Poznan triggers the countdown to to save the climate

The climate conference in Poznan UN (1-December 12) should start, despite the economic crisis, the countdown to a new agreement to fight against global warming that should lead late in 2009 in Copenhagen. Despite the absence of the new team Obama, the better prepared than the outgoing U.S. administration, Poznan must activate the negotiation of the future agreement, while global emissions of greenhouse gases have never been so high. Those in developing countries now totals more than half of global emissions and China has become the first global polluter. Last year in Bali, the States Parties to the UN Convention against Climate Change (UNFCCC) have promised to complete the new agreement by December 2009 - the time required for ratification - even if the date seems really hard to take. "Poznan conference is a step between Bali and Copenhagen, but not without challenge if stumbles this year, we will have no chance next year," warns European negotiator. Since the entry into force of Kyoto in 2005, the negotiation climate is played briefly on two rails, the Framework Convention of the UN Climate Change (UNFCCC, 192 countries) and the Kyoto Protocol. To date, only 37 countries industrialized Kyoto signatories are subject to binding targets to reduce their emissions until 2012, which led the United States to reject the treaty. The new agreement will have to decide on a survival of Kyoto, modified and extended to emerging countries, or the placing into orbit of a "Copenhagen Protocol" includes all the world and allowing the United States to start from scratch. Among the major rendezvous of the Polish fortnight, which will join last year as the UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon and the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, a table Round of Environment Ministers on 11 and Dec. 12 will exchange views on a "shared vision" long-term fight against climate change. This vision for 2050 should reflect the ambitions of everyone in reducing emissions and the climate. According to scientists, emissions from industrialized countries, which have taken off since 2000, should stop growing by 2015 and then decline drastically by 2050 to maintain a manageable climate. But the large emerging countries like China and India are also expected to keep inflation under control of their pollution. "Developing countries are likely to emphasize that we are ready to let go," the representative of an industrialized country. "But we will point they pollute as much as we do now." "China and Burkina Faso, it is still not the same situation," he insists. Africa has also Nov. 20 in Algiers to adopt a common position to defend its own interests. The skipper of the UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer, does not expect the announcement in Poznan numerical reduction ranges from one or the other, but "Strive for a breakthrough": "I hope the roundtable we give a course of policy clearer, "he told AFP. "It is clear to everyone that it can not continue like this," a Western diplomat analysis. "So far we have multiplied the options on the table, the next step will be to limit them. Otherwise we will arrive with 1,000 pages in Copenhagen. And we will not agree."