From Copenhagen to Cancun, from “Chinese Medicine” to “Food Diplomacy”

Nov, 26, Friday Less than an hour to Los Angles, three days before Cancun, COP 16


While I was trying to feel comfortable for gaining a day flying a restless 11-hour journey westbound, a peek into someone else’ newspaper indeed injected me some comfort. On the back side of the front page, it was Lina’s interview by China Daily – “Climate sparks warm views,” by the journalist Sun Li who visited us at the Sunday team meeting two weeks ago.

The article started with Lina’s awe-inspiring trip to the Antarctic with the “2041 project” initiated by Robert Swan, and moved on to her “part-time career” as an environmental activist besides her Fortune 500 job. But of course the core of this article is Lina’s transition of leadership (from the policy team leader of COP 15 China Youth Delegation to the chief of the COP 16 delegation) and that of the whole China Youth COP delegation from Copenhagen to Cancun.

One year after, from a winter to a “summer”, are we coming back Stronger?

The transition of the delegation is by all means necessary and the efforts of maturing are recommendable. Last year the whole delegation was irradiant, yet on some level, flimsy—the first Chinese youth delegation ever to voice out on behalf of some 400 million youth at home, 40-sth strong in number, over ten people receiving educations overseas. We symbolized China’s hope. Yet very unprepared, many of the “delegates” had to “do their homework” to get familiar with the negotiation process on the spot after arrival in Copenhagen, much as they all cared about the environment and climate. Too large a team, and too many distractions during the two weeks, just to name a few.

This year, however, we learned our lesson. Lina volunteered to go through the intensive preparation process once again and even to take the lead as the chief coordinator of the less-than-20 team. So did Furong, Mengsi and myself decide to take the challenge one more time and improve upon our experiences. The new team was assembled in August officially, after rounds of applications, selections and interviews. The team had convened for around 20 times each weekend, not including the daily meeting during the Tianjin round of talks, studying technical materials, planning activities, receiving trainings from field experts, organizing internal debate, managing our social media outlets, sending out newsletter, etc. Like last year, most of the funding came almost during the last minutes. No one backed out. No one intended.

“The college students are not easy! They all had to fund-raise for themselves to go, unlike you (referring to other big NGOs). I visited them both in Copenhagen and Tianjin,” said Xie Zhenghua, the deputy director of the National Development and Reform Committee and the head of the official Chinese negotiation delegation, in a close-door meeting with NGO representatives in China on the 25th before departure. He had especially requested representatives from the Delegation and the China Youth Climate Action Network.

A hard decision. We did not plan any “high-profile” campaign activities this year such as the “Green China” and “Chinese medicine therapy to climate change” we staged last year. We thought we ought to think deeper and wider this time.

So instead of having one of our guys dressing like a Chinese “Daifu (doctor),” the team came up with the idea of a new carbon calculator with support from Zhejiang University’s “Qiushi Chao” club. This is a carbon calculator that tells you what 10 US dollars can do to offset your carbon footprint – how many trees can be planted and CO2 sequestrated per say – or how long a student in the country side can remain in school, or how many chickens could be brought into a rural household in China. It will be available on our official website and and introduced through a side event.

“I think of this idea after the Tianjin meeting,” vented Yina, the head of our policy team, “where I had heard enough of foreign participants saying that China was such a developed country when they had not set their foot in places no longer than an hour away from the conference place.” This is not to say that China has no responsibility of being diligent in reducing its emission but that it needs to take a smarter move for its own sustainable development and at the international negotiation stage, Yina explained.

Recognizing our hard-earned opportunity to fly half way around the world to Cancun to witness the “first scene,” we highlight our responsibility of transmitting back the most up-to-date development and dynamics of the negotiations, as well as personal interpretations and reflections from a youth angle at Cancun with our multi-media distribution channels (e.g. official website, blogs, partner online media, online social media, etc.) targeting domestic young audience. On top of that, an army of reinforcement of over 30 people (with one third stationed overseas) has been assembled back home to support the frontline in terms of translation, editing articles and multi-media materials and organizing domestic activities on college campuses.

