Q&A: How close is an international treaty to stop climate change?

Editor's note: This story was originally published on Sept. 29. Check here for news from the climate change conference in Lima this week.

LIMA, Peru — With carbon emissions surging and heatwaves, floods, droughts and extreme storms striking across the globe, a new international treaty to halt global warming cannot come quickly enough.

But the United Nations climate talks, critics claim, have become bogged down in bickering as some governments dodge the blame, refuse to slash emissions, and seek to avoid paying to help poorer countries confront the climate crisis.

The next installment of the negotiations will take place here in December as delegations from nearly 200 countries descend on Lima to hammer out a draft agreement to succeed the dated Kyoto Protocol.

It will be the 20th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP), the countries that have signed up to the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The final version of the treaty — on which the future of life on planet Earth could depend — is due to be signed at “COP21” in Paris in December 2015.

Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal. (Adam Berry AFP/Getty Images)

COP20, in Lima, will be chaired by Peru’s environment minister, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, a lawyer with nearly three decades of experience working on environmental issues, including previously heading the SPDA, one of the country’s top green groups.

In recent months, Pulgar-Vidal has been fighting to maintain Peru’s environmental safeguards while also preparing for the biggest test of his career, overseeing the COP — with many worldwide green activists skeptical the process will yield results.

More from GlobalPost: With its green cred under fire, Peru prepares to host UN climate talks

Here, Pulgar-Vidal talks to GlobalPost about the negotiations.

GlobalPost: What will it take for COP20 to be judged a success?

Manuel Pulgar-Vidal: The COP20 must be understood as part of a process that began in Warsaw in 2013, continues in Lima in 2014, and concludes in Paris in 2015. We want to have a draft agreement by the end of December. That is the mandate, to have one to build on for Paris next year.

Chairing COP20 is a huge responsibility. What will be the main challenges?

The chairmanship involves a challenge that is rooted in a fundamental principle; the chairman has to be neutral but have the ability to generate trust. To generate trust, you mustn’t prejudge, but you must understand perfectly the complexity of the process, and you must try to bring the parties closer together.

Will the document signed in Paris in 2015 be the strong treaty in line with what scientists are telling us we need to solve the climate crisis?

The document is advancing in the ADP [the UNFCCC “ad hoc” working group drafting the treaty text]. This agreement still has polarizing aspects that must be bridged. The strength of the agreement, I believe, is in the framework, about which everyone agrees; the science tells us what should be the maximum temperature rise. All the countries know the current tendency, which is heading above that threshold of 2 degrees Celsius [3.6 degrees Fahrenheit], and everyone knows we need to take action. The debate is not about the science. It is about the “how.” The challenge of the process, for it to arrive in Paris successfully, is for all the parties to feel represented.

What are the chances of avoiding a rise of 4 or 5 degrees Celsius, which scientists tell us would be catastrophic?

The trend from the IPCC [the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, regarded as the top authority on climate science] tells us that if we carry on as we are, temperatures will rise by around 3.7 or 3.8 degrees [Celsius]. And 4 degrees, or close to 4 degrees, would effectively be catastrophic. That is something that makes us want to respond urgently. I think it is inevitable that countries will be carbon neutral and to achieve that we will need to go down the path of de-carbonization. I am optimistic about that. It is not insignificant that nations are already taking internal measures. Now we need to turn those internal measures into a global treaty. That is the challenge and we are still in time to meet it.

Greg Asner, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution, told me he took you in his airplane for a flight over a part of the Peruvian Amazon severely affected by climate change. What did you see?

I flew over the Cordillera Azul [a national park in Peru’s central Amazon]. There were zones of the forest with very dry canopy, the result of temperature variations affecting the ecosystem. There still needs to be more research to determine the exact state of the forest, and for that the Environment Ministry, with Carnegie, has not just been elaborating a map of forest carbon stocks but also studying carbon stocks in the soil, and doing a forest inventory, and we have a forest investment program. This scene, from the air, is definitely worrying. We all know that with the current temperature trends, the most extreme models show that the Amazon would suffer a ‘savanna-ization.’ That’s the real risk and it’s something to which we must adapt.

More from GlobalPost: Calamity Calling — What if we lost the Amazon? (VIDEO)

We’re already seeing extreme weather events such as Hurricane Sandy hitting New York. Yet many countries still appear unwilling to tackle climate change. What will it take to change that?

The big challenge in the talks is to avoid polarization and acknowledge [the different national] realities. Many countries are doing things nationally, which may not be enough [to stop climate change on their own], but they feel that that is not being reflected in the negotiations. We also have those that think we should repeat what happened at Kyoto, which is to establish a rule for everyone and impose it. We have to listen to all these different voices and try to find a point that articulates that and where everyone feels represented. It is a very complex process but it is possible.

One of the most difficult issues in these negotiations is the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities [which stipulates all countries are responsible for climate change, although some, especially rich nations, are most to blame]. The interesting thing is that everyone recognizes that it is valid. The point is how you interpret it.

What are the most politically sensitive points of the negotiations?

There are four: Common but differentiated responsibilities; legally binding, in other words should the whole treaty be that way, or just some clauses; the concept of reportable and verifiable [in other words, how can a nation prove it has reduced carbon emissions]; and climate finance [with rich nations lending or donating money to poor nations to fight climate change]. Those are the four that still require gaps to be bridged and that are the most sensitive.

What do developing countries like Peru need from rich countries?

Peru is highly vulnerable to climate change thanks to its ecosystems and because many economic activities depend on those ecosystems that could be altered by climate change. So, for us, adaptation is a central issue. But equally, countries like Peru must be responsible so that the adaptation agenda is well-developed and we are ready to stand on our own feet. I think in these talks the mitigation [reducing emissions] agenda is more advanced than the adaptation [preparing for the impacts of climate change] agenda; we need to move the adaptation agenda forward. And we need the resources to flow based on nations’ vulnerabilities.

If a tough climate change treaty is not agreed on and signed in Paris, what does that mean for our children and grandchildren?

It’s not even in my calculations that we might not achieve it. I don’t think it’s in anyone’s calculations. The truth is that, although something will be achieved in Paris, the COPs — and the world — don’t end in 2015. In fact, there will be elements of the process that will continue. We need to view 2015 as an important landmark, to elaborate this treaty, but the debate and the talks will continue.

This interview has been edited for length.