Climate talks end with diplomats looking to Obama for leadership

John Vidal in Bangkok
guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 October 2009 22.21 BST
Global climate change talks came to an end in Bangkok todayin an atmosphere of distrust and recrimination, with the rift between rich and poor countries seemingly wider than ever. After two weeks of negotiations there have been no breakthroughs on big issues such as money or emissions cuts.
With five days of negotiating time left before the concluding talks in Copenhagen in December, delegates said it appeared a weak deal was the most likely outcome, and no deal at all was a possibility.
Barack Obama's expected visit to Oslo to receive the Nobel peace prize in the middle of the climate talks raised hopes that he would make the short journey to Copenhagen to galvanise governments.
"World leadership is now vital if the talks are not to fail completely. It is inconceivable that Obama could now ignore the climate change talks," said one diplomat. The Nobel citation specifically mentions the president's role in the US "now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting".
China, India, Brazil and other developing countries lined up with environment and development groups to condemn both the US and EU for demanding a brand-new climate agreement rather than staying within the Kyoto protocol framework.
"It's irresponsible to even contemplate the idea of discarding the Kyoto protocol. It's the lifeblood of any future agreement. It is the only legally binding agreement that gives the certainty of moving rapidly to addressing the climate concerns of billions of people," said Di-Aping Lumumba, Sudanese chair of the G77, a group of 130 developing countries.
But the EU and UN brushed off concerns. "We are not killing Kyoto," said Anders Turesson, chair of the EU working group in the negotiations. "This is trying to build something bigger and better than Kyoto." But environment and development groups accused the EU and US of holding poor countries to ransom.
"The rift between rich and poor has intensified because rich countries have not put serious money on the table to help poor countries adapt to escalating impacts of climate change," said Oxfam's senior climate adviser, Antonio Hill. "The US has been silent on the scale of finance it will commit to."
Separately, the EU was forced into an embarrassing climbdown on forest protection. One of its negotiators adopted a position with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea to strike a passage from the proposed agreement intended to protect forests. This led to accusations that the EU had been influenced by lobbyists from the logging industry.
At a press conference a spokesman for the Swedish EU presidency admitted there had been "an unfortunate mishap … the EU has not changed its position. It is unfortunate. The poor negotiator has been slapped in his face."