All posts in COP17

Posted:
December 6, 2011
Author:
COA Students

The Future of Developed Country Commitments: Mitigation in the new LCA Text

by Trudi Zundel

The new AWG-LCA text came out on Saturday, a bulky 130-page document that was to serve as a guiding tool for the high-level negotiations going on this week. The LCA, or Long-term Cooperative Action, is the negotiating track that runs alongside the discussion on the future of the Kyoto Protocol. Any “Durban Mandate” that comes out of this session will be based on the LCA negotiating text, so its contents are vitally important.

The text is little more than an updated version of country submissions–it’s hard to tell where many of the issues will end up. The crux of the new text, though, which is mitigation, is in an absolutely disastrous state.  Article 1.b.i of the Bali Action Plan, the agreement on which this text is supposed to based, describes developed country commitments.  It was under this article that the United States was finally trapped in a mitigation commitment. The US has realized that, and is trying to steer the LCA text away from the Bali Action Plan and towards the Cancun Agreements, which were based on a pledge-and-review system, under which countries would simply record how much they were able to mitigate and then somehow, someone would check and see if they did that. Given current country pledges, the earth’s temperature would rise by at least 4 degrees. A pledge-and-review system would effectively seal our planet’s fate.

Nationally appropriate mitigation commitments by developed country under this new text includes no specific commitments; no strong language about increasing ambition or scaling up efforts; nothing about Annex 1 countries, only “developed country Parties,” which could be interpreted in many ways.  The only real content is a paragraph on the relationship between targets and market mechanisms, and referrals to SBSTA or the secretariat for more information.

On multiple levels, this text is bad. Really bad. With the way Kyoto Protocol negotiations are going, the Durban outcome could be to lock in a system that disregards the mandate of the Bali Action Plan and replaces it with the Cancun Agreements, which have feeble pledges and no “guarantee” of strong US involvement.

If we can’t commit developed countries under the KP because they don’t agree to a second commitment period, and don’t have good enough promises under Article 1.b.i in the LCA–how are we supposed to hold developed countries accountable to any emissions reductions? If they can’t hold up a legal agreement like the KP, there is no way, no way at all that they will voluntarily mitigate even close to what they say they will.

This is one of the worst things that could have happened to the climate, and a huge blow to civil society organizations trying to have their voice heard and their lives saved. What’s worst is that so many people don’t understand that the progress that is being made on the text isn’t good progress, but a casually veiled facade shielding one of the biggest developed country cop-outs of our time.

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[look for more on this later]

 

 

Posted:
December 6, 2011
Author:
COA Students

Who Are These Guys Anyway?

by Joe Perullo

I decided to do some investigating on who exactly the country delegates were.  Who hires them? Who are they really representing? What do they do outside of the UNFCCC? When we say the US is stalling progress and shoving responsibility onto developing countries, who exactly do we mean?  A lot of fingers are pointed at the delegates, but they’re just people, right?

The US was my case study, but I’m sure the basic structure (not to be confused with political agenda) can be applied to most countries.

As we know, the countries’ positions are determined long before the negotiations take place by foreign ministers.  In the US, this responsibility is given to the State Department, a department under the Executive branch (so the president has the ultimate authority). The delegates we see negotiating at COP are usually workers of the state department or people hired by it. Within the State Department, policies pertaining to the COP are done by the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES).  This is where they lay out exactly what they want the text to look like coming out of a COP. Now, I’m sure they really do care about the environment, but keep in mind that any standpoints they want the delegates to make at COP need to get approval by the greater Department of State—who’s agenda isn’t confined to making international peace or saving the planet but to bettering the lives of Americans—and be signed by the Secretary of State, who is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The State Department’s official agenda is, as officially mentioned in the Foreign Policy Agenda, “to create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community.” In reality consideration of the international community is far from the top of the list.  The “american exceptionalism” of the country and its governments will not allow members of the house, who also need to think about re-elections, pass a bill that would let the country fall behind China in the green economy. And lets not forget about corporate lobbyist. Even if the OES and the delegates want nothing more than for the US to reduce emissions, they are at the whims of the State Department.

This is exactly what happened with the Kyoto Protocol—the US signed on to it but it could not be ratified through congress.  That signing was a clear “mistake” on behalf of the US COP delegates who negotiated such a protocol out, since it did not accurately reflect the actual will of the US to have legally binding emission reduction targets.  With this system, the delegates in some way “weren’t” doing their job.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they were released or given undesirable positions as punishment.

This gives American political environmentalists a tough choice: do they focus their energy in the international realm, where they can more tangibly deal with policies that affect the world, or in their own country, in an attempt to influence the internal struggles that determine when the true gavel is smashed in international negotiations?

Posted:
December 6, 2011
Author:
COA Students

Speak for Yourself

by Katie O’Brien

I cannot speak for anyone other than myself. It seems obvious—at least to me it does—because how can I speak on things I have not experienced myself? But this is exactly the problem with the UNFCCC process (and other processes as well but lets not go into that today): speaking on behalf of people. I suppose my statement wasn’t entirely true because in applying to be a Sierra Student Coalition delegate I was chosen (hopefully) with the confidence that I could accurately speak for and represent the SSC at these negotiations and in working groups. But I don’t think I can extend my power of speech beyond that. At the same time I feel like my voice is already represented and I feel that there are many others not represented. So I would like to speak for them but I cannot. I am privileged. I am a white, upper-middle class North American female who speaks English, has never had to worry about food, is able-bodied, of sound mind, and who goes to a private liberal-arts college in Maine. At the same time you can’t just boil me down to this. I am still a young person who cares about our future, I am a human and so I care about other humans’ lives and their experiences, and I am a being on this Earth who cares about what happens to its climate and to its biodiversity. My privilege has allowed me to speak about these cares but has silenced the voices of many South African youth and countless other peoples who have these concerns and more. And this is only within YOUNGO (the youth constituency). In the actual negotiations my voice is barely heard above the roars of those who represent me. So what about those who don’t even have the agency to come here and attempt to shout?

I suppose this is not a problem with all of the UNFCCC. I feel like many African and Small Island States are accurately representing their people’s sentiments. I’ve been to a few side-events with speakers from these areas and many of them reference their lives before being in government, back when they too were just people. They speak of their experiences in their lives of the effects of climate change where they are from. But like I said earlier, I cannot speak for them and really I have no idea what I am talking about. But as a Canadian and a pseudo-American, I can say delegations like the United States and Canada are not accurately representing their people. These delegates are listening to the corporations over the people; I suppose money is louder than real words. The delegates themselves are not to blame, the people did not choose the delegates, but someone the people thought represented them chose the delegates.

Maybe it sounds as if I am just going with the times of the Occupy movements, but I feel like this system is broken and I have for some time. I have felt for a long time that we need a more fair and accurately represented governing body. The system here is just as corrupted and convoluted as our political process at home because our politicians back home choose the people here.

Despite all of this I still am trying to work here and make a difference in some way. I am in the YOUNGO Water Working Group and we are working towards getting a larger focus on water, to us it seems to be only slipped in as footnotes and is ignored. But it has become apparent to us that this will take some time. Instead we hope to make some noise and establish this group and have a larger basis to continue this work. We have gained attention from other countries and organizations looking for the same thing and we hope we can use our unique position as youth to bring these issues to more light.

Is this worth it? If this is such a broken system shouldn’t we work to fix the system or create a new one?

I feel I have to think that it is worth it. Just as how I feel it is worth it to fight for climate justice in the United States despite how many people tell me it is dismal. I have to fight because I never know who might hear me screaming my lungs out at what seems to be just a blank wall of a building filled with deaf people. And I remember that I have so many people here at the negotiations and back home who care just as much as me and are working just as hard or harder at making sure people hear us. I have to work at this because if I don’t than why should any of them work on it? We can’t let things continue the way they have. We have to be loud and we have to work at these issues until we can say they have been solved. That means working on them in all theaters, within this broken convoluted system as well as outside so that maybe, just maybe something actually happens.

Posted:
December 6, 2011
Author:
COA Students

The Common African Position

by Samuli Sinisalo

By the end of the week, we will know what Durban will deliver. Durban is an African COP, and Africa will have a key role in determining the outcome. A united Africa is a strong force in the negotiations, as the rest of the developing world is likely not to challenge them. What is good for Africa, is good for the developing world.

In September the African Ministerial conference convened in Bamako, and issued a declaration with the key messages for the Durban negotiations. This three page document is really significant – if Africa stays true to it and pushes the goals together.

First, the Bamako declaration highlights the Millennium Development Goals, and how climate change puts further challenges on achieving them. They have not been extensively discussed in the UNFCCC in the past, but they might be in the future. Second, Africa wants the UNFCCC to maintain its status as the forum where climate decisions, based on science, are taken. The declaration also includes the principles of historic responsibility and common but differentiated responsibilities.

More specifically, the African ministers declared they want two separate outcomes from the negotiation tracks. On Kyoto Protocol, the wanted an amendment to Kyoto Protocol for a legally binding second commitment period from 2013 to 2017, with ambitious targets that keep the Annex 1 countries on track for 40% cuts by 2020 and 95% by 2050. In the second commitment period, market mechanisms could only count for 10% of the national emission reductions – rest would have to be domestic action. On the LCA track, the non-Kyoto Annex 1 Parties should take on comparable emission reduction objectives.

Further the Ministers wish to operationalize the Cancun institutions on adaptation, technology transfer and finance – all under the supervision of the COP. The Green Climate Fund should additionally have its own legal personality. On finance, they were concerned the private sector and about the division of funds between adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation needs are increasing by the minute, but private funds steer away, as relocating coastal communities is not as profitable as generating renewable electricity. The concern about fast start finance already seems futile, as the developed countries pledges are already falling short and there is no remedy in sight.

Last, but not least, I want to highlight the part of the Bamako Declaration which calls for maintaining a firewall between the developed countries legally binding mitigation commitments and developing countries nationally appropriate mitigation actions. The latter are conditional on financial support from the developed world. This has been the cornerstone of the UNFCCC for nearly two decades, but is now challenged in Durban as even some developing countries, including China, are ready to negotiate on this.

Some of the African countries are expected to diverge from the common position in the name of short term national gains. The last days will show whether Africa stands united until the end. Will they crumble? What will they compromise?

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