World leaders must step into the ongoing UN climate change negotiations, to remove roadblocks and ensure their negotiating teams can lay the groundwork for an agreement at landmark talk in December, an influential group of former leaders has urged. The Elders – a group including former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, Graca Machel, the Mozambican politician and widow of Nelson Mandela, and Mary Robinson, formerly president of Ireland and a UN high commissioner – made their call on Friday, as the latest round of pre-Paris negotiations ended with many key issues left open. --Fiona Harvey,
The Guardian, 4 September 2015
A senior Obama administration official will visit India and China next week to "consult" on climate change ahead of the crucial UN climate talks in Paris later this year, the White House has said. "Senior Advisor to the President, Brian Deese, will visit New Delhi on September 7 and Beijing on September 9 and 10. He will meet with senior officials in both countries, including Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in India and Executive Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli in China, to consult on key international climate change issues," a White House statement said. --
Press Trust of India, 5 September 2015
Diplomats in Germany wrangling over the text of a climate rescue pact with a December deadline looming, kicked the can further down the road Friday, frustrated at their own slow progress. “We have only 1,800 minutes (at the next meeting) to agree on the draft package for Paris,” said Djoghlaf. “Every minute has value.” The existing blueprint is an 83-page behemoth with contradictory country proposals for dealing with the pressing climate threat. Fundamental divisions remain over how to share out carbon-emissions cuts between rich nations, which have polluted for longer, and emerging giants such as China and India powering fast-growing economies and populations. --Mariette Le Roux,
AFP, 4 September 2015
Negotiators from 195 nations tasked with crafting a universal climate pact are driven by twin fears tugging in opposite directions, which may result in a hollow deal, say analysts. Career diplomats — and their political bosses — working on the nitty-gritty of the deal to be inked in Paris in December are haunted by another fear subtly nudging them in the opposite direction: the fear of failure. And yet, progress has been incremental and painfully slow. Negotiators left the former [West] German capital Friday after a week of closed-door meetings with very little to show and a draft agreement “not fit for a negotiation,” in the words of the European Commission’s top negotiator, Elina Bardram. --Marlowe Hood,
AFP, 5 September 2015
Paeans of praise emerged from our rival newspapers this week in the wake of President Obama’s hastily-called conference in Anchorage to push his “legacy” climate agenda. According to University of Saskatchewan’s Greg Poelzer, writing in the Globe and Mail, “Make no mistake: The consolidation of a political consensus [on addressing climate change] is real and rapidly gaining strength.” Tell that to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who just summoned world leaders to New York later this month because climate talks are going nowhere. Indeed, Obama’s trip took place as the process of trying to clean up a “bewildering” 80-odd page text for the UN climate meeting in Paris in December was reportedly close to collapse. --Peter Foster,
Financial Post, 4 September 2015
