According to the European Union, an international agreement on global warming must have legally binding targets. This is the position that Europe supports at a UN climate summit in Peru. The conference has the aim to deliver the first draft of an accord to cut carbon emissions and avoid dangerous climate change that is expected to be signed at a UN conference in Paris next year. Any concrete agreement on emissions cuts need to be mandatory, a senior EU official in Brussels said. The EU is working to establish legally binding mitigation targets, officials said. In addition to that, European experts have outlined that the current agreement prototype includes options within options, and has a broad range of views of what constitutes legal force. In this way, governments need to achieve concrete results in Lima, as time is short, experts suggested. In relation to this, French president François Hollande has highlighted the importance to undertake stricter measures to overcome environmental issues. According to Hollande, the international community needs to cooperate; a climate agreement will be a significant mark, Hollande said. New Zealand has launched a proposal that would contain some legally binding elements but allow countries to determine the scale and pace of their emissions reductions. However, some experts have argued that this proposal calls into question the aim of keeping temperature rises below 2°C, the level that countries have agreed to limit warming to. In this context, the US special envoy on climate change, Todd Stern has stressed that during negotiations, a hybrid approach to legal enforcement offered the best chance of reaching a deal agreeable to all. Moreover, the special envoy on climate change has highlighted the US commitment on climate change related issues, showing that the US government at a climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009 offered a 42% CO2 reduction by 2030, higher than the 30% cut by 2025 announced by president Obama in China this month. Additionally, the special envoy has confirmed that an 83% decrease by 2050 remained Washington’s key objective. The European Union plays a crucial role in driving environmental policies, experts outlined. In this way, the EU has marked an important step, setting out a legally binding 40% drop in emissions by 2030, but measures this against carbon output in 1990, rather than the US’s preferred 2005 baseline, experts indicated. In this framework, experts have recognized that achieving and accepting a binding deal could represent an obstacle in the next US elections. However, showing that reaching a low carbon transition is possible could persuade Republicans to accept climate targets, officials suggested. The gLAWcal Team POREEN project Thursday, 27 November 2014 (Source: The Guardian)