China slams rich nations as leaked draft causes uproar - Summary

Copenhagen - Climate change talks in Copenhagen produced a deep rift between developed and developing nations Tuesday as China accused the world's richest of failing to live up to their commitments - and a Danish draft proposal caused uproar among negotiators. In a rare meeting with the international press, China's chief climate negotiator, Su Wei, said the European Union, the United States and Japan had all tabled far too modest emission cuts.

"Developed countries shoulder a historical responsibility" for climate change and "need to take the lead to reduce their emissions by a large margin," Su said.

Su described the EU's planned reduction of 20 per cent against 1990 levels by 2020 as "not enough", and US President Barack Obama's proposed cuts of around 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020 as "neither notable nor remarkable".

His comments came against the backdrop of a brewing row over a leaked "Copenhagen Agreement" text drafted by the Danish prime minister's office and circulated among a restricted group of delegations attending the UN talks.

The draft, which was published by the Guardian newspaper on its website, states that all parties should "support the goal of a reduction of global annual emissions in 2050 by at least 50 per cent versus 1990 annual emissions."

More controversially, the text envisages a deadline for peak emissions from developing nations.

Moreover, financial support for adaptation to the effects of climate change should prioritize "the poorest and most vulnerable countries", rather than cover big developing nations such as China, India or Brazil.

While not an official text, insiders confirmed its authenticity to the German Press Agency dpa.

According to the Guardian, the text weakens the role of the United Nations in handling climate finance and effectively allows rich nations to continue emitting much more than less developed countries.

Su, for his part, accused rich nations of allowing their emissions to grow and said it would be "unfair to set a peak target for developing countries which are still in the stage of industrialization."

The Danish text was also slammed by environmentalists present in Copenhagen.

"The Danish proposal falls far short of emissions cuts needed, and remains vague on the climate cash," Antonio Hill, Oxfam International Climate Adviser said.

Kim Carstensen of the WWF said the draft was "weak and reflects a too elitist, selective and non-transparent approach."

The UN's climate chief, Yvo de Boer, had earlier warned that greenhouse gas emission cuts pledged so far by the industrial world were "not good enough."

According to the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the cuts envisaged by rich nations would not be sufficient to meet scientists' calls for a global reduction of between 25 and 40 per cent - the range needed to avoid the worst impact of climate change.

While underlying the "very positive and encouraging" start to the conference, which began on Monday, de Boer also urged negotiators from 192 countries present in Copenhagen to work to the full ahead of the arrival next week of environment ministers and some 110 world leaders.

The negotiations remain mired by mutual recriminations and deep divisions over how much each party should do to prevent global average temperatures from rising above the potentially dangerous 2-degree limit.

"I have heard representatives of both Europe and the US say that the target that China has tabled can be improved upon; I have heard representatives from Europe and China say that the target tabled by the US can be improved upon ... and I have heard least developed states say that nobody's targets are good enough at the moment," de Boer said.

"So clearly we are going to have a very intense process of negotiations," he said.

Developed and developing countries are also split over how much money is needed to help poor nations adapt to climate change and mitigate its impact, and on whether existing or new organizations should handle the hundreds of billions of dollars that will be required.

Rich nations say they are prepared to provide poor nations with 10 billion dollars in immediate aid next year.

But "if you divide this sum by the population of the world, it's less than 2 dollars per person," Su said.

"That's not enough to buy a cup of coffee in Copenhagen," the Chinese official said.

Pressure on all parties to reach an ambitious deal was stepped up Tuesday by the publication of two new alarming reports.

One, by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said the current decade was set to become the warmest on record.

Another report from Germanwatch, a pressure group, blamed a rise in "extreme weather events" for the death of 600,000 deaths and massive economic damage over the past two decades.