South African will take an “African” position at the global climate change meeting in Durban later this year, Environmental Affairs chief negotiator Alf Wills said on Monday, while acknowledging that the continent was not united on some environmental issues.

South Africa, which is the president of the Seventeenth Conference the Parties (COP 17), has key trade partners within the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and the Ibsa (India, Brazil, South Africa) grouping of countries, as well as strong relations with the US, particularly through the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

But Wills said the country’s position on climate change was aligned with the African position, pointing out that Brics was not a negotiating bloc.

Although Africa as a bloc was not as coherent as the European Union (EU), it remained the most coherent after the EU, Wills said.

“There are differences in Africa, especially with regard to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, REDD, between the Democratic Republic of Congo and East African countries in terms of the use of forests in a market-based platform, while oil-rich African countries also had certain affiliations with the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.”

In terms of the EU, Poland’s Centre for International Relations CEO Janusz Reiter said the EU remained diverse in its views, taking into consideration the economics and culture of climate change. However, the EU’s energy policy remained one around common rules and infrastructure, which is why the former Polish special envoy on climate change and ambassador to the US and Germany, believed Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear energy shortly after the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March, was a challenging one.

“Some believe that Germany’s decision is one that was irrational, but other believe it was a decision to generate pressure on Germany to develop green technologies and make their green industry more competitive,” Reiter said.

He believed that Germany would try to fill its energy gap through the use of natural gas, which has political and geopolitical implications, as it also increased dependence on Russia.

Indicating that his comments were in his personal capacity, he said such thinking, even for countries in the EU, were not attractive, particularly for countries that could not transition to a low based carbon economy and do not have the resources available to compete globally.

“This raises the question of fairness within the EU,” he said.

While Poland did not have a climate change policy, it remained fully committed to the EU agenda on climate change.

The coal-dependent Poland, he said, was transitioning towards nuclear, with the intention to build two nuclear power plants. It would also invest in shale gas, but the challenge remained the strong lobbying groups against the source of energy in the EU and the US, with strong opposition from Germany, Reiter explained.

EU negotiators were currently meeting in Luxemburg to finalise its final position for the COP 17 talks.

Reiter told Engineering News Online that the European debt crisis could reflect itself in the conditions of the EU’s offering to reduce emissions.

“The debt crisis remains a serious issue and makes much more of a difference in how the conditions reflects the realities of the EU’s vision,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Wills called for the agreements reached in Cancun to be operationalised and that while a legally binding agreement may not be reached at COP 17, it was key to ensure that a rule-based multilateral systems is encouraged to put forward the best system that could enable a legally binding agreement.

Both Wills and Reiter believed that it was key that in driving economic growth through climate change, that Intellectual property (IP) rights should not be undermined and there should be no room for taking away incentives for innovation.

Both agreed that a mixture of trade with climate change would also lead to a “no-win situation,”