UN - climate change

World leaders tailor climate expectations after talks

Article published on the 2009-11-17 Latest update 2009-11-17 15:53 TU

Activists display clocks outside the Barcelona climate change talks earlier this month
(Credit: Reuters)

Environment ministers from 44 countries emerged from talks on Tuesday with a new strategy aimed at accepting a scaled-back agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions at next month’s at the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen. US President Barack Obama hopes the pact will "take immediate operational effect", even if countries do not create a legally-binding agreement at the summit itself.

Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao met in Beijing on Tuesday, where the leaders of the world's largest producers of greenhouse gases agreed to take "significant" action to scale down their output of carbon dioxide.

This response deals with one of the four key points UN Climate Chief Yvo de Boer believes need to be addressed next month in Copenhagen. 

De Boer has called for answers from industrialised countries on how much they are willing to cut their emissions and from developing countries such as China and India on how much they are willing to limit the growth of their emissions. He has also asked industrialised countries to help finance curbing emissions of developing countries, and how will that money be managed.

The US aim in Copenhagen "is not a partial accord or a political declaration, but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations and one that has immediate operational effect," Obama said in Beijing.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen was pleased that both China and the US backed the Danish scaled-back strategy for a politically-binding, if not legally-binding agreement.

Rasmussen took Hu and Obama's approvals to imply "that all developed countries will need to bring strong reduction targets to the negotiating table in Copenhagen," he said.

China and the US together make 37.5 per cent of global emissions of the six main greenhouse gases, according to the World Resources Institute.