----- forwarded message ------ Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:38:04 +0200 From: secr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Send in the clowns! Bonn climate talks under cloud ----- forwarded message ------ Subject: [gaia-l] Send in the clowns? Bonn climate talks under cloud Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 07:59:40 -0300 From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GERMANY: July 18, 2001 BONN, Germany - The United Nations' travelling climate circus has pitched its tent in Bonn - but this time as talks on the Kyoto global warming pact get under way, the jugglers and the clowns have stayed at home. Last time the 180 or so countries met that adhere to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), stilt walkers and mime artists greeted them at supposedly make-or-break talks in The Hague in November, a bid by the Dutch government to concentrate minds on saving the planet. Tuesday's mood in the old West German capital on the Rhine was considerably less entertaining, with environmental campaigners warning that a now wider gap between Europe and the new US administration of President George W. Bush, which has rejected the pact, may wreck hopes of averting disaster. Hague host Jan Pronk, the Dutch environment minister, wanted to chivvy delegates into settling the details of implementing the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gases, which was originally agreed in the ancient Japanese capital in 1997. Massage booths and vendors of organic sandwiches scattered throughout the venue of The Hague talks added to the festival feel that Pronk hoped would create a mood for compromise. With much of their country lying below sea-level, the Dutch know only too well the dangers that might come if the greenhouse effect of polluting gases melts polar ice and raises the oceans. But their new-age side-shows were not enough to bridge the divide between the two biggest, and most polluting, powers. The talks collapsed in Transatlantic acrimony after two weeks, leading to the resumed session which began in Bonn on Monday. It is due also to run until the end of next week. LITTLE LIGHT RELIEF A no-frills opening speech by Pronk, who continues to chair the extra-time negotiations, brought forward the timetable by a couple of days. It was time to get down to business, he said. That left as the only light relief the odd protester dressed as a polar bear and distributing leaflets warning against shrinking ice-caps or a musician strumming a pedal-powered electric guitar close the house where Beethoven grew up. Unlike the optimistic party atmosphere at the start of proceedings in The Hague, the mood in Bonn is sombre. "There is a huge black cloud over the conference," said Bill Hare of environmental lobby group Greenpeace. The Japanese prime minister has already suggested it may take another round of negotiations, scheduled for the Moroccan city of Marrakesh in October, before any deal might be struck. Delegates gathering in the bland, modern confines of a conference hotel in Bonn's now rather desolate old government quarter do not know if they are negotiating a treaty or marking time until it can be pronounced dead. Despite the uncertainties, professional negotiators worked late into the evening trying to agree some of the detailed rules on how the pact would work in practice - such as compliance regimes and systems for buying and selling rights to pollute. But in the corridors outside the closed meetings, there was a sombre mood among those who have campaigned furiously to avert what they fear could be havoc on the planet, with animals dying out, deserts growing and floods of biblical proportions. "The Hague had the feeling of an event," said one environmental campaigner. "This has the feeling of a non-event." Story by Robin Pomeroy REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
