HEADLINE NEWS
G77/China Chair in press conference says rich countries want to ditch Kyoto Protocol.
NZ becomes bakra of meeting on Kyoto Protocol. Responds to its recent decision to further kill level of ambition. Is asked to defend its position by South Africa. Says from a developed country perspective, NZ is almost like a developing country.
Brazil, China, South Africa, India, Micronesia make impassioned statements at Kyoto Protocol targets discussion. Says Annex I countries are forgetting developed country populations, historical responsibility, or that there is a real climate crisis while defending their poor level of ambition.
KEY ISSUES OF THE DAY
Negotiations on Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA) continued today, with contact groups beginning the process of consolidating text on developed and developing country mitigation actions (each under separate paragraphs of the Bali Action Plan). Recall that mitigation is a key process to actually reducing emission reductions, and that at some time in the future, developing countries (as they develop) also need to set some targets. For now, the silence is valid and allowed, although pressure for some major developing countries to come out and make commitments is building.
While there is a clear mandate in the Bali Action Plan for developing country emission trajectories to reduce ‘significantly’ from Business As Usual (BAU) paths, the differences of opinion here, are focused around the actual targets, and the need for developing country actions to be Measurable, Reportable and Verifiable (MRV).
G77/China and several developing countries indicated that all actions on mitigation that they would take up by themselves (unilaterally and therefore not financed from Annex I countries) would:
– not be subjected to verification
– be voluntary
– and bottom-up (decided domestically)
This is something they have been saying right from the start. Nevertheless, with 65 days to Copenhagen and the pressure for a deal (post 2012 deal) building, developing country silence on any sort of long-term targets seems to be exasperating developed country partners. Many Annex I countries are unable to come to grips with political posturing by India and China or even Indonesia recently, with none of these actually translating into ‘commitments’.
As for the LCA discussion on the nature of developed country mitigation targets in the future, today’s session was focused on the issue of ‘comparability’ – or how emission reductions can be measured one against the other. The United States is keen that comparing targets is done through a domestic process that is then peer reviewed. G77/China and India argued for top-down setting of targets that are objectively reviewed by a legal international process.
Technocratic decisions aside, Parties are still in the process of putting logical bits of currently incoherent text together, so that they can then begin the process of negotiation. As indicated yesterday, real negotiations are still likely to begin only by Monday.
Coming to the other track of the negotiations – the Kyoto Protocol, decisions on Annex I mitigation targets below 1990 levels are still to be decided. Parties (Annex I) still have to agree on the base year, the commitment period, and the proportion of offsets that will come from domestic cuts.
However, it is rather clear that targets are a hugely political decision, and that negotiators here may not have the mandate to set such targets. In effect, the three hour session on Kyoto targets managed to get rather heated, confused and an unhappy exercise for most Parties.
The EU began with its progress report, which included a display of how to use hot air as credits, and how it was possible to cash in on all the loopholes in the Kyoto Process while claiming emission reductions. While their intentions may have been noble, and while they are the only developed country block showing some environmental integrity, they managed along with Japan, to ask for a joint session between the KP and the LCA – tracks meant to be addressed separately since 2007. They added meat to their argument by saying that the LCA and the Land-Use and Land-Use Change (LULUCF) discussions had not progressed so far, and that this meant there was little hope for the targets discussion here at the KP to progress.
The invisible elephant in the KP room was the US, which was mentioned in the discussions despite its not being a member of the Kyoto Protocol. The EU asked for developing countries to make their long-term targets clear so that they (Annex I) would be able to meet their Kyoto Targets. Australia said encouraging political statements made by several developing countries had not yet translated into any action here, in the negotiations, and was visibly exasperated by this. The KP session was not perhaps the most appropriate forum to bring all these issues up – it could easily have been discussed at the LCA sessions.
Venezuela began the rebuff on these suggestions to mix the tracks, by saying ‘no-one held a gun to their head to sign the Kyoto’, but ‘now they want to throw the responsibility on developing countries’. South Africa, India, China, Micronesia and Pakistan chimed in agreement on no need to mix tracks. China made an impassioned statement about whether they ‘recognised their responsibility’, and that they were talking here of 1/4th of the world’s population causing here quarters of the emissions, and vice versa.
What could this complete waste of three hours imply? Simply that there was an absence of a clear political mandate from Annex I countries, and that this meant a stalemate here. As the South African delegate clearly said, ‘it’s a chicken and an egg story’, and nothing will move until something moves, but if no one wants anything to move then nothing will move.
Focus on the GOI
At the LCA, India mostly clarified its position on what it and the G77/China understood by the paragraphs on NAMAs for developing countries. On developed country mitigation requirements, negotiators said there was a need for all comparability of efforts to be transparent and done through an objective process. They also indicated that they wanted the benchmark for future ambition and targets to come from the architecture (rules and processes) of the Kyoto Protocol.
On the KP targets track, when the EU and Australia suggested the idea of a joint session for the two tracks, India said ‘was it a dream that we met in Bali where we decided to keep the KP and the LCA tracks separate?’ India argued that what developing countries said – referencing to Australia’s exasperation on political movement but lack of translation into negotiation process – was not relevant here. They charged that Annex I countries were comparing apples, oranges and all kinds of Annex I fruits, and finding ways of measuring their emission cuts in several different ways. But that they were not addressing their targets in the context of science, rationality, and responsibility.
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