“As parliamentarians, we all have great expectations for this Conference”, said EP Vice-President and delegation chair Alejo Vidal-Quadras (EPP-ED, ES), “and – although we do not participate in the talks directly – we lay great stake in getting an ambitious outcome from the talks.” After all, he added, “as members of the Parliament, we will be legislating in the years to come on decisions reached at Bali.” One of the main challenges before negotiators, he noted, is to find ways of ensuring that developing countries contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “For this,” he argued, “positive incentives – such as participation in a global carbon market and technology transfer – are necessary”.
The ball is in America’s court
“We have now reached the defining stage of the negotiations: we are moving from technical issues to key political talks”, said Guido Sacconi (PES, IT), Chair of the EP’s Temporary Committee on Climate Change. “Although, from my perspective, the latest draft of the final Bali text is acceptable, I must make the following clear: we must avoid the risk of seeing this text being watered down. To ensure that future negotiations are efficiently organised, we must also avoid a text that is open to multiple interpretations. What we expect, therefore, is a clear, watertight framework for negotiations – a framework that explicitly identifies deadlines, benchmarks, as well as those responsible for implementing them.”
“We have always stressed that industrialised countries must lead by example – it is they, therefore, who now hold the keys to success at Bali. We expect, at the very least, for the industrialised world to agree to ambitious targets on emissions reductions. For the time being, the European Union, having agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020, has done its part. At this point in the negotiations the world’s eyes are fixed on the United States; the world expects real, quantifiable commitments, not rhetoric. The ball, today, is in America’s court.”
Incentives needed for global energy markets and to tackle deforestation
Karl Heinz Florenz (EPP-ED, DE) – the rapporteur on climate change, who spoke on behalf of the EP delegation at a round-table of international parliamentarians – stressed the idea of developing global carbon trading markets, highlighting, at the same time, the importance of technology transfer. The key challenge, he said, “is for the EU to offer other countries – such as China, India and the developing world – proper incentives to implement their own carbon-trading systems. We have to provide them with the technology and the know-how. The question is how we can activate the financing for this – and that, unfortunately, is an open-ended question.” Europe, he stressed, “has to be a forerunner in this area in order to earn the respect and the confidence of the developing world.”
Mr Florenz also highlighted the importance of fighting deforestation. Speaking to a group of Indonesian parliamentarians, he said: “If we want you to keep your forests, we have to compensate you”. Noting the low (11) number of Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs - a system allowing industrialised countries to invest in carbon emission reductions in developing countries as an equivalent to more expensive emission reductions in their own countries) in Indonesia, he also added: “We, and the industrialised world as a whole, need to provide countries like Indonesia with more support in developing additional CDMs”.
