US plans major polluters climate meeting for Washington

The controversial twin-track approach to international climate change negotiations is to continue after the top US climate change negotiator confirmed plans to a host a meeting of major polluters later this month.

Todd Stern told news agency Reuters yesterday that the US would host a meeting in Washington on 18-19 April that will follow hot on the heels of the next UN climate change meeting in Bonn, which starts tomorrow.

Stern insisted the meeting of the Major Economies Forum, which includes 17 countries that together account for about 80 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, would not challenge the primacy of the UN-led negotiations.

However, he said the Washington talks, which are expected to cover issues such as climate financing and emission targets, would aim to find common ground between the world's largest emitters that could help move the UN negotiations forward.

"We will look forward to having a pretty broad discussion about what people's expectations are this year," he told Reuters.

The meeting will still risk angering smaller countries, many of which were left feeling sidelined by the Copenhagen summit, which culminated in a group of just five countries – the US, Brazil, South Africa, China and India – hammering out the Copenhagen Accord that has since been endorsed by more than 110 nations.

Stern said this week's meeting in Bonn will focus on the procedural issues that repeatedly blocked progress at last year's Copenhagen summit, although he refused to be drawn on whether or not the various barriers to delivering a treaty at this year's Mexico summit can be overcome.

"There are fundamentally six big issues at the center of negotiations: mitigation, transparency... financing, technology, forests and adaptation," he said. "It would be a quite desirable outcome to essentially conclude text on all those issues."

Stern's comments came as a senior Chinese official called for greater levels of "mutual trust" between countries as they prepare to kick off this year's round of negotiations.

Speaking at the 2010 Asia News Network Board Meeting in Beijing, Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, reportedly warned that delivering an international treaty remained a "herculean" task.

He added that a deal could only be delivered if countries begin to trust each other's environmental commitments, aiming thinly veiled criticism at US negotiators who angered China at the Copenhagen summit by demanding the formation of an international verification scheme to ensure countries make good on their emission reduction pledges.

"China will unswervingly carry out the sustainable development policy, actively push forward and adapt to climate-friendly developments," Xie said. " In the spirit of rowing together in the same boat, we hope the international community could enhance their mutual trust and beef up the climate co-operation, so as to work out a better planet for future generations."

Stern told Reuters that the US appreciated the commitments that had been made by China, but added that "more needs to be done and we have to see how it goes this year".