Aquino, leaders issue call for carbon pricing

WASHINGTON—A group of world leaders, including Philippine President Aquino, on Monday issued a call for countries around the globe to put a price on carbon to strengthen the international fight against climate change.

As a week of talks on a global climate agreement opened in Bonn, the leaders of the Philippines, Germany, France, Chile, Mexico, and Ethiopia as well as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund called on other nations to back pricing schemes “to steer the global economy toward a low-carbon, productive, competitive future without the dangerous levels of carbon pollution driving warming.”

The group, known as the Carbon Pricing Panel, said in a joint statement that carbon pricing created a basis for private companies “to make long-term investments in climate-smart development.”

So far, the group said, about 40 nations and 23 cities, states and regions have initiated carbon pricing schemes. Without a very wide implementation of such schemes, however, the playing field for investment and trade remains uneven and unfair.

The panel also includes California Gov. Jerry Brown, Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes, and leading companies and financial groups including CalPERS of California, ENGIE of France, Mahindra Group of India, and Royal DSM of the Netherlands.

“Low carbon technologies are an element in the fight against worldwide climate change. With a price for carbon and a global carbon market, we promote investment in these climate friendly technologies,” the statement said.

Turning point

“There has never been a global movement to put a price on carbon at this level and with this degree of unison,” said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.

“It marks a turning point from the debate on the economic systems needed for low carbon growth to the implementation of policies and pricing mechanisms to deliver jobs, clean growth and prosperity,” he said.

The call came as negotiators in Bonn began a final round of talks to map out a global agreement that could be finalized at the 195-nation UN climate conference in Paris on Nov. 30-Dec. 11.

Due to take effect in 2020, the UN climate pact would be the first agreement signed by virtually all the world’s nations.

The overarching goal is to limit average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels—beyond which scientists say the impacts will be disastrous.

Developing nations

In Bonn, developing nations accused rich ones on Monday of sidelining their interests at crunch climate talks, as the UN chief and France’s president beat the drum for an ambitious global deal.

A South Africa negotiator for a developing country bloc complained of “apartheid” treatment at the hands of developed nations at a meeting in Bonn, while UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described the process as “frustrating” and “slow.”

The G-77 group of more than 130 developing nations—including China and India—rejected a slimmed-down, draft agreement crafted for the five-day parlay in the former West German capital.

The text, slashed from 80 to 20 pages by two diplomats guiding the process, left out redline demands on finance and fairness, the group complained.

“When you take out the issues of others, you disenfranchise them, and disempower those who suffer the most,” said South Africa’s climate envoy Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko, who chairs the G-77 group.

This, in turn, is a recipe for “conflict,” she said.

Last chance

The five-day Bonn talks offer is the last chance for official bartering on the wording of the text that nations have agreed to finalize at the UN climate conference in Paris.

But the first day was taken up by reinserting core demands which developing countries said had been excised.

Speaking to journalists in the Slovak capital Bratislava, the head of the United Nations said the talks had been held back by “narrow national perspectives.”

“We don’t have any Plan B because we don’t have any Planet B,” Ban warned.

In Paris, French President Francois Hollande affirmed “there will be a deal” coming out of the Nov. 30-Dec. 11 summit in the French capital.

But Hollande cautioned against a hollow result. “The question is at what level the agreement will be reached, and whether we will be able to revise it regularly,” he said.

Nat’l pledges

A key pillar of the Paris pact will be a roster of national pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 2 degrees C.

Scientists say pledges submitted by more than 150 nations so far place Earth on course for warming closer to 3 degrees C—a world of dangerous sea level rise, superstorms and disease spread.

A key disagreement at the talks concerns a mechanism to regularly review and ramp up country actions so that the 2 degrees C goal is achieved.

The Paris pact, due to take effect in 2020, will be the first climate agreement to include all the world’s nations—crowning more than two decades of fractious negotiations.

‘The world is looking’

Developing nations also complained on Monday that the latest version of the draft text was short of assurances on financial aid.

Rich countries have pledged to cough up $100 billion per year from 2020 to boost carbon reduction efforts and help vulnerable states brace for climate-induced impacts.

The draft that emerges from Bonn will be taken in hand by ministers and heads of state for the hard political compromises required to seal a deal in Paris.

“The whole world is looking at us,” Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar Vidal told negotiators. “The (Paris) agreement must launch the transformation of our economies toward a low carbon and resilient society.”

Negotiators will make a new attempt on Tuesday to tackle the tough job of line-by-line bartering on the contents of the pact.

The global thermometer has already gone up by 0.8 degrees C since the mid-19th century, and US government scientists have said 2015 is likely to overtake 2014 as the hottest year on record. AFP