中国气候变化信息网 China Climate Change Info-Net

（2013-11-13）The Warsaw climate meet may have had a dramatic start with a Philippines envoy announcing a fast until a meaningful outcome to negotiations, but there's no sign of progress towards any agreement with some industrialised countries even backing out of their earlier commitments. 

The Philippines climate change commissioner Yeb Sano's announcement of fasting to push the global community towards decisive action to tackle climate change, after super typhoon Haiyan killed thousands of people in his homeland, got the attention of youth and civil society organisations, but official negotiators seemed unmoved. 

Countries such as Japan, Australia, Canada and Russia are doing less than what they had promised to do under the Kyoto Protocol — the legally binding agreement setting out emission reduction targets for industrialised countries to be met by 2020. 

Japan and Australia will miss their Kyoto targets while Canada and Russia have abandoned the agreement. UN climate chief Christiana Figueres set the tone of the summit in right earnest, pushing countries to do more to reduce emissions in the period up to 2020. 

"We must win the Warsaw opportunity. We must stay focused, exert maximum effort for the full time and produce a positive result, because what happens in this stadium is not a game," she said at the opening session of the Warsaw round of negotiations. 

"We must deliver an effective path to pre-2020 ambition, and develop further clarity for elements of the new agreement that will shape the post-2020 global climate, economic and development agendas," Figueres added. 

But all that looks tough as both developed and developing countries look preoccupied with their immediate economic and social challenges. Japan, which earlier pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, has announced a new target of reducing emissions by 3.8 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020. 

In real terms, this target represents a 3 per cent increase in emissions from 1990 levels. Tokyo, which refused to sign on to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, cites its reduced reliance on nuclear power following the 2011 Fukusima crisis for changing the goalpost. 

The European Union is set to exceed the target of 20 per cent reduction it set for the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol.