Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 8 • Number 2 • 8th February 2008

US Sponsors Major Carbon Emitters Meeting

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A meeting organised by the US saw continued discussions on future global action to combat climate change, but delivered little in concrete terms.

Gathering in Honolulu, Hawaii, from 30-31 January, the participants represented the world’s major emitters - 17 countries that account for 80 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, namely, the Group of Eight industrialised nations, China, India, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea and the EU. The debate continued on issues raised within the multilateral UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, where all countries agreed in December 2007 to embark on negotiations towards a comprehensive climate agreement by 2009 (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 18 December 2007, http://www.ictsd.org/biores/07-12-18/story1.htm).

“We had a very constructive debate,” said Matthias Machnig of Germany’s Ministry for the Environment. “It’s very important to have an international regime of mandatory targets based under the umbrella of the United Nations and hopefully we made a step forward here to come to real agreement in 2009.”

Prior to the meeting, C. Boyden Gray, the US Ambassador to Brussels, touched on the need for all major emitters to take on climate mitigation commitments in order to avoid unfair trade competition among industries facing different carbon requirements. He said international sectoral initiatives within energy-intensive industrial sectors was a good option, but that if developing countries did not agree to sectoral limits, the US and EU would have no choice but to impose some form of ‘carbon tariffs’ on imports from these countries. The EU recently launched a draft energy and climate package that leaves the door open to the use of controversial border measures to safeguard the competitiveness of its energy-intensive industries (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 25 January 2008, http://www.ictsd.org/biores/08-01-25/story2.htm) and similar measures are envisioned in draft US climate legislation.

“World’s big polluters note change in US climate stance,” REUTERS, 31 January 2008; “U.S. Envoy Says Carbon Offset Tax Inevitable If China, India, Others Do Not Agree to Limits,” WTO REPORTER, 29 January 2008.