The group of developing countries, which includes China and India, slammed the effort by U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and European negotiators for countries to conduct the reviews of their climate initiatives more often.
The United States, the European Union and the U.K. drew a sharp rebuke on Thursday from developing countries who accused them of trying to shift the burden for fighting greenhouse gases under a plan calling for nations to more frequently report whether they were on track to meet their Paris climate agreement goals. The group of developing countries, which includes China and India, slammed the effort by U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and European negotiators for countries to conduct the reviews of their climate initiatives more often, saying that the rich world had pumped most of the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that was causing the changes in the climate. “We need to fight the war against this carbon colonialism, which is very risky for our countries and is completely ignoring that there are historical responsibilities,” said Bolivian chief negotiator Diego Pacheco Balanza, who chairs the 22-member „like-minded“ countries group that includes India, China, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. The issue has emerged as one of the most contentious in the talks among the nearly 200 governments that are aiming to finalize many of the rules laid out under the 2015 Paris agreement to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. Critics say that the policies being implemented by the largest greenhouse gas polluters are falling short of that goal, and are well off the pace of what’s needed to meet the Paris agreement’s stretch target of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Kerry has pushed countries to revisit their plans and take stock of their emissions frequently to determine whether they were on track for those goals. „It just behooves us — in order to convey to people the seriousness of purpose — to try to revisit this as much as we can,“ Kerry said at a press conference last week. „I hope we come up with a very short framework.“ But the call has incensed developing nations, and the group proposed ditching the whole section of a draft text for a pending Glasgow agreement regarding countries‘ efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet.
