Obama Climate Pledge "Very Positive" - UN Official
ALGERIA: November 20, 2008
ALGIERS - Barack Obama's pledge to work to reduce emissions sharply by 2020
is a "huge signal" of encouragement to countries negotiating a new climate
pact, the head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat said on Wednesday.
The US president-elect said on Tuesday the United States would engage
vigorously in climate change talks when he is president, and he pledged to
work to reduce emissions sharply by 2020, despite the financial crisis.
"I think that will have a very positive influence on the negotiations," Yvo
de Boer, who heads the Secretariat, told Reuters in Algeria. "He indicated
that he intends to show national and international leadership.
"I think that that statement will be seen as a huge signal of encouragement
to the international community," he said in an interview on the sidelines of
an African environment conference.
"A CHALLENGE, BUT DOABLE"
De Boer said US emissions of greenhouse gases stood at 14 percent above
their 1990 levels but it was possible to get volumes down to that target
within the deadline. He said: "I think its feasible. It's a challenge, but
it's doable."
European nations have pushed the United States for years to show more
leadership on climate change so that China and India, developing nations
whose emissions are outpacing the developed world's, will follow suit.
The Democratic president-elect, who regularly criticised the Bush
administration's attitude toward global warming, said his government would
set strong annual targets that set the country on a course to reduce
emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and cut them by a further 80 percent
by 2050.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, 37 developed nations have agreed to cut emissions
by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.
Members hope to finalise a new accord to follow Kyoto at a summit in
Copenhagen in late 2009, but pressure for poor countries, who made no Kyoto
commitments, to sign up to cuts is fuelling tensions between rich and poor
groupings in the talks.
Poverty in Africa, where nearly three quarters of people rely on
agriculture, means it is the part of the world least able to adapt to the
severe weather changes forecast to be triggered by global warming, experts
say.
"We really need to use the Copenhagen opportunity to design a regime that is
more Africa-friendly," de Boer said.
"African nations have actually been quite modest in the negotiations so far.
This meeting in Algeria provides an opportunity for 53 African countries to
really develop a collective position and that will give them important
negotiating strength in the process," de Boer said.
Asked if Obama's apparent sensitivity to climate questions and his own
part-African heritage would help strengthen African involvement in the
climate talks, de Boer replied: "I think you should ask Senator Obama this
question. He's made it very clear he's first and foremost an American. But
let's see how he develops his international policy."
(Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Story by William Maclean
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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