Centre for Social Markets at the UNFCCC Bangkok – Day 5 Report [02 Oct 2009]
HEADLINE NEWS
Weekend Stock-taking session for Kyoto Protocol (KP) and Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA) tracks.
Kyoto Protocol – stock-taking indicates good progress made on land use change, potential consequences. Targets remain the big question.
LCA – Technology transfer and capacity building makes good progress. First reading of text on Finance nearly done. Progress remains to be made in mitigation, adaptation sections.
Venezuela says in the past there use to be land grabs, now it is sky grabs.
KEY ISSUES OF THE DAY
Today marks the last day of the first week of a two-week session. Negotiators have a text before them that they must consolidate, but the point is not so much that they have to cut down the number of pages (>200), but rather that they must identify the key elements that must go into a Copenhagen deal.
As the Chair of the Kyoto Protocol session indicated during the stock-taking session, the reality of the crisis has NOT sunk in. That, while politicians made big promises at the UN Secretary General’s summit on climate change, those statements have not translated into anything concrete here.
Eleven negotiating days remain for the Copenhagen process to start. In this short time, negotiators have the unenviable task of seeking to avoid key numbers and commitments while negotiating text. While a number of Annex 1 countries have put down numbers for 2020 and the G8 have agreed to an 80% reduction by 2050, the level of ambition is criticized for not being enough. AOSIS critiqued the Annex 1 collective ambition of 11-18% below 1990 levels by 2020 and said this would lead to a temperature increase of “3ºC or worse.” The numbers do not go far enough to meet calls by them and other nations for cuts between 25-40% by 2020. Mitigation by Annex 1 countries and meaningful contributions by major developing economies is one sticking point. Another is the numbers on finance. These are all issues that will be subject to horse-trading. The fear is that decisions on these key issues will have to wait till the big guns arrive – the politicians – at Copenhagen. By then it may well be too late to reach agreement.
While this Copenhagen outcome will be new, the UN Convention is the main reference document on which the new deal will be built. It will also be guided by the Bali Action Plan, which provides the basis for a larger picture and a long-term vision that will give a perspective to the new outcome.
As for the Kyoto Protocol, it is the legal offspring of the Convention, valid till 2012. Over the course of the week, it has become apparent that some Annex I countries would prefer to phase out the Kyoto Protocol for the post 2012 deal. They would rather have a new deal that does away with the Kyoto Protocol but which keeps in line with the Convention and the Bali Action Plan.
Many developing countries, keen to retain the focus on Annex 1 countries, say that portions of the current text (proposed by Annex I), undermines the three key principles of the Convention – historical responsibility, common but differentiated responsibility and environmental integrity. They charge some Annex I countries with seeking to erode these principles of the Convention. Developing countries also say that the new text cannot just do away with the Kyoto Protocol, since that does away with any sort of legally binding compliance.
Given there are only eleven days (six here, five in Barcelona), time is running out. So the best way to move forward from here, is to focus on core issues and mechanisms. The chair of the AWG will soon convene informal meetings (tomorrow) that will aim to speed up the process for the following week.
The Climate Action Network urged the KP and LCA chairs to inject the political momentum from New York into the negotiations, and urged deviation from business as usual especially in these negotiations.
FOCUS ON THE GOI
In the mitigation section, India indicated that it would like to request the Secretariat to list currently available literature on whether the level of ambition put down by developed countries was adequate, and to assess the targets in comparison to the IPCC 2007 report. This was in response to the Australian proposal of schedules for future targets, on which all countries would put down their numbers.
In the stock-taking section of the LCA, Mr R.R. Rashmi – a key negotiator for India (on all issues technical), said they thought progress so far was fairly good. However, he said that in our efforts to reach a deal, we must not sprint to the end, but rather focus on some key areas:
- Developed countries had to give a deep emission reduction commitment, and reduction of 40-45% below 1990 levels
· Deliver on Finance without losing time
· And a global mechanisms that would deliver technology transfer at affordable cost would be a deal-clincher
He said if delegates could organize their work here to get these key issues on board, and inscribe it into the text before us, real progress could be made before Copenhagen.
The comments were appreciated by the Chair, owing to process suggestions that would lend clarity and de-cloud the rest of the week of negotiations.
Leave a Reply