A new round of international negotiations begins tomorrow in Ghana, as
delegates from more than 190 nations try to reach agreement on a
climate change treaty to pick up where the Kyoto Protocol ends in
2012.
This will be the third round of United Nations-led talks this year, and tensions are high following a breakdown of World Trade Orgnaization negotiations three weeks ago in Geneva.
Negotiators have roughly 15 months to reach an agreement before
their self imposed deadline of December 2009, but little headway has
been made to sort out disagreements between industrialized nations and
developing nations, like China, India and Brazil.
The talks in Accra, Ghana will take place from August 21-27, and
the pressure is building for negotiators to move forward, regardless of
uncertainties regarding the United States.
The U.S. is not currently a member of the Kyoto Protocol and has
been reluctant to committ to specific targets for cutting greenhouse
gas emissions. As a result, negotiations have largely been put on hold
until a new (and possibly more agreeable) presidential administration
takes office in January.
However, that leaves very little time to hammer out an agreement
by the end of 2009. As a result, the call is going out for current
Kyoto memebers to begin moving forward on determing details for the new
treaty without the U.S., in the hopes that Barack Obama or John McCain
will bring the U.S. along, once in office.
"While progress has been made, there is no doubt that we need to
move forward quickly," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change
Secretariat, said in a statement.
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