On the other hand, we want to show the world what efforts the pioneering Chinese youth have made to educate our peers by releasing the China Youth Climate Action Report during Cancun. We are also open to discuss strategies and lessons from youth groups from around the world and eager to seek resources to bring back home to enhance the work of the domestic youth organizations and NGOs at large.

Another legacy from Copenhagen that the team decided not to let it deposit but to dig deeper, polish and perpetuate is the second China-U.S. Youth Climate Exchange at Cancun after Copenhagen. Unlike last year when only three out of the 40 of team were involved in organizing the workshops and other joint activities, this year the preparation had started in a month in advance followed by intensive rounds of skype meetings with the help of tools like google docs that contain our “progress reports.” We have a core organizing team of over ten Americans and Chinese from both sides, claiming “territories” of work and serving as bottom-liners and facilitators of specific projects such as two workshops, focal groups, shared actions, and “food diplomacy” – a potluck party where the Americans have pledged to make pumpkin cheesecake and the Chinese to do the “Sichuan hotpot.”

The primary goals of the collaboration between young people from the two largest emitters are to educate themselves and build their own capacity and those of their peers to influence the policy-making at high level. Holly Chang, the CEO and founder of GoldenBridges and someone who has worked a facilitator of meetings between American and Chinese for three years, was again very instrumental in helping set up the framework and SMART goals of our collaboration. For us youth we recognize that we have our strengths and opportunities; we believe in alternatives and want to approach the issue our own way and potentially set up examples for the adults– such as, getting to know what our dorms each look like and our pet peeves before we go on to discuss CO2 and wind turbines. Last Monday, during the tele-conference organized by SustainUS to announce the youth participating strategies at Cancun, the exchange was announced for the first time. Later a story was published by SolveClimate and picked up by Reuters. "We hope to strengthen trust between our countries by growing our own trust. We hope ... to show the world in a more visible way that China and the U.S. are working together now."” quoted Jared Schy.

Thus we have designated a prioritized mission to be carried out before, during and after Cancun to reflect our core purposes of building our own capacity to make greater influence on the climate agenda for our own future and that of peers at home by engendering domestic interaction and international civic diplomacy. We need to grow substantially after Cancun and provide platforms for more to join the party.

From Copenhagen, to Nairobi, and to Cancun – an “L” journey that tells a big story

Now shift the wide angle to a close-up. Interestingly for myself, from Copenhagen to Cancun, it’s a year that has witnessed some organic and substantial growth – a transition of concentration from youth advocacy to implementation.

I lingered on in Copenhagen after COP 15, not because I enjoy Scandinavia’s gloomy winter and Denmark’s little mermaid, but because I had arranged to study in Denmark for an exchange semester prior to knowing I was going to COP 15. It was all worth-a-while. From both the courses and my involvement with Energy Crossroads Denmark Chapter – a youth organization focusing on energy issues -- I had the chance to learn more about the highly developed and efficient Danish energy supply system and its advancement in wind energy, and how to create value and opportunities for the society and youth themselves amidst the seemingly conflicting nature of climate change and development.

As if I had been traumatized by Europe’s coldest winter in 30 years and needed some intensive therapy, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) headquartered in the equatorial country of Kenya offered me an internship after I submitted my “medical case of illness.” From Copenhagen to Nairobi, life was finally awoken from a cold but fruitful dormancy.

Although while at the communication division of UNEP I was, for most of time, focusing on awareness-raising and advocacy -- promoting UNEP’s programs and activities to broader Chinese audience through various forms of social media. In the meanwhile, I went to the meetings of the African Youth Initiatives on Climate Change (AYICC) every Wednesday for one project. We had been pooling together resources for local youth groups to help implement energy-saving and clean cook stoves in Kenya – a mission I had promised my fellow Energy Crossroaders that I would carry on when I went there. And later together with several young Kenyans of my age, we founded the Rural Energy Enterprises Network (REEN), which is envisioned to become the network and incubator of youth enterprises for the sustainable promotion of appropriate energy technologies for rural households in Kenya and later across African under the umbrella of AYICC.

