The world’s biggest emitters of global-warming greenhouse gases met behind closed doors on Wednesday for a U.S.-sponsored conference, as protesters pointed up Hawaii’s vulnerability to climate change. The two-day meeting is meant to spur U.N. negotiations for an international climate agreement by 2009 so a pact will be ready when the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, stressed that time was short to come up with a plan and said delegates to the Hawaii meeting need to take the lead. By midday, he said there was “no clear sense of direction yet.”
“Nothing got accomplished yet this morning,” de Boer said in an interview. “This was a first discussion on what is this process supposed to deliver, how can it contribute to broader negotiations.”
He described a change in mood from the first round in September of these U.S.-led talks among major greenhouse polluters, when many participants faulted Washington as isolated for its stand against the Kyoto agreement’s mandatory carbon limits.
A global conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, in December and the “roadmap” it produced made the difference, de Boer said.
“I think people feel a lot more comfortable now given that there was an outcome in Bali establishing the issues that need to be part of both the negotiations and a post-2012 package,” he said.
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