Bolivia won't support agreement without binding emission cuts

Proposal to curb global temperatures at 2 degrees Celsius "totally inadequate"

Bolivian President Evo Morales is greeted by an activist from La Via Campesina, an international movement of peasants, during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico, Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Bolivia will not support any agreement that does not have legally binding emission cuts, its chief negotiator Pablo Solon told an informal plenary session at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change here.

Bolivia was supported to some extent by Cuba and Venezuela, but this time the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which comprises nations of South America and the Caribbean countries, were not one with it.Mr. Solon told the media before the plenary on Friday that the text of the proposed agreements did not have any commitment on the part of the industrialised countries to the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol. It has confirmed preparations that the next climate change framework will not be under the Kyoto Protocol. “This was the famous anchoring of pledges that has been talked about,” he pointed out.

Mr. Solon said the proposal to curb global temperatures at 2 degrees Celsius was totally inadequate. Emissions from war and weapons, which should have been included as part of global emissions, were not considered.

He said the proposals could open the door to an agreement that would replace the Kyoto Protocol. Even the market mechanism, which Bolivia has been opposing all along, found a place in the drafts. Also, the Green Fund did not specify where the resources would be generated from, he said.

“Dirty war”

However, Bolivia would not veto the proposals or walk out as it had already done once at the ministerial meeting. It was very much part of the U.N. and would continue to be so, Mr. Solon said. This “is a dirty war” and Bolivia was being pushed into a corner.

Mr. Solon said the United States had prepared the Copenhagen text and now its hand was seen in the Cancun texts too.

He criticised several aspects of the texts, which were circulated before the agreements were finalised, including the fact that Intellectual Property Rights (IPS) did not find any mention.

At later meetings too, Mr. Solon repeatedly raised objections to the proposals until he was overruled by Conference of Parties president Patricia Espinosa, who, however, allowed his views to be recorded. Admitting that different views existed, she called for a compromise and a step forward.