Climate talks break up with no agreement on carbon trading

The UN climate talks in Madrid ended in stalemate on Sunday, with the negotiations running two days over time as countries squabbled over rules for a new global carbon trading market.

The talks, known as COP25, ran for 14 days and set a record for the longest-ever climate negotiations, but failed to produce any agreement on trading in carbon credits.

This year global carbon dioxide emissions rose to record levels, millions of students marched in climate protests and leading economies adopted new net zero emissions targets. But none of that translated into measurable results at the negotiations.

Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said the outcome was “totally unacceptable”.

“It is not adequate to just come back next year and say you are going to do more,” she said. “Governments need to completely rethink how they do this.”

The failure of COP25 to agree on the carbon market rules will complicate the task facing the UK, which takes over the presidency of the next UN climate talks in Glasgow next year.

Geopolitical tension and the low profile of the US and China, the world’s two biggest emitters, severely handicapped the negotiations, which descended into open bickering on the plenary floor in the final hours. Delegates appeared to be exhausted after all-night negotiating sessions on Friday night and Saturday night as negotiators raced to salvage a deal.

The Paris climate accord, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2C, has been signed by 197 countries.

But the agreement operates only by consensus and the original 2015 deal left many details to be worked out in future climate summits — a task that has been made much more complicated by fraying multilateralism and US opposition to the climate deal.

The US is in the process of withdrawing from the Paris accord on the instructions of President Donald Trump, and this year is the last it will participate as a signatory.

The withdrawal of the US, and efforts by Brazil and Australia to water down the outcome, all helped lead to a result that many countries said was dismaying.

António Guterres, UN secretary-general, said he was disappointed with the result of the COP25 talks. “The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis,” he said.

Farhana Yamin, an activist with Extinction Rebellion and former climate negotiator, said the Madrid talks had been a “setback”.

“The world is seeing how difficult it is to get countries to self-agree on something they don’t want to agree on,” she said. “It is not the failure of the agreement itself, it is the failure in many countries, reflecting a return to the climate denial agenda.”



The EU delegation also said it was disappointed that the meetings failed to find agreement on carbon markets.

“This COP did not deliver all we came here for,” the EU said in its final statement, adding that it was “deeply concerned” that countries’ existing climate targets were far off track from what was needed to achieve the goals of the Paris accord.

As the UK prepares to take charge of next year’s climate talks, its handling of the summit is poised to be one of the biggest diplomatic initiatives for Boris Johnson, prime minister, after Brexit, which is scheduled for the end of January.

As president of the Glasgow talks, the UK’s job will be to rally more countries to adopt new climate targets for the middle of the century and to pick up the pieces on carbon markets.

Claire Perry O’Neill, the UK-appointed president of next year’s talks, said she welcomed the challenge of sorting out the carbon markets issue.

“No deal is definitely better than the bad deal proposed,” she said, referring to the carbon markets framework discussion. “We will pull no punches next year in getting clarity and certainty for natural carbon markets.”