UN climate talks ‘lacking urgency’
Lack of urgency in the Durban meeting halls and pressing issues elsewhere threaten to block progress as the UN climate summit enters its final days.
Some delegates said there was no clear process for bridging divides.
Others suggested that the EU summit on Thursday and Friday would see European leaders “thinking of the euro crisis, not the climate crisis”.
Most nations appear to want a strong deal - but the exceptions are some of the world’s most powerful countries.
The US, India, China and Brazil are among those likely to oppose parts of the solution sought by the EU and the majority of developing countries.
As those four together account for nearly half of the world’s emissions, the diplomacy is harder than the mere numbers might indicate.
With two days left to run in the South African city, some experienced delegates said the talks appeared to lack urgency.
By this stage in last year’s meeting, they said, the Mexican hosts had already decided a process to resolve outstanding differences; but that is not the case here.
Final stages of negotiations often involve a few calls between heads of state, who can sometimes break an impasse when their underlings cannot.
But with EU nations desperately searching for a solution to the eurozone crisis at the Brussels summit, delegates questioned whether European leaders would have the time or inclination to make the key calls.