That said, yet I did not realize the significance of the establishment of REEN until a young journalist from Germany, who had just finished his travel to China to interview the young climate pioneers there, came to his stop in Africa to complete a book on global youth climate movement. It was Daniel who brought AYICCers and me two big pictures of this unprecedented global movement. His interviews of youth leaders from over 20-something countries told him that youth activists from many developing countries can give lots of inspirations and strategies to their counterparts in developed nations, not only just vice versa. And the creation of REEN, in his eyes, symbolized AYICC’s “high-profile” move that has been brewing for long to implementation of mitigation and adaptation projects from just pure climate change advocacy activities. Behind his “eyes,” I suddenly realized that I have consciously and unconsciously shifted my own focus of energy from singing the song to walking the talk.

But, is it a once-and-for-all transition? Is the climate movement on a personal level a point-A-to-point-B line? Is there anything more to it?

From Nairobi to Beijing

Then, do my decision to take a semester off school and returning to Beijing to help prepare the team signals my re-embracement of youth advocacy over implementation? I pondered over the question myself and could finally give out the ever-neutral “Yes-and-No” answer, which could potentially be a theory in the boiling as I’d like to see it that way.

It is nothing but a forward-rolling circle, like all matters in the universe, and I am only just one of the tides that are trying to raise more boats (to borrow Holly’s words), and the same for the whole team from a collective point of view.

Having my eyes wide-open at the 10-thousand-strong PowerShift09 and worked for the China Youth Climate Action Network the following summer, Copenhagen was a glorious attraction for me, academically and career-wise. This year, despite the frustrating outcome of Copenhagen and much cooler public enthusiasm, I decided that I am still motivated to build upon my experience and continue my efforts to organize and facilitate the Delegation as the stakes of no agreement is getting higher and the presence and voices of Chinese youth need to be sustained and lifted up and indeed--new sprouts need to be given chance to mature to lead waves of young Chinese into the spread the words of climate change, including learning ways to mitigate and adapt to it.

For the first China Youth Delegation to COP 15, the purpose was to organize a strong youth force and send our voices to the summit that we youth in China care about the climate change and we’ve done a lot to educate our peers and the general public. But this year to put the perspective back into the circle with Cancun being a big knot, the objective of promoting the ideas and examples of sustainable development was added into our COP 16 “constitution” of the team. And together with our U.S. counterparts, we come to Cancun with an agenda to spark the U.S.-China youth exchange into some long-term collaboration that bring youth into the field to experience and innovate sustainable development.

So for the team as a whole, while newbies are not only educated of the matters, they will also be exposed in Cancun—to the epicenter for-the-moment of climate change experts and solution practitioners—a place to accelerate the transition of each individual and the overall flow and movement of the big cycle. By transmitting back everything we will have experienced during the next two weeks, we are motivated and determined to stir up more cycles of transitions that will eventually flow into the mainstream of climate movement in China and around the world.

Climate: A defining issue

Richard Black and his blog--a great resource for what's going on with COP 15, what will be going on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

A couple of weeks ago, the cat came well and truly out of the bag: there would not be a legally binding treaty at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen next month.

Or will there?

During his meeting on Tuesday with China's President Hu Jintao, President Obama appeared to indicate that some sort of comprehensive agreement was still possible.

Then, Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, speaking to a pre-summit meeting of environment ministers, called for developed nations to bring firm targets to Copenhagen - targets that should be binding.

All of this is very much at odds with statements from a number of European officials and ministers during and directly after the recent UN negotiating session in Barcelona, which were variations on the theme that a legally-binding deal was "unlikely", "extremely unlikely" or "impossible".

It certainly poses more questions. What does "legally binding" mean in this context? What does the alternative being bandied around - "politically binding" - mean?

And where does the formulation that President Obama used in his Beijing speech - "not a partial accord or a political declaration, but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations and one that has immediate operational effect" - fit in to the overall picture?

We are into a miasma of nuance here; but for different parties, all of the nuances are important, so it's worth having a look at what's being suggested, what might actually transpire, and who's likely to be happy or unhappy.

So let's go back to the Bali meeting nearly two years ago and the pledge, in the Bali Action Plan (BAP), to produce something new by Copenhagen.

