Copenhagen: 200 days and counting

With just 200 days to go to the opening of the UN's crucial climate change meeting in Copenhagen, the team in charge of the long-running talks to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol yesterday released the first "real negotiating text" that is expected to provide a basis for the eventual treaty.

The 53 page document was made available online yesterday and follows the release on Friday of two further documents detailing new medium-term emission targets for industrialised countries and proposals to reform UN-backed carbon trading mechanisms to include forestry and land use projects.

Together the three documents will form the basis for negotiations at the latest round of UN-backed negotiations in Bonn, Germany next month.

Yvo de Boer, the UN's top climate change official, hailed the new document as an important milestone on the road to agreeing a new international deal. "It's the first time real negotiating text will be on the table which can serve as a basis for governments to start drafting a Copenhagen-agreed outcome," he said.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, a UN spokesman said that together the three new documents "cover all the bases", including proposals for long-term and short-term goals, detailed options on how to finance clean technologies and adaptation frameworks, proposals for how developing economies should be incorporated into the final framework, and ideas on how emission reductions will be verified and enforced.

The Bonn talks, which begin on 1 June, are expected to focus on the mechanisms that will underpin any final treaty, such as the expansion of the carbon market, and increased support for forestry schemes and adaptation measures.

However, officials are resigned to the fact that more contentious issues, such as agreeing carbon emission targets and climate change funding for developing nations, will once again be kicked into the long grass and are unlikely to be agreed much before the Copenhagen talks.

The latest texts from the UN propose that industrialised nations agree to a halving of carbon emissions on 1990 levels by 2018-2020. But the target is likely to face considerable opposition from developed nations, not least from the US, which under the Obama administration has signalled it is willing to agree to cuts, but at a significantly lower level than that proposed by the UN.

However, De Boer said he remained optimistic that a meaningful deal would be agreed by the end of the year.

"Within the talks, we have an almost complete list of industrialised nations' pledges to cut emissions after 2012, so governments can see now more clearly where they are in comparison to each other, and can build a higher ambition on that basis," he said. "Meanwhile, the US has committed to a Copenhagen agreement and a clean energy future. Industrialised countries are giving developing nations due credit for the climate change strategies they already have in place... With only 200 days before Copenhagen, time gets tighter, but the world is not standing still on climate change."

De Boer's optimism would have been further reinforced today by reports that China is working on a long-term plan for tackling climate change focused on enhancing energy efficiency, expanding forests and investing in clean coal technology.

Xie Zhenhua, a top-ranking climate change official within the Chinese government, told the Xinhua news agency that the country's " determination to deal with climate change will not falter" as a result of the economic downturn, adding that the new plan would strengthen China's "capacity to enforce international covenants".