Norway ups Copenhagen stakes with 40 per cent pledge

Norway yesterday became the first country to pledge to cut carbon emissions in line with climate scientists' most demanding recommendations, committing to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 40 per cent on their 1990 level by 2020.

Prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, who was re-elected last month, said the government was prepared to meet demands from developing nations for the rich world to take the lead in tackling climate change and would upgrade its existing 30 per cent target to 40 per cent.

In a statement he said that one of the main objectives of the new pledge was to help reinvigorate talks ahead of December's Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which have stalled with rich nations reluctant to meet demands from developing countries for ambitious emissions cuts of at least 40 per cent by 2020.

Norway's pledge means that industrialised countries have committed to combined emission cuts of between 13 and 21 per cent by 2020, although that falls to between 11 and 18 per cent if the cuts included in the US climate bill being considered by the Senate are included.

However, with no other rich nations currently indicating that they too will upgrade their targets, industrialised countries remain well short of the 25 to 40 per cent targets recommended by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Norway's new target, coupled with Japan's recent pledge to upgrade its 2020 emissions target to a 25 per cent cut on 1990 levels, offer one of the few bright spots from the past week's talks in Bangkok, where negotiations have been marred by a row between the US and the G77 group of developing countries over emissions targets.

The row continued to bubble away for a second day after the US yesterday said it would not sign up to any deal based on the Kyoto Protocol and called for a complete reworking of the draft Copenhagen Treaty based on countries setting their own emissions targets.

Chinese officials responded by saying Kyoto was non-negotiable, while poorer nations and green NGOs all rushed to accuse the US of hijacking the negotiating process and jeopardising the chances of an agreement.