Mock Annex I leaders prepare to cut up a climate finance check for developing countries (Photo courtesy of Oxfam))
Last Monday, Alexander Ochs called November the “month for ambition.” After already slow progress at the last Copenhagen preparatory meeting in Bangkok in October, the creeping pace this week has left even more unresolved business for negotiators to get through for the world to get a binding global agreement in Copenhagen.
United States negotiators continued to stall on offering guaranteed and quantified greenhouse gas pollution cuts. A U.S. target will have no credibility until the Senate passes climate legislation, which is so far not on track to happen before Copenhagen 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the UN climate convention ends. Given this uncertainty, the industrialized nations continued to hesitate on raising the level of their reduction commitments. High-emitting emerging countries have also mostly balked at being asked to limit their own emissions.
Pushing negotiations into 2010, possibly as far as COP 16 (likely in Mexico in December), would buy the U.S. time to create domestic law, but at the risk of countries not ratifying an agreement before the Kyoto Protocol’s commitments expire in 2012. Governments are now talking about reaching a politically binding agreement in Copenhagen, instead of a legally binding one. Reaching agreement on a strong treaty without tying all the legal bows is better than getting a weak treaty that is legally binding. Still, every meeting that fails to wrap up a post-Kyoto agreement puts us one step closer to the commitment-free void that still waits for us on 1 January 2013 when Kyoto currently expires.
Big gaps also remain in the forest negotiations. The Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) rules for developed countries still don’t distinguish between intact, natural forests and tree plantations. Turning the first into the second releases significant amount of carbon and kills forest species. Protection against developing country conversion of natural forests remains in the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) section, but only in vague terms, the text still in brackets to signify that governments haven’t yet agreed on the exact definition. These loopholes leave a major source of emissions unregulated.
Financing discussions also only inched forward, with funding for adaptation, technology transfer, and climate disaster insurance still having far to go. An adaptation fund for developing countries was nearly finished last year in Poland, and has served as a good model for other funds. Nations looked to a proposal by the Japanese government this week to fill in the details for formulating the other funds, but the proposal was vague and looked strikingly similar to a U.S. architecture already under consideration. Meanwhile, governments fought over text that would have industrialized nations paying a risk insurance premium for climate change-induced disasters in developing countries. No clarity on any of these funding proposals emerged by the end of the week.
Developing countries, international youth, and sustainable development advocates reacted with panic at the agonizing pace of negotiations. The Africa Group delegates staged a temporary walkout in protest of industrialized countries’ failure to finalize their reduction commitments. Youth, environment, and development groups called out Saudi Arabia’s persistent attempts to stall any progress with banners and actions outside the negotiating hall and 18 Saudi embassies worldwide. These groups are anxious to see a swifter commitment to an agreement. As the youth said at the meeting’s only intervention speech late Friday, “take the brackets off our future.”
This comment is an exclusive contribution to our blog by Kyle Gracey (chair@sustainus.org), Chair of SustainUS – a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of young people advancing sustainable development and youth empowerment in the United States.
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