All posts tagged Bali

Posted:
December 3, 2011
Author:
COA Students

No One Can Play Poker Like The US

by Joe Perullo

There was a special Open-ended informal consultation on Wednesday organized by the president of the COP to discuss the possible Durban outcome.  There’s no definition on what the outcome is right now, but it will for sure address the concerns arising from the potential elimination of the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.  The US was second or third on the initial speakers list, but strategically told the president that it was having “technical difficulties” and wouldn’t be ready to talk until later…

Indonesia took the floor, stressing the need for the conclusion of the Bali Action Plan (adaptation). Kenya and almost all others wanted a second commitment period to be part of the Durban package. Colombia and Cape Verde recognized the insufficiency of the KP (in both quantity of emission reductions required and implementation) and requested full operationalization of the Green Climate Fund, while The Bahamas mentioned how the amount of money in the Adaptation fund is insufficient.

Norway jumped on board with the developing countries stating its “faith in the facilitators.” This reveals the Scandinavian nation’s concerns over transparency in the process. Norway is a developed but non-essential player who wouldn’t be part of any side discussion by, say, the US, China, and India. With fears of being “left out of the room,” Norway called for the president and facilitators to keep the process opened for all the parties.

New Zealand stressed operationalization of the Cancun Agreements, which include the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Climate Technology Centre (CTC).

After all of these concerns of a Durban outcome were expressed, the US was finally ready to take the floor.  It played a wild card: instead of addressing the stated issues, the US ranted on how the AWG-LCA needed to be completed, meaning it should not be given any more time to address the five pillars of the Bali Road Map (shared vision, mitigation, adaptation, technology development and transfer, and finance). At the moment, LCA has barely finished developing policies for these, and has completely avoided mitigation.

Had the US said this in the beginning when it was supposed to, the other delegates would have focused their talks around keeping the LCA alive.  Soon after, the meeting was over and the US could slip out without having to defend itself from a torrent opposition.

Posted:
December 3, 2011
Author:
COA Students

Possible outcomes from Durban

by Samuli Sinisalo

After one week of negotiations, what are some of the possible outcomes we can expect from Durban?

The negotiations run on the two tracks: Kyoto Protocol and the Long term Cooperative Action.

From the Kyoto track, there are at least four possible outcomes:
1) No second commitment period is signed and Kyoto Protocol is buried and forgotten
2) Negotiations for second commitment period are extended by another year
3) The Kyoto Protocol is continued selectively with a political declaration
4) The Kyoto Protocol gets a second commitment period

From the Long Term Cooperative Action track I can think of at least five possible outcomes:
1) No agreement – the Bali Action Plan is buried and forgotten
2) The Bali Action Plan is concluded with a political declaration of emission reductions
3) The Bali Action Plan is not concluded, but extended for another year
4) The Bali Action Plan is rewritten into a new Durban negotiation mandate
5) The Bali Action plan is concluded by signing a new and ambitious legally binding instrument

The options above are listed in order apparent success. Number ones are the clear failures, which are hard to be spinned into successes by anyone.

Number two on both lists are the political declarations. This would be simply repeating the failure of Copenhagen. The political approach of pledge and review has been out there for two years now, and it can be seen that it is not the solution to the mitigation of climate change, nor to the adaptation. Especially under Kyoto Protocol it would be better to continue negotiations than to lock into low level of ambition and compromise the legally binding status of the Protocol.

Option 3 on KP track and options 3 and 4 on the LCA track all result in the continuation of negotiations. As I said, for KP it’s better to continue negotiating that to settle for a bad outcome. Under LCA, the negotiation mandate from Bali has already been extended twice. As long as real progress is made, extending it for another year might not be a bad idea. But renegotiating the negotiation mandate, turning the ambitious, comprehensive and equitable Bali Action Plan into a watered down Durban Mandate is not a good idea. The planet and the developing world only have things to lose if the Bali Action Plan is redefined.

