Yvo de Boer, the UN's top climate change official, has expressed optimism that a binding international climate change treaty can be agreed later this year at the Mexico summit, arguing that the agreement brokered in Copenhagen last month has given countries "all the ingredients" they need to reach a deal.
Speaking in an online press conference this afternoon, de Boer admitted the Copenhagen summit had not resulted in the ambitious deal hoped for by many, but insisted a binding international treaty to deliver deep cuts in carbon emissions could still be delivered.
"Copenhagen did not produce the final cake, but it left countries with all the right ingredients to a bake a new one in Mexico," he said, adding that "if countries follow Copenhagen's outcomes clearly with their eyes firmly fixed on the advantages of global action, then we can finish the job."
De Boer said he had written to representatives of all countries to ask if they wished to support the Copenhagen Accord, which was controversially agreed between the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa in the frantic final hours of the Copenhagen summit.
He said that he had issued a deadline for countries to signal their support for the Accord and submit carbon targets and action plans for use in the document by the end of this month. However, he insisted that it was a "soft deadline", adding that the Copenhagen Accord would become a "living document" that nations could endorse over the course of the year.
De Boer's comments came as the UN confirmed that Australia, France and Canada had become the latest countries to confirm they would accept the accord, taking the number of nations that will definitely sign up to 14. Only Cuba has so far told the UN it will definitely reject the Accord.
De Boer also sought to play down concerns among developing countries that the Copenhagen Accord could sideline the ongoing UN-backed process, arguing that it instead represented an important political agreement between countries accounting for about 80 per cent of global carbon emissions that would help inform the wider negotiations.
He added that the negotiations had now entered a "cooling-off period" ahead of the next UN meeting in Bonn in late May/early June.
However, he also revealed that several countries had called for an " intensified negotiating schedule" that could see an additional meeting hosted ahead of the Bonn event and a series of further meetings scheduled in the build-up to the COP 16 summit in Mexico in December.
De Boer's comments were echoed by Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who told the third World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi that agreement could still be reached in Mexico.
"Mexico could produce a binding agreement but there are critical factors that need superhuman efforts," he said. "We need leadership from several countries of the world. There should be no bickering after a feeling of dismay after Copenhagen."
However, the need for a "cooling-off period" was dramatically underlined today when India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh launched a blistering attack on the "hypocritical" stance of rich nations at the Copenhagen summit.
In an exclusive interview with Channel 4 news to be broadcast this evening, Ramesh accused industrialised nations of bullying poorer countries to cut their carbon emissions while making few commitments themselves to tackle climate change.
Reserving much of his ire for the British energy and climate change secretary, Ramesh expressed his anger at what he regards as the "constant preaching from Ed Miliband" about China and India's carbon emissions.
"I can tell you that Ed Miliband’s carbon footprint is probably 20 times my carbon footprint," he added, arguing that rich nations were "in denial" about the need to change lifestyles to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
"Indian emissions are survival emissions," he said. "In the West they are lifestyle emissions, so I would tell my environmentalist friends to change their lifestyles before they preach to us as to what our development strategy should be."
He added that India was "very aggressively" committed to curbing its carbon emissions, but would not accept binding emission targets until industrialised nations show significantly more ambition.
Ramesh's comments come ahead of a meeting next week of India, China, Brazil and South Africa intended to co-ordinate their position ahead of the deadline for the publication of commitments under the Copenhagen Accord.
In a further blow to the next round of negotiations, he downplayed the chances of a binding agreement being reached this year. "These are very difficult issues – because the Western countries don't want to compromise on lifestyle and we cannot compromise on our developmental priorities," he said. " So I don't see how we break out of this logjam."
India's stance will further add to the pessimism surrounding the negotiations after the Obama administration's chances of passing climate change legislation this year were dealt a blow by the loss yesterday of the Democrats' filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
De Boer attempted to downplay the implications of any possible delay to US carbon legislation, arguing that president Obama should be judged by his commitment to world leaders at Copenhagen that the US would cut emissions 17 per cent by 2020 and deliver significantly deeper cuts by 2030.
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