PLEA Network

10 May 2018, Climate Home News, Eyes on ministers to intervene as UN climate talks get mired in old battles. Ministers from the EU and China must intervene to rescue talks on putting the Paris climate pact into action, a top EU negotiator said on Thursday. Delegates at a meeting in Bonn, which closes on Thursday evening, accused China and other emerging economies of reopening divisions between rich and poor countries – while wealthy countries refused to meet demands on climate finance. Elina Bardram, head of the EU delegation, said attempts to write different rules for rich and poor countries into the Paris Agreement were a “recurring theme”. Climate ministers from the EU and China are set to meet at least twice this year in the lead up to a major summit in Katowice, Poland in December – billed as the most important since the Paris deal was struck. Bardram said their high-level political intervention was needed to resolve the issue. Fights over differing responsibilities and money mean the past fortnight has seen stuttering progress on writing the rulebook that will govern the accord. Extra talks have been scheduled in Bangkok in September. Governments are straining to finalise the rules at the Katowice talks. Report: Extra climate talks scheduled amid Bonn stalemate Climate Home News found Gebru Jember Endalew, an Ethiopian who leads the bloc of least developed countries, in the cafeteria, while upstairs representatives of nearly 200 countries debated how to unbind the stalemate. After two weeks of talks, the level of progress was “not something to be proud of”, he said. UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa called progress “satisfactory… but we have to be very, very clear that we have a lot of work in the months ahead”. The co-chairs overseeing the negotiations on the rulebook are set to leave Bonn with formidable homework: to whittle down hundreds of pages of informal notes to something countries can debate in the Thai capital.Read more here