Trade ministers seek to aid UN climate talks

JIMBARAN: Trade ministers seek to open a new front in combating global warming during UN climate talks on Saturday with controversy about how to ease barriers to climate-friendly technologies.

About a dozen trade ministers, including from the United States, Australia, Brazil and Portugal, which holds the European Union presidency, gathered in Bali for two days of meetings to discuss whether more trade will harm or help the environment.

The meeting, on the fringe of 190-nation U.N. climate talks in a nearby beach resort, is the first time annual U.N. climate talks have been widened from environment ministers. Finance ministers will also meet in Bali on Monday and Tuesday. "Intelligent financial engineering is really going to be the key to success," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Secretariat, of a shift away from high polluting fossil fuels.

The talks, behind closed doors, will open at midday (0400 GMT). "This is really the first time that these kinds of meetings are being organised," during U.N. climate meetings, he said of the trade and finance talks, adding they could "have an important impact on the process here."

On Nov 30, the United States and the EU made a proposal to eliminate barriers to trade in clean energy technologies, such as wind turbines or solar panels, as part of the long-running Doha round of world trade talks. But India and Brazil criticised the measures as disguised protectionism to boost exports from rich nations.

Brazil, a big producer of biofuels from sugar cane, noted the proposals did not include biofuels nor biofuels technologies.

The U.N. climate negotiations are trying to launch two years of negotiations on a new climate pact to widen the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol to all nations beyond 2012, including more participation by the United States, China and India. Kyoto now binds 36 developed nations to cut emissions by 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 in a first step to slow what U.N. scientists say will be more droughts, shifts in the ranges of diseases, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

Indonesia, the host, said the first session of the trade talks on Saturday would focus on the links between trade, investment and climate policies for the development of climate friendly technologies and clean energy systems. On Sunday, World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy will look at "what kind of tools and instruments can be applied to maximise linkages between trade and climate policies".

A U.N. report in August projected that net annual investments of $200-$210 billion by 2030 were needed to curb emissions, in cleaner areas such as renewable energies. De Boer said that it was like shifting the course of an "investment supertanker" and needed help from every part of the economy.

Trade issues also include whether sending more goods across borders around the world -- by ship, train, truck or plane -- will help safeguard the environment or merely end up stoking more carbon emissions. Many greens are sceptical. "The meeting of trade ministers here in Bali is a waste of time," said Peter Hardstaff of the World Development Movement. He said that several countries were simply using climate change as a new excuse to seek competitive advantages.