As Environmentalists Walk out of UN Talks, Top US Envoy Says No to Reparations for Climate Damage

Negotiations at the U.N. climate summit in Warsaw, Poland, have entered their final scheduled day, but deep divisions remain between rich and poor nations. Negotiators from nearly 200 countries have been meeting for the past two weeks trying to...

November 22, 2013 | Source: Democracy Now! | by

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Negotiations at the U.N. climate summit in Warsaw, Poland, have entered their final scheduled day, but deep divisions remain between rich and poor nations. Negotiators from nearly 200 countries have been meeting for the past two weeks trying to lay the foundation for a new global climate treaty to be agreed at talks scheduled in Paris in two years. On Thursday, more than 800 members of various environmental groups staged an unprecedented walk out of the talks. Questioned by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman hours later, the U.S. special envoy for climate change and lead climate negotiator, Todd Stern, rejected calls for reparations to poor countries damaged by the carbon emissions of the world’s biggest polluters. We discuss the state of the talks with two guests: Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre, and Nitin Sethi, senior assistant editor at The Hindu. Sethi was responsible for leaking U.S. briefing papers on the climate negotiations before the summit began, revealing how U.S. negotiators at the climate talks are opposing efforts to help developing countries adapt to climate change. According to the internal memo, the U.S. delegation is worried the talks in Warsaw will “focus increasingly on blame and liability” and that poor nations will be “seeking redress for climate damages from sea level rise, droughts, powerful storms and other adverse impacts.”