Copenhagen – The heads of delegations of emerging nations established by Brazil, China, India and South Africa met on Monday (14) at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP-15) to establish a joint strategy to force the rich countries to adopt more daring targets against global warming.
The meeting included the presence of Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff, and took place at the same time as poor nations – led by the Africans – abandoned several formal meetings, in a clear jamming of negotiations.
The leaders of developing nations fear that the advance of negotiations, as they have been conducted over the last 24 hours, should relegate to a second plan the debate regarding more daring targets for Europe, the United States, Australia and Canada. "For the time being, none of this [more daring targets for the rich] has been discussed," said to Agência Brasil one of the main negotiators of the G77 (the group of poor and developing nations), asking for anonymity.
COP-15 began with the objective of guaranteeing that, at the end of the meeting, the sum of measures announced by the rich nations guarantee a reduction of at least 25% in greenhouse gas, when considering the levels of 1990.
After the meeting with leaders from China, India and South Africa, minister Dilma Rousseff limited herself to saying that the talks were “good” and that negotiations are following a good route.
The executive secretary at the conference, Yvo de Boer, recalled that, apart from the long-term financing to help poor nations to fight global warming and from the more daring targets for developed nations, there is one more fundamental point outside the agenda.
"Methods to inspect and punish those who do not comply with their targets, to be established by the nations that signed Kyoto Protocol, has not yet been discussed,” he said.
This list includes the countries of the European Union, but the United States, the country responsible for the main volume of gas emissions on the planet, has not signed the document and has said that it is not going to accept the protocol during the conference in Copenhagen.
*Translated by Mark Ament