The BAP doesn't actually prescribe a legally-binding treaty, although that's an interpretation and an outcome that's been accepted by most governments as desirable and necessary.

You could argue that something legally-binding is implied by the agreement that all developed countries must adopt "measurable, reportable and verifiable nationally appropriate mitigation commitments or actions, including quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives".

What is explicit is that a Copenhagen agreement must "achieve the ultimate objective of the [UN climate] convention" - in other words, must stabilise "greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".

In the broadest sense, then, there is acknowledgement by all governments that everything enacted before - the UN climate convention of 1992, the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 - could not achieve that goal, and something new was needed.

That "something else", according to BAP, would have to be bigger and bolder, encompassing emissions cuts by rich countries, curbs on the rate of growth of emissions by major developing countries, and finance and technology transfer to help poorer countries constrain their emissions and adapt to climate impacts. ( Three goals)

It was described by UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband as the most complex set of international negotiations ever, on any issue.

Two principal factors now line up to prevent a full binding treaty emerging in Copenhagen. One is the sheer amount of negotiating needed in a tight period of time; the other is that the US has yet to put any commitments on the table and may not do so before the summit.

What a number of developing countries are still demanding - joined, apparently, by Mr Rasmussen - is something that is firmly binding even though it might not carry any formally legal weight, let alone the paraphernalia of a full treaty.

But how can that be?

Recall first that these treaties don't become binding on anyone until they've been ratified by enough countries to gain the status of international law. In the case of Kyoto, that took eight years - and in the case of Copenhagen, we don't yet have an agreement on the legal form of any treaty, let alone what would trigger its adoption as law.

Secondly, one of the bases for the Copenhagen process has been that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed".

(A better phrase might be "nothing is binding until everything is binding, because certain things such as an agreement on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) could conceivably emerge as a self-standing entity whatever the carnage around it.")

Are governments really going to grant binding status to something that includes main numbers on emissions targets and finance, but omits details that for some nations might turn out to be crucial? This has to be a consensus of 192 countries, not a majority vote.

Thirdly, what is there except international law that can bind countries to anything?

When it comes to the form and status of something that is not international law but is more than just a promise, I for one am out of ideas; if anyone has a clearer notion, I'd be very happy if you can spell it out for us in a comment.

A fourth issue is that some countries are very unhappy about signing up to anything that is not legally binding. A number of developing nations including Sudan (chair of the G77/China bloc), Grenada and Barbados have been making noises about not agreeing to anything that is not legally binding.

Their position is that we had the politically-binding agreement in Bali. In a sense, we had it in Rio; this is supposed to be the time for delivery on those fine words.

And it not just small developing countries; a number of European delegates have said that no deal is better than a bad deal, and presumably if they do not see the requisite amount of "binding" in the text, they will not sign, whatever embarrassment that might cause the Danish hosts.

The runes on this story appear to shift their shape daily. Experienced negotiators and observers suggest the fog is unlikely to clear before the final Copenhagen dawn on December 18th.

To the outside observer, it might seem a strange old way to try and solve a problem that most governments acknowledge as a serious and urgent threat to humanity's prospects.

But if there's one thing that governments appear to consider truly binding in this process, it's the requirement to obfuscate and procrastinate right down to the wire.

Headline : Race to kill kyoto protocol

Down to Earth, Center for Science and Environment, New Delhi, India

Intro:As Copenhagen nears, Obama’s America sees new hope: Yes, we can...dump climate multilateralism. In Bangkok, most developed countries joined the charge. Their methods: jettison equity, peddle domestic actions and dangle carrots to break developing country unity. Some, like India, show signs of wavering. Kushal Pal Singh Yadav tracks negotiations in Bangkok

An atmosphere of gloom prevailed in the galleries of the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok on October 9, 2008. It was the last day of talks on climate change, and there was near-unanimity that the Kyoto Protocol was going to die. Delegates from developing countries were an angry lot. Those from developed countries did not seem to care much.

