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By Bloomberg

Envoys at the United Nations climate talks enter their final day in Lima divided on how to put teeth into a deal that the biggest polluters have turned into a package of mostly voluntary measures.

Developing countries led by China and India want to pin down industrial nations on how they’ll meet a pledge for $100 billion a year in climate-related aid by 2020. The U.S. and its allies want to secure a way to ensure that all governments, rich and poor alike, will curb greenhouse gases.

The differing goals underscore how quickly the problem about how to rein in emissions has shifted from an issue aimed mostly at rich polluters into one that needs to be answered by all nations. The approach means the deal that nations are working to seal next December in Paris lacks the protection sought by the poorest and most vulnerable nations.

“This process is slipping between their fingers,” said Yvo de Boer, who was the main UN diplomat shepherding the talks until 2010 and now is director-general of the Global Green Growth Institute in Seoul. “The emissions-reduction commitments are getting weaker. The financial commitments are not what developing countries hoped. The legal rigor has been washed away.”

With fossil-fuel emissions and temperatures hitting record levels, the UN acknowledges that neither this year’s meeting nor the next will prevent the more violent weather and rising seas predicted by scientists. The goal of an agreement next year is to do enough to hold the warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.

Record Levels

Since 1992, envoys have agreed rich countries should move first on emissions and help pay for cuts made by the poor. That left developing nations looking to the U.S., the European Union and Japan for a solution, and cash. Now, as industries emerge within developing countries, the emphasis is changing.

“There’s a third tier of countries that matter a lot to emissions -- Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico,” said Jake Schmidt, who follows the talks for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington. “The question now is, ‘What are they doing?’”

Last month, China, which is classified as developing, agreed to peak its pollution levels by 2030. That drove a wedge between the bloc of developing nations and put attention on the group starting with India where emissions are rising rapidly. Bringing aboard the poorer countries, though, had a price: commitments are now framed as voluntary instead of legally binding.

Action Urged

China will provide more data next year to back up its pledge, its deputy delegation chief, Liu Zhenmin, told reporters yesterday in Lima.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry dropped into the talks yesterday saying all governments must act, and that those who aren’t involved are part of the problem.

“No single country, not even the United States, can solve this problem or foot this bill alone,” Kerry said in a speech. “If even one or two major economies fail to respond to this threat, it will counteract much of the good work.”

Since the last big global agreement on climate in 1997, China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and India became third. China’s announcement transformed the debate, said Nat Keohane, a vice-president at the Environmental Defense Fund, a New York-based advocacy group.

“For a long time, other countries had the excuse: ‘If the U.S. isn’t acting, if China isn’t acting, why do we have to act?’” said Keohane, a former adviser to Obama. Now, he said, “different countries are trying on a different language” and starting to move.

India, Japan

India has indicated it’s working on a pledge, though it also has said its pollution levels must keep rising to fight poverty. Japan has suggested its pledge may come after the deadline at the end of March.

“Everyone knows what countries have been slightly slow on this, but the impact is going to be that they will redouble their efforts, and that’s a good thing,” said U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Davey. “Even those who don’t make the end of the first quarter next year will come out relatively soon afterwards because the pressure is increasing on them.”

That leaves the question of aid unanswered for now. In an effort to reach a climate deal in 2009, industrial nations pledged to boost aid from the $10 billion a year that flowed through 2012 to 10 times that level. Recipients, China among them, say they need clearer signs about how and when that money will flow so that they can manage their spending on climate projects.

Emissions Reductions

Issues that remain sticking points include how to differentiate the pledges of developed and developing nations, the content of those promises and whether they should be reviewed next year, before the Paris deal, Brazilian envoy Antonio Marcondes said.

Delays in giving information about aid and emissions reductions show that major economies risk kicking the problem down the road, said Tony de Brum, foreign minister of the Marshall Islands. The Pacific Ocean nation has already seen 2 percent of its population displaced by rising seas.

“There are still some groups of negotiators here in Lima that appear to want to keep prolonging the process and not dealing with climate change head on,” de Brum said in an interview. “How does a vulnerable atoll country like mine walk up to sign something in Paris that says you’re done for?”