By Nina Chestney
Bonn - United Nations talks have moved backward rather than forward toward a hoped-for deal later this year as nations make slow progress on pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions and add more proposals to the working document.
As talks in Bonn on a new climate treaty draw to an end on Friday, there is still a lot of work to be done at remaining meetings in Tianjin, China and Mexico at the end of the year.
"I came to Bonn hopeful of a deal in Cancun, but at this point I am very concerned as I have seen some countries walking back from progress made in Copenhagen," said Jonathan Pershing, the US deputy special climate envoy.
A new climate text under discussion has increased to 34 pages from 17 as new proposals are added or old ones reinserted.
The blueprint contains a set of draft decisions for final UN talks in Cancun, Mexico in November, including the impact of agriculture on emissions, carbon market mechanisms and the mechanics and impact of moving to a low-emissions future.
The European Union's co-lead negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, accused some countries of adding text in a "tit for tat" way and said: "It is important in Tianjin to turn that spirit around."
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said the text would not be allowed to grow further and that some progress had been made towards deciding on the shape of a future deal.
"If you see the bigger picture, we have progress here in Bonn. It is hard to cook a meal without a pot, and governments are much closer to actually making the pot," she said.
But the Climate Action Network, a coalition of about 500 non-profit organisations, said heads of state need to give their representatives clearer direction to concentrate on areas where they can find convergence to make real progress in Cancun.
The pace of negotiations has slowed as some countries have gone back on issues agreed last year in Copenhagen such as monitoring and measuring greenhouse gas emissions and ways of cutting emissions from rich nations and developing countries.
"The mitigation discussion even went backwards and became more polarised," said Gordon Shepherd at campaign group WWF.
Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) was also reopened over the definition of what it covered.
The Alliance of Small Island States complained rich nations' pledges to cut emissions fell short of what was needed.
"We cannot anticipate any major shift from what we had in Copenhagen, which was a 12 to 18 percent reduction when the IPCC called for 25 percent. We are far from that in the aggregate figures," said the group's chair, Dessima Williams.
The US said the talks focused too much on putting the onus only on rich nations to deliver cuts, rather than all countries.
Climate finance is also an area of disagreement. The Copenhagen Accord last December set a long-term goal of raising $100-billion a year by 2020 to avert the effects of climate change and a short-term goal of $10-billion a year by 2012.
The architecture of that finance is far from defined and Pershing said some countries were seeking "staggering sums out of line with reality".
Another setback to the talks arose from the lack of legislation to curb emissions in the United States.
The US Senate dropped efforts to put emissions curbs in an energy bill that is now focused narrowly on reforming offshore drilling, but the country has said it will stick by its 2020 target for reducing emissions.
"It has been taken as a signal by some that the process should be slowed or we should wait for the US," Williams said. - Reuters