The penultimate meeting, just a few negotiating days before the big one at Danish capital Copenhagen in December, had been chosen to sound the death knell for the internationally binding agreement on emission reductions (see box: Genesis of Kyoto). Chinese chief negotiator Yu Qingtai put it succinctly: “Developed country partners are trying to invent something totally new two months before Copenhagen and asking everybody else to come along. That’s not the way to conduct negotiations.”

The first nail in the coffin was driven in by the US, the biggest polluter that first refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and is now dragging its feet on committing to a healthy cut in emissions. US inaction, cried delegations of developing countries, is inciting other developed countries to dump the protocol. “The developed countries need to rise to the challenge rather than race to the bottom with the US,” said Lumumba Stanislaus-Kaw Di Aping, head of Sudanese delegation and chair of G77 plus China. But isn’t the Barack Obama administration more progressive about climate change? “Obama has only offered some of the most progressive utterances,” Lumumba shot back.

In the last week of talks in Bangkok developed countries (referred to as Annex I under the protocol) developed cold feet; they were not ready to commit to emission reduction targets for the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol. The first phase ends in 2012. The discussion came to a standstill.

In addition to the US, the European Union (EU), which had for long been claiming the moral high ground, turned out to be the villain. EU had proposed a reduction target of 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. This could go up to 30 per cent if an ambitious deal were signed in Copenhagen. EU had been banking on the US passing its climate change bill before the Copenhagen meet (see: Kerry-Boxer doesn’t pack a punch on P 28). That would have meant some sort of legal commitment from the US to reduce its emissions. But during the Bangkok meet it became clear that the US climate legislation would not be ready in time for Copenhagen.

So EU was faced with a situation where it would have committed to a reduction target without any commitment from the US.

Seeing that the biggest polluter might not come to Copenhagen with any reduction target, most developed countries began abandoning the Kyoto process. Japan, the other major party under Kyoto, has also expressed reservations about continuing under a Kyoto regime.

Why we need Kyoto
The negotiations on climate change take place under two ad hoc working groups.

The deadlock in the group discussing the reduction targets for Annex I countries had repercussions on the group debating long-term emission cuts by all nations and implementation of the Bali Action Plan, a roadmap to conclude a deal at Copenhagen. After failed negotiations in the first group, developing countries did not see any merit in continuing with negotiations in the second group. The ground was prepared for EU to make a pitch for a new unified treaty.

“There is now a concerted effort to somehow put the Kyoto Protocol aside and to say we need a new instrument in which the commitments of both those that are party to the protocol and those that are not party to the protocol could be reflected,” said Shyam Saran, Indian prime minister’s special envoy on climate change.

But the new treaty is also meant to reflect the commitments of developing countries, or at least the major developing countries. It is a call to throw out of the window the differentiation of responsibility for climate change. Emissions by the developed countries over the past decades are today haunting the developing countries. Developed nations are responsible, developing countries are not. This differentiation is at the heart of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (unfccc) and climate negotiations. Under Kyoto, developing countries are allowed to increase emissions so that they can develop.

EU reaffirmed its faith in the Kyoto process at press conferences, but said it was looking at one legal treaty that would include the Kyoto system, albeit in bits and pieces.

Developing countries are sceptical. “We do not accept the argument that you can save a legal instrument by tearing it to pieces and keeping the parts that you believe are good,” Chinese negotiator Yu retorted. “It’s a basic contradiction; you kill a document so that you can save it.”

“We are being told that a new and single instrument is essential if we want an agreement at Copenhagen. It does not need a great deal of imagination to see what this could lead to,” Saran said in the closing plenary in Bangkok. The proposals, far from enhancing climate change actions, will end up diluting the commitments of Annex I countries, unilaterally imposing new commitments and burdens on developing countries, he added.

Developing countries, more specifically what are termed emerging economies, the likes of India and China, are under pressure from developed countries to commit to emission-reduction targets. The US and EU have been bullying them to abandon the equity principle—that every individual has an equal share of atmospheric space—and to focus on actual emissions.

