'Too soon' to set binding NZ target

Tim Groser says New Zealand would not be pressured into setting a binding greenhouse gas target. Photo / Paul Estcourt

The New Zealand delegation is likely to leave Copenhagen without setting a binding greenhouse gas target.

Negotiating minister Tim Groser, speaking as he prepared for the second week of talks on combating climate change, said it was unlikely New Zealand would be asked to put a final number for cutting greenhouse gas emissions on the table and would not be pressured by other countries to do so.

No target would be settled until the rules relating to forestry and other carbon offsets were settled - a process that might not be finished this week.

Mr Groser joined a chorus of disapproval by industrialised countries against an official draft negotiating text that was tabled last week for failing to put binding limits on China, saying there was "no way" rich countries could commit on that basis.

"What is more, I don't really in my heart believe that [a voluntary target regime] is what the Chinese are limited to. I think that there is a basis for an agreement here," said Mr Groser, the Minister of Climate Change Issues.

There was no point in a treaty that did not bind big developing nations.

A major focus of the negotiations so far has been agreeing how rich countries should help developing countries curb emissions. Last week, the European Union offered to pay €2.4 billion ($4.9 billion) a year until 2012 - about a third of what the UN says is needed to kick-start a fund to help poorer countries to adapt.

The US says China does not need its money and the fund should go to the poorest countries.

This sparked a bristling response from the Chinese. They said rich countries owed a debt for their decades of pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and called on the US to toughen its domestic target.

US climate envoy Todd Stern took umbrage at the "debt" suggestion, saying that for most of the last 200 years industrial countries did not know greenhouse gases caused global warming.

The spat between the world's biggest polluters has epitomised the divide between rich and poor. Both must commit to cuts if the talks are to have any chance at success, and both have been reluctant to be legally bound.

Mr Groser said international assessments showed the best that developed countries could do on their own was limit CO2 in the atmosphere to 750 parts per million, compared with the 450ppm or less scientists say is needed to keeping world warming within 2C. "That (750ppm) is catastrophic levels of global warming."

To address this, a draft voluntary agreement for developing countries suggests changes in the order of 15-30 per cent below "business as usual" by 2020 - meaning China and India could keep increasing emissions as they tried to raise millions of citizens out of poverty but could not pollute as much as they would have.

"It's not like we're putting [out] a target that is brutal," said Mr Groser.

He said there was "every possibility" some industrialised countries would table binding offers by Friday.

The details of rules New Zealand wanted altered were not as important to other countries, he said. Among other things, ministers want to make progress on allowing forest sinks to be cut down and replanted elsewhere without a carbon penalty, as well as another change acknowledging that not all carbon from felled trees goes immediately into the atmosphere - for example if the wood is used for timber.

The Government is relying heavily on forest carbon sinks to meet its target of cutting 1990 emissions in half by 2050 and 10-20 per cent by 2020.

Many developed countries have an unconditional target that they will aim for no matter what other countries agree to, but New Zealand's target of 10-20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 is entirely conditional on getting "satisfactory" rules.

Mr Groser said negotiations were progressing "reasonably satisfactorily" from New Zealand's perspective but the change allowing the moving of forests was opposed by some countries.