The optimum outcome, the only real and unquestionable success from Durban would be the signing of the second commitment period under KP, and the non-KP Annex 1 Parties committing to comparable cuts under the LCA.

Whatever the combination of these two negotiating tracks is, we will see in about a week. The media, all over the world, is likely to call it a success. With this breakdown of the negotiations, you can analyze yourself what kind of success it really was. Unfortunately the negotiations are likely to go for the lowest common denominator and result in the least ambitious combination possible that can be spinned as success in the eyes of media and public. For the time being, Durban Disaster seems to be the most likely outcome from COP17.

Posted:
November 27, 2011
Author:
COA Students

(The Lack of) High Hopes for Durban

by Samuli Sinisalo

On Monday the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change convenes for two weeks in Durban, South Africa. This is the 17th annual Conference of Parties, where parties come together to fulfill the framework convention. As the negotiations grow ever more technical and complex, it is good to keep in mind that the ultimate goal of the convetion is to stabilize the green house gases in the atmosphere to a level that prevents dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. But personally I am not having my hopes very high for any major breakthroughs to that direction this time. In fact, I would consider even a few very modest steps forward as major success in Durban.

The last comprehensive breakthrough within the UNFCCC context is the Bali Action Plan from 2007. In Bali a two track approach was designed, which would ensure a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol and another longer term solution for implementing the framework convention. These two tracks, or ad-hoc working groups, were given a two year mandate and were supposed to conclude their work in Copenhagen 2009. The Copenhagen conference failed to deliver, and the mandate of the working groups was extended to Cancun 2010.

Last year, few weeks before the Cancun negotiations began, the chair of one of the long term cooperative action track released a note by the chair which included the possible outcome for the negotiations. The Bali Action Plan from 2007 included five building blocks, which were shared vision, adaptation, mitigation, tech transfer and finance. The note by the chair in 2010 included four of these, but there was no outcome for mitigation. This to me describes the current state of the negotiations.

Mitigation is a key component of the negotiations. It is the most direct response for limiting the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. At the same time it is potentially the most contested area in these negotiations. There are several probable reasons why the chair of the long term cooperative action group left mitigation out from his draft agreement prior to Cancun. Some possible explanations could be the legal form of the future commitments, the continuation of Kyoto Protocol, the role of major emitters and of course the ambition of mitigation targets. But in the end, all these boil down to the lack of political will to commit for binding domestic mitigation targets, in the developed countries. Consequently Cancun also failed to deliver and the mandate of the ad-hoc working groups was extended to Durban.

I do not think there will be a comprehensive outcome from Durban either. The most contested issues, the future of the Kyoto Protocol and the ambition of mitigation targets have not moved forward sufficiently prior to the meeting, and the political pressure has not increased sufficiently.

Personally I have put the bar for success in Durban really low. There are a few results I would like to see.

First and foremost, the UNFCCC has to maintain its credibility as the forum in which future climate decisions are held and decisions are made. If stalled continuously and indefinitely, the global political attention will shift and UNFCCC faces the threat of being sidelined and becoming irrelevant. In the future, climate decisions might take place outside the UN framework. Therefore Durban has to deliver.

The most obvious and necessary area to deliver is the finance. In Copenhagen, an agreement on finance was reached. Developed countries promised to mobilize 30bn in fast-track finance by 2012. In Copenhagen, the Conference of the Parties also decided to establish a Green Climate Fund, which would, by 2020, provide 100bn annually. A Transitional Committee was set up in Cancun to design the fund, and that committee is submitting its (contested) report to the Conference of the Parties in Durban. The fund has to become equitable and operational as the result of the Durban conference.

These two are my personal minimun expectations for COP-17 in Durban, and I hope not to be too badly disappointed. This is not to say there could be no positive results from other Bali Action Plan elements, such as tech transfer or adaptation. But I dare not hope for that. And I dare not even dream of second commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol. But I hope I could dream to be positively surprised in Durban..

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