“We want to achieve the substantive goals of Kyoto, but we can do this only if we widen the participation. We are convinced that we need to bring into a single legal instrument all that we have done in Kyoto but make it applicable to a much wider participation—the US on the one hand and the emerging developing countries who have become large emitters on the other hand,” Jonathan Pershing, the chief US negotiator, said in Bangkok.

Adopting the same tenor, EU advocated dumping the per capita emissions approach based on the equity principle. Speaking on behalf of the developing nations, Yu tore into their web of arguments. “Emission aggregates don’t stand alone in abstract. Behind a country’s emissions are human beings. Each of them is entitled to a fair share of the common atmospheric space in the world,” he said. “I am sure everyone believes all are born equal. As a Chinese, I don’t think anyone can persuade me to believe that being born a Chinese would give me less entitlement compared to what someone born in a developed country would get. That is politically and morally incorrect.”

In the midst of relentless pressure and lobbying it seems one person blinked.

Just to bring the US into the fold does not mean that an instrument with more than a 100 parties is set aside. We are being told that a new, single instrument is essential for an agreement at Copenhagen. We are not engaged in negotiating a new climate change treaty. -SHYAM SARAN, Indian delegation headM
What they are trying to do during the past week or so is a concerted effort to put an end to Kyoto protocol and everything that protocol represents. It's a basic contradiction; you kill a document so that you can save it. It's just incomprehensible. -YU QINGTAI, Chinese delegation head
Attempts to replace the protocol will be counterproductive. Developed nations need to rise to the challenge, not race to the bottom with the US. -LUMUMBA DI APING, Sudanese Ambassador, G-77 + China Chair
When you have big countries not acting, then countries of a similar status feel 'we don't have to do anything too'. So rather than being aspirational everyone wants to do nothing. And the end outcome: we are more threatened, more vulnerable and our future more insecure. -ALBERT BINGER, Scientific advisor to Grenada, Chair of AOSIS

Sadly for India, it was its environment minister Jairam Ramesh.

India fumbles
Ramesh, in a confidential note to the prime minister, suggested a drastic shift in India’s stance in climate negotiations. Key suggestions included making compromises to bring the US on board an international agreement, putting in place domestic legislation for emission reduction, aligning more with the G20 than G77 and China, delinking mitigation actions from financing and technology transfer from Annex I countries, and a trade-off on climate negotiations in favour of securing a UN Security Council seat.

This was not the first time Ramesh expressed views widely divergent from India’s position. During his earlier visit to the US, he was quoted as saying that India would be open to verification of all its actions on mitigating climate change. India’s official position is that only the actions enabled by multilateral financing will be open for international verification. In fact, India has always opposed any kind of scrutiny of its domestic actions. In Bangkok this very issue led to an argument between an Indian negotiator and Pershing.

Following a backlash from all quarters on his note, Ramesh was forced to issue a clarification that India will never agree to eliminate the distinction between developed and developing countries. “I have never at any stage considered or advocated abandoning the fundamental tenets of the Kyoto Protocol,” the minister clarified.

But by suggesting that India might pass a greenhouse gas mitigation law, Ramesh seems to have walked into the US trap. The US has for long been advocating that instead of a multilateral, internationally binding treaty, each country pass its own mitigation law. In Bangkok, Pershing clearly stated that the US favoured “every country commits at home” and takes national actions which can then be enshrined in an international treaty.

Such an approach will destroy Kyoto. Climate change is not a domestic problem because CO₂ emissions do not know national boundaries. A global problem requires a global response. The US has been advocating that every country does what it can, and not what science demands of it. This approach will kill the multilateral process.

This will also mean delinking mitigation actions from financing and technology transfer, and that will be not be affordable for developing countries. India is, in any case, doing whatever it can to address climate change. In fact, it is doing far more than it is required to, more than the US and many other developed countries. But high-end technology options come at a cost. Under the Bali Action Plan, it was agreed by all parties that the developed countries would pay full, incremental costs for adaptation and mitigation actions in developing countries. They have to pay for their historical responsibility.

Linking a geopolitical issue like a Security Council seat to a soft stand at climate negotiations is not a good idea. By moving away from developing countries’ group (G77 and China), India will get isolated. There is no way it can then get a Security Council seat. G77 plus China has been a major force in negotiations, thwarting developed countries’ attempts at diluting Kyoto processes.

Ramesh’s eagerness to bring the US into the mainstream has led him to suggest measures that would compromise the very basis of negotiations, the unfccc and the Kyoto Protocol. Ramesh maintains that India supports any means to bring the US into the mainstream, without diluting the basic Annex I and non-Annex I distinction. But he is again faltering. This time by supporting the Australian proposal put forward earlier this year. The proposal creates a kind of schedule where all countries have commitments of similar nature, though the level of effort may differ. It is similar to the US approach of blurring the distinction between developed and developing countries. In Bangkok, the US asked for a single deal that puts similar commitments on all countries.

The Australian proposal suggests replacing the Kyoto Protocol with a series of national "schedules", in which countries record climate action plans and agree to be legally bound by what they themselves suggest.

For the industrialized world, the proposal has an intoxicating allure. It abandons the principal tenet of the Kyoto architecture that there is a fundamental difference between developed and developing countries. Instead it applies the framework of "Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions and Commitments" to everyone. It also opens other core elements of Kyoto, like targets, to renegotiation.

For instance, a discussion draft Australia submitted to the unfccc in May offered the following clarification: "The objective of this Agreement is to achieve an environmentally sound response to climate change...through unified long-term action that sets the world on a path to peak global emissions by [X] and then reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by [X] per cent by [X] on [X] levels..."

Australia proposes that all countries decide their own targets. This creates ample scope for horse-trading

Speaking before the New York University School of Law in September, Australia’s climate minister Penny Wong said, “In putting Australia’s proposal forward we are seeking once again to help find common ground where it has thus far eluded us.” Later in the speech she neatly packed the premise of the Australian proposal in feel-good jargon: “The design (of an agreement) itself can influence the level of ambition of the agreement because the design will influence the level of confidence the parties have.”

Subversion proposal
Translated into simple English it means: countries will sign an agreement in earnest only if it is flexible enough not to impose commitments they don’t like. This matters because an agreement will be durable only if countries sign earnestly. In turn, confidence in the enduring cachet of an agreement alone will bring countries to the negotiating table willing to make concessions. So the Australian logic is: if we want countries to agree to do more, we have to let them do less.

In the run-up to Copenhagen, delegates should understand the perversity and politics of this logic. They must closely scrutinize three issues. First, that the Australian proposal jettisons the principle of historical responsibility. The May discussion draft does not even contain the word “historical”. It also sterilizes the principle of common but differentiated responsibility by extending it to an absurd limit: every country is unique, so we must reject legally binding distinctions like Annex I and Non-Annex I countries. Although the proposal does not say countries like India, China or Brazil should take on targets, it also forbears to say they should not.

Second, the proposal suggests building an international agreement by collating national proposals. The May draft states, “Countries would put forward draft national schedules as part of the negotiation process. This would provide an opportunity for transparent assessment of the comparability of effort and comment on the draft schedules.”

The idea that science should determine the global level of effort, and principles of equity and responsibility should determine their distribution, is missing. Instead, following—or perhaps leading—the US example, domestic laws are allowed to set the global agenda.

Third, the very notion that without any guiding principles of equity or fairness, a free-for-all negotiation among 200 countries will yield fair results, beggars belief. Ramesh’s suggestion to the prime minister that India could obtain a Security Council seat by softening its climate position hints at the kind of horse-trading that could ensue.

Ever sanguine, Wong offered a salve in her speech: “For developing countries, taking on international mitigation obligations for the first time is a big deal, but the flexibilities in schedules are designed to give them greater comfort.” If “developing” is replaced by “developed”, the statement becomes insightful, much like the Australian minister’s closing remark: “Naturally, even the perfect design can only take us so far. The level of ambition (of the next agreement) will ultimately be determined by the political will of the parties.”

Prospects of getting an equitable and ambitious deal at Copenhagen are dimming by the day. It is now almost certain that the US will not be able to pass its climate bill in time for Copenhagen. American chief negotiator Todd Stern has said he would not go beyond what the US Congress is willing to endorse. As it did with Kyoto, the US is all set to let the world down a second time.

With inputs from Jaisel Vadgama

---------- BOX:Genesis of Kyoto ----------

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in 1992. The UNFCCC provides a framework to stabilize greenhouse gases at a level that would prevent “dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system”.

The framework convention recognized developed countries as the source of past and current greenhouse gas emissions, and made them responsible to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. Developing nations were given the time and space to increase their emissions in the pursuit of development. Thus, a principle of common but differentiated responsibilities was established.

In 1997, parties to the convention agreed to a Protocol to the UNFCCC in Kyoto, Japan. The Kyoto Protocol commits industrialized nations (known as Annex I under the treaty) to emission reduction targets.

These countries agreed to reduce their overall emissions by 5.2% below 1990 levels in the first commitment period of 2008-2012. Specific targets varied from country to country, ranging from -8% for the EU collectively to +10% for Iceland. The Kyoto Protocol came into force in February 2005.

Negotiations are on for the reduction targets of Annex I countries in the second commitment period. The Bali Action Plan, adopted in Bali in December 2007, set a deadline for the conclusion of negotiations at Copenhagen in December 2009.

---------- BOX:Kyoto diary ----------

December 11, 1997: Kyoto Protocol adopted with legally binding emission reduction targets for developed countries.

November 1998: The Byrd-Hagel resolution unanimously passed by the US Senate rejecting Kyoto

2001: The Third IPCC report presented the worst case scenario with the average global temperatures rising by 6 degrees Celsius within a century

July 2001: Most countries decide to continue with the ratification process at the climate Summit in Bonn

December 2002: Countries in the process of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol promise to do so within a year

E.U. Reaches Funding Deal on Climate Change

October 31, 2009
By JAMES KANTER and STEPHEN CASTLE

European Union leaders on Friday offered to contribute money to a global fund to help developing countries tackle global warming hoping kick-start stalled talks on a new agreement on climate change.

But E.U. leaders disappointed climate campaigners by making the offer conditional on donations from other parts of the world and by failing to decide how much Europe would contribute to a global pot of up to 50 billion euros by 2020.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt insisted the E.U. now had "a very strong negotiating position" to press for a global deal at United Nations talks in Copenhagen in December that are aimed at agreeing a successor accord to the Kyoto Protocol.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, also stressed that Europe was leading the way.

"There is no-one else among the industrialized nations" to have made as concrete an offer of climate finance, Ms. Merkel told a press conference in Brussels.

But environmental groups took a mostly negative view of the results of the two-day summit, saying E.U. leaders had chosen vague, global figures and thereby diminished chances of unblocking climate negotiations ahead of the meeting in Copenhagen.

"Europe has failed once again to say how much it is prepared to contribute for climate finance," said Sonja Meister, a climate campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe. "In every way the EU is shirking its historical responsibilities and blocking progress towards the just and fair agreement the world needs in Copenhagen," she said.

The European Commission had called on E.U. leaders to make an offer of up to 15 billion euros annually by 2020.

Mr. Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister, said leaders had instead agreed that developing nations needed about 100 billion euros annually by 2020 and that, of that sum, between 22 billion euros and 50 billion euros would have to come from public funds, as opposed to private sources like investments in carbon-reduction projects.

Mr. Reinfeldt also said that E.U. nations could make a voluntary decision to contribute to a so-called fast-track mechanism that would make funds available immediately to developing countries.

Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, put a brave face on the result, underlining that the trade bloc should not be "naive" going into the negotiations in Copenhagen that are set to begin in fewer than six weeks.

"Our offer is not a blank check," said Mr. Barroso. "We are ready to act, if our partners deliver," he said.

E.U. officials said that Ms. Merkel, the German chancellor, who had been reticent over making any European commitment, had been persuaded that the figures were only conditional on steps being taken by other nations.

Business Daily (Nairobi) Africa: Continent Rejects New Climate Change Pact Cosmas Butunyi 27 October 2009

As the clock ticks towards the climate change talks in Copenhagen, Africa has now declared that it will not accept a new pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

The African negotiators have also stated that neither will