Momentum for climate deal grows as heads gather in Paris

PARIS — More than 140 world leaders including United States President Barack Obama and Xi Jinping of China are gathering in Paris, striving to reach the first truly global deal to curb greenhouse gases.

The two weeks of United Nations-sponsored talks have already gathered pledges to reduce emissions from 177 of the 195 countries involved, signalling broader support for a deal than when envoys last attempted to reach one six years ago. Those discussions in Copenhagen ended in disarray with recriminations between industrialised and developing nations.

Now, with the cost of alternatives to fossil fuels coming down and scientific concern about global warming mounting, there is stronger political will to act than ever. Delegates opened discussions yesterday, and leaders are scheduled to speak today to lend political momentum to the process.

“The stars are more aligned right now to reach agreement than I have ever seen them,” US Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern told reporters last week. “We are riding on the wave of those 170 targets that have been submitted.”

The terrorist attacks that killed 130 people in Paris two weeks ago prompted the authorities to cancel demonstrations planned by environmental groups, close major highways and urge residents to stay home, if possible, today. Political resolve for a deal remains.

“What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be when the world stands as one,” Mr Obama said last week in a press conference with French President Francois Hollande.

Disagreements remain on the legal nature of the deal, the mechanism that will prod future action and on how much support industrialised nations should give poorer countries to cut their emissions and cope with the effects of warming. The leaders depart after their speeches, leaving the thorny issues to envoys drawn mostly from environment and energy ministries.

Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan as well as Environment and Water Resources Minister Masagos Zulkifli will lead the Singapore delegation. “Climate finance is a deal-killer in Paris,” said Mr Jairam Ramesh, the former Environment Minister of India and a veteran of Copenhagen. Industrialised nations must show how they will deliver on a promise first made in 2009 to boost annual climate aid to US$100 billion (S$141 billion) by 2020, he said.

Adding urgency is a finding by the World Meteorological Organization that global temperatures probably touched a record this year. The pledges, which are not up for negotiation, leave the world on track for a 2.7°C increase since the industrial revolution, showed Climate Action Tracker, a project by four climate research institutions. That is above the 2°C target set in previous talks, a shift in the climate that would still be quicker than when the last ice age ended. The most vulnerable nations want a 1.5°C goal to protect them from rising seas.

“We’re not home and dry in terms of the 2°, but developing countries are not seeing the money they need in order to cope with the consequences of that shortcoming,” said former UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, who led the Copenhagen talks and now heads the Global Green Growth Institute in Seoul.

Another fight on the agenda in Paris will be on how to ensure countries periodically “ratchet” upward their ambition to reduce pollution, said Mr Laurence Tubiana, who as France’s climate change ambassador will help steer the discussions. Envoys must deliver “a broad message on the low-carbon economy being the new normal”.

It is not just countries that are mobilising. The UN has gathered pledges to fight climate change from more than 2,000 cities worldwide and more than 2,000 corporations, which will be on display at conferences drawing thousands to venues separate from the heavily policed UN compound.

“Paris will be a watershed,” said Mr Steve Howard, chief sustainability officer of the Swedish furniture retailer IKEA.

The enthusiasm for a deal is in contrast with the meeting in Copenhagen in 2009, when just 55 nations met a deadline to submit pledges. This time, envoys coordinated their positions and put many of the elements for the deal in place before arriving in Paris.

“Our survival is based on coming to a good enough deal,” Maldives Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon said by phone. It must ensure “there are still opportunities for countries to come back with more ambitious targets”. AGENCIES