Back to basics

Countries participating in the Cancun climate change conference need to "go back to the basics" to rebuild mutual trust for a successful negotiation, Yu Qingtai, China's special representative for climate change negotiations, said on Sunday.

Yu cited the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol as the basic principles for the talks.

"The principles, especially the common but differentiated responsibilities (for developed and developing nations), should serve as the foundation for negotiations. No progress can be achieved if we deviate from such a principle," Yu said on the sidelines of an Expo forum held in Nanjing over the weekend.

Such a principle is key to rebuilding mutual trust among nations, which is the most urgent task for any meaningful results to be achieved from the Cancun conference, he said.

That trust had been "regretfully and seriously" damaged during last year's Copenhagen summit, when a few developed nations failed to live up to their commitments and raised "unreasonable" demands for developing countries which are actually the victims of climate change and should not bear the consequences, Yu said.

Yu also urged developed countries to honor their commitment to provide financial and technological aid to developing nations in the fight against climate change.

Rich nations have pledged almost $30 billion in aid from 2010 to 2012 and up to $100 billion annually by 2020 in the Copenhagen Accord. But so far, there has been no agreement over where the money would be coming from and how it is going to be used.

Yu reiterated the stand that any design and implementation of a climate change policy in China should consider that much of its population is struggling under the poverty line.

Still, the country will spare no effort to adopt proactive measures and achieve the ambitious goal of cutting carbon intensity per unit of GDP by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, a voluntary target set by Chinese authorities last November, he said.

China is "doing a lot internally," said Tariq Banuri, director of the division for sustainable development, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The way for the international community to tide over the current differences is to find out strategies that can benefit everybody and generate agreements, Banuri said.