With 192 Parties, the UNFCCC has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
Under the Kyoto Protocol which has 178 member Parties, 37 states, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments, as they have been recognized as the major emitters of green house gases (GHG), throughout the last two centuries of industrialization process.
Developing countries hold that the industrialized countries should continue to take on the main responsibility for climate change mitigation by being committed to further cut on GHG during the next phrase for Kyoto Protocol. One suggestion is that the rich group cut GHG emissions by at least 25 percent to 40 percent from the level of 1990 in the next commitment period of 10 to 15 years.
Meanwhile the rich countries are calling for capping emissions in the developing world, especially emerging economies and growing emitters like China and India.
It is unfair to charge the same on the developing countries, where poverty eradication is still the top priority, as on the developed countries when the latter still emit GHGs per capita three or four times that of the former, China's Special Representative on Climate Change Talks Yu Qingtai told Xinhua on Monday.
Aside from committing themselves to further and deeper cut on emissions, the industrialized countries are obliged to transfer more technologies needed for mitigation and adaptation efforts at affordable price to developing countries, and setting up more aid fund to finance the world's poorer members' efforts.
However, little progress has been made in those two areas due to the reluctance of rich countries, both from the government side and the private sector and big industries' side.
It is impossible for the developing countries to discuss cutting emissions of their own without knowing where the money needed will come from, acknowledged De Boer.
"For me, the most important issue in the negotiations toward a global agreement is how much the individual industrialized countries are willing to reduce their emissions," said De Boer at a press briefing after the opening.
(Xinhua News Agency April 1, 2008)
