Delegates at a key UN climate conference moved forward on a plan to encourage developing countries to regulate carbon emissions by focusing on their largest industries. The so-called “sectoral approach” sidesteps objections from countries like India and China, which refuse to accept national targets for the overall emission of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.How to get developing countries to commit to reducing pollution levels has deeply divided countries seeking to craft a new climate change agreement to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.The meeting of 1,600 delegates and environmentalist from 160 countries was the third conference this year working on the accord, due to be adopted in Copenhagen in December 2009.The Accra meeting also was discussing ways to integrate the conservation of the world’s ever-shrinking forests into the Copenhagen agreement, as well as studying ways to raise and distribute the tens of billions of dollars needed annually to help poor countries deal with the consequences of climate change.Under the Kyoto pact, only 37 industrial countries were required to meet specific targets. Together, they were required to cut emissions by an average 5 per cent from 1990 levels by 2012. The United States refused to participate in the Kyoto regime because it excluded China and other large emerging economies from any obligation.Under the approach now taking shape, developing countries would set pollution targets for specific industries, like cement production, steel or aluminum. Unlike the industrial countries, they likely would not be punished for missing their targets.“Something quiet but quite dramatic is happening,” said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “People are now talking about the same idea in the same language.” China and India voiced reservations, but did not reject the concept.“There is now a basis for discussion” on the issue, said Katrin Gutmann, policy coordinator of the WWF Global Climate Initiative. “Before, we worried there would just be more clashes.”Details of any agreement on a sectoral approach would be complex and difficult to reach, and it is only one of many disputed components of an agreement.But consensus appeared to coalesce around the idea that industrial countries will remain legally bound to meet a national cap on their carbon emissions, while developing countries would have flexibility in deciding which industries would be controlled and at what levels.Advanced countries would provide the technology and funding to help other countries curb emissions in heavily polluting industries.Japan, which introduced the proposal earlier this year to a chorus of criticism, said it was pleased with the generally positive response to the modified plan it brought to Accra.
