The European Union will press for ambitious reporting and monitoring of nations' pledged cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions, a lead EU negotiator told Dow Jones Newswires this week.
The European Union will press for ambitious reporting and monitoring of nations' pledged cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions, a lead EU negotiator told Dow Jones Newswires this week.

While the 27-nation bloc, like others, has damped expectations for achieving a binding global climate change treaty this year at an international summit in Copenhagen , it wants to work toward a more ambitious verification framework than the Kyoto protocol contains.

That issue presents a potential stumbling block for the negotiations. Yet the EU maintains that any deal to minimize man's effect on global climate change must include a strong mechanism to monitor and report on progress, said Artur Runge-Metzger, one of the EU's lead negotiators, in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires.

"Even out of Copenhagen you need to have something that tells you: OK, how are you going to monitor and report," Runge-Metzger said. Some technical details might need to be negotiated next year, but "in terms of the principles, it should be pretty clear that all of this is part of a deal in Copenhagen ," he said.

Runge-Metzger still expects Copenhagen will deliver a "substantive agreement," which should contain a clause committing the parties to transposing the deal into a binding legal agreement during 2010.

Almost 200 countries will meet Dec. 7-18 to negotiate how to limit global warming and fight climate change by containing carbon dioxide emissions.

The EU aims to steer the Copenhagen talks toward "real action" in a binding treaty.

"That means real money on the table, and it also means real commitments in terms of emission reductions from industrialized countries and real action from developing countries," Runge-Metzger said.

The EU committed last year to cut its own emissions by 20% of 1990 levels by 2020. It is willing to raise that target to 30%, should other countries agree to do their part.

But expectations for the Copenhagen summit's likely success flagged this month. A meeting of leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, including U.S. President Barack Obama, dropped plans to reach a binding agreement in Copenhagen and instead pledged what they called a "political framework" for future negotiations.

The EU, however, continued calling for concrete commitments from major polluters.

"Everybody wants to see emission-reduction numbers from developed countries; everybody wants to see major developing countries take action and put that into an accord," Runge-Metzger said Wednesday.

Soon after the EU negotiators' comments this week, the world's two biggest carbon dioxide emitters announced measures that have inspired new confidence that a meaningful climate change deal can be struck.

Wednesday, the U.S. said Obama will attend the summit to pledge that his country will cut greenhouse-gas emissions 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050.

Thursday, China said it would aim to cut its "carbon intensity"--the amount of greenhouse gas it emits per unit of gross domestic product --by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2020.

The U.S. and Chinese proposals include some positive elements, although their targets will disappoint some observers, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a joint statement with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. "We hope that both the Chinese and U.S. indications represent the first steps towards steeper reductions," they said.

On a global level, the proposals taking shape would commit rich countries to CO2-emissions cuts by a specific year in the future, usually 2020. They also would make money available to help poorer nations fight the impacts of climate change and reduce the projected growth of their emissions. At the same time, developing countries would commit to specific actions so they would reduce their emissions growth.

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