Japan seeks firm commitments

Times of India , Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Correspondent : Nitin Sethi, TNN

CANCUN: The climate talks at Cancun hit a bad logjam on Monday night with Japan and AOSIS (Association of Small Island Countries) demanding that India and other developing countries get bound into international emission reduction commitments before they allow Kyoto Protocol to continue or the long-term deal to proceed.

India and China took a joint and strong position against the blackmail and drew a red line immediately that they would not allow the long-term agreement to be turned into a legally binding document at the moment — a way to bind emerging economies' voluntary actions into binding targets.

Japan has made legally binding status for the new global deal — which would lead to commitments for India and other developing countries — a pre-requisite to keep the Kyoto Protocol alive in the near future. The AOSIS countries, seen to be aligned closely to EU interests (as Wikileaks has shown), threatened to block progress on the long-term deal unless the "legally binding" status tag was attached to it.

The LCA negotiations are meant to etch out a long-term global deal. For long, the understanding has been that all developed countries except the US will bind themselves to emission reduction targets under the second phase of Kyoto Protocol, while the US will take comparable targets and prominent developing countries will assume some responsibilities voluntarily under the new deal.

If the new deal becomes a legally binding one, then the voluntary actions of the developing countries would by default turn into binding commitments, something they are not required to do under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Bali Action Plan.

 
SOURCE : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/Japan-seeks-firm-commitments-/articleshow/7063203.cms
 


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