Formal negotiations on climate change begin in Thailand
Talks to set the agenda for treaty
BANGKOK - Representatives from more than 160 countries began formal negotiations here yesterday on a treaty to mitigate climate change, with the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, urging governments to help in "saving the planet."
The talks, which are scheduled to conclude at the end of 2009, come three months after a rancorous meeting in Indonesia that exposed deep fissures in how countries plan to battle global warming.
"Saving our planet requires you to be ambitious in what you aim and, equally, in how hard you work to reach your goal," Ban told delegates in a prerecorded video message.
No breakthroughs are expected at the weeklong meeting in Bangkok, which is mainly intended to lay out the agenda for a series of subsequent sessions.
"We see this as very much a process-oriented meeting, no negotiations per se on numbers," said Harlan Watson, the negotiator representing the United States at the talks.
One of the main challenges for negotiators over the next 21 months will be reintroducing the United States into a global system of emissions reductions. The United States signed but did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that binds wealthy countries to specific cuts in greenhouse gases.
The new treaty would replace the Kyoto Protocol, although some provisions of the previous treaty would remain.
The November presidential election will come roughly halfway through the negotiations, and many here believe negotiators will defer tough decisions until a new president is inaugurated.
Former vice president Al Gore, a Nobel Prize winner for his environmental advocacy, is due to begin a $300 million advertising campaign to encourage Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse emissions, according to media reports.
