Emerging giants and small islands crank up pressure at Poznan

Developing economies have upped the pressure on the developed world to agree to deeper emission reduction targets at the UN's climate change talks in Poznan, Poland this week, claiming that current proposals from both the EU and US president-elect Barack Obama do not go far enough.

Officials from the both the Chinese and Indian delegations, whose position on the long-running negotiations are widely held to be of critical importance, told Reuters yesterday that they wanted to see the US agree to deeper emission cuts than are currently being considered by Obama's transition team.

Commenting on the president-elect's proposals for a US cap-and-trade scheme that would see carbon emissions cut to 1990 levels by 2020 before falling 80 per cent by 2050, the Chinese delegation's He Jiankun said that while it represented an improvement on the Bush administration's proposals "it is not enough to achieve the urgent, long-term goal of greenhouse gas reductions".

Similarly, Dinesh Patnaik, a director at the Indian Foreign Ministry, told the news agency that Obama's plans are "not ambitious enough considering the Kyoto Protocol targets, but given the eight-year Bush administration it is progress".

The comments are significant as both China and India have long maintained that they will only sign up to long-term emission reduction targets for their growing economies if developed nations such as the US agree to significantly deeper cuts, on the grounds it is these nations that are historically responsible for the vast majority of carbon emissions.

The US, meanwhile, has said it will not sign up to targets that could give the two emerging economic giants a competitive advantage unless they too agree to reasonable targets – a position observers claim is unlikely to change significantly under an Obama administration, despite the president-elect's pledge to take a more constructive role in future climate talks than the Bush White House did.

The comments come as Brazil reportedly put the finishing touches to proposals apparently based on the contraction and convergence principle that would see countries agree to per-capita emission reduction targets.

Under the proposals, emission targets would be set on a per-head-of population basis, meaning that developing economies with low-carbon emissions per capita such as China would face less-demanding targets, while those countries with the highest level of emissions per person would have to deliver the deepest cuts.

The plan has secured tentative support from a number of developed economies as it is seen to offer a fair means of sharing out emission reductions. However, any per-capita scheme will most likely have to be adapted to take account of large countries with relatively small populations, such as Canada and Australia, which have high per-capita emissions as a result of high-carbon transport infrastructures.

Meanwhile, a delegation of 43 small island states yesterday made an impassioned plea for developed economies to sign up to deeper emission cuts than those currently being considered, warning that without more ambitious targets they could be inundated.

In a joint statement the nations warned that the two degree centigrade temperature rise above pre-industrial levels that is now widely seen as inevitable by developed nations, "would have devastating consequences on small island developing states".

They are calling for industrialised nations to agree to cuts of more than 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and more than 95 per cent by 2050.

However, even the most ambitious targets currently on the table – that of a 30 per cent cut by 2030 in the event of other countries agreeing to deep cuts – is still well short of this goal.

Speaking to Reuters, Selwin Hart of Barbados and a co-ordinator of the alliance, hinted that the island states were willing to adopt a tough negotiating position to ensure demanding targets are set.

"We are not prepared to sign a suicide agreement that causes small island states to disappear," he said.