on Monday (2 March). The design, a golden S-shaped curve dividing - or perhaps uniting - two blue sides was described by the winning advertising agency, Bacon Advertising, as reflecting "openness, dialogue, climate and light".

Environment ministers failed yesterday (2 March) to hammer out an EU position for global climate talks, passing the buck on funding to finance ministers expected to meet next Tuesday (10 March) in Brussels.

Environment ministers from the 27-member bloc will meet on Monday (2 March) to fine-tune the EU's position ahead of international climate negotiations for the period after 2012. But views differ as to how the world's richest countries should contribute, with member states at odds over criteria such as GDP and population size.

China and India must play their full part in fighting climate change and accept that programmes financed by the West to modernise their industries will only come in return for making genuine efforts at home, warns the EU's chief climate negotiator in an interview with EurActiv.

The UN climate change conference in Copenhagen this December "may well determine whether or not the world can respond to a threat which scientists are convinced will lead to catastrophic change unless we act fast," writes Michael Berendt, a senior policy advisor at Fleishman Hillard, on Blogactiv.

The European Parliament yesterday (4 February) adopted detailed recommendations for a future integrated policy on climate change by large majority, calling on the EU to commit to more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets and make energy-saving targets legally binding.