Copenhagen climate change summit a ‘disaster,’ Sweden says
Reuters
Tuesday, December 22nd 2009, 10:39 AM
Dejong/AP
Protesters said they wanted to take over the global conference — and turn it into a “people’s assembly.”
BRUSSELS — Sweden described the Copenhagen climate change summit as a “disaster” and a “great failure” on Tuesday, ahead of a meeting of European Union environment ministers to discuss how to rescue the process.
The European Union went to Copenhagen with the hope of achieving a broad commitment to at least a 20% cut in carbon emissions below 1990 levels within 10 years, but that and other firm goals failed to emerge in the final accord.
“Ministers are going to meet today to discuss, of course, how to proceed after this disaster we really had in Copenhagen,” Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren told reporters as he and other ministers gathered for the meeting in Brussels.
Carlgren will preside over
the talks as Sweden currently holds the EU presidency.
“I expect us to discuss both how to continue … but also elaborate on possibilities for alternate ways to work now, because it was a really great failure and we have to learn from that.”
The two-week, UN-led conference ended on Saturday with a nonlegally binding agreement to limit global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial times, but it did not lay out how to achieve that.
Despite months of preparation and strenuous international diplomacy, the talks boiled down to an inability of the world’s two largest emitters, the United States and China, to agree on headline-fixed targets.
The 27 member states of the EU had gone into the talks with a unified position and with a plan for financing emissions cuts in the developing world, with a commitment to spend around $10.01 billion over the next three years to aid poorer countries.
But those aims were largely sidelined as the talks failed to produce the breakthrough agreement many had hoped for.
“Europe never lost its aim, never, never came to splits or different positions, but of course this was mainly about other countries really [being] unwilling, and especially the United States and China,” Carlgren said.
Britain on Monday accused China and a handful of other countries of holding the world for ransom by blocking a legally binding treaty at Copenhagen, stepping up a blame game that has gathered momentum since the talks ended.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described the summit as “at best flawed and at worst chaotic” and demanded an urgent reform of the process to try to reach a legal treaty when talks are expected to resume in Germany next June.
But Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard, who quit as president of the Copenhagen talks midway through after being criticized by African countries for allegedly favoring wealthier nations in negotiations, said it was no time to get depressed about the process of tackling climate change.
“What we need to do is to secure the step that we took and turn it into a result,” she told reporters as she arrived for the Brussels meeting on Tuesday. Asked whether Copenhagen had been a failure, she replied: “It would have been a failure if we had achieved nothing. But we achieved something. A first step. It was the first time we held a process where all the countries were present, including the big emitters.”
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스웨덴 환경장관, “코펜하겐 협정은 ‘재앙’”
YTN | 입력 2009.12.23 02:58
스웨덴 환경장관이 법적 구속력도 갖지 않는, 낮은 수준의 합의문을 채택하는 데 그친 제 15차 유엔 기후변화협약 당사국 총회에 대해 ‘재앙’이라고 강하게 비난했습니다.
유럽연합, EU 이사회 순번의장국 스웨덴의 안드레아스 칼그렌 환경장관은 브뤼셀에서 환경장관회의를 주재하기에 앞서 기자들에게 코펜하겐 기후변화 정상회의는 ‘재앙’이었으며 엄청난 실패’였다고 말했습니다.
칼그렌 장관은 27개 EU 회원국 환경장관들이 코펜하겐 기후변화 회의 결과에 대해 실망감과 유감을 피력했다면서도 기존의 입장을 굽히지 않고 코펜하겐 회의를 교훈으로 삼아 향후 대응 방안을 모색하기로 했다고 말했습니다.
하지만 이번 회의에서도 향후 EU가 어떤 식으로 미국, 중국 등 이른바 ‘G2′ 국가의 양보를 이끌어낼 것인지 구체적 방안은 도출되지 않은 것으로 전해졌습니다.
한편, 노르베르트 뢰트겐 독일 환경장관은 EU는 기후변화에 효과적으로 대응하고자 하는, 연대세력을 찾아야 한다며 전 세계에 이처럼 뜻을 같이하는 국가가 있으므로 새로운 동맹을 조직할 필요가 있다고 제안한 것으로 알려졌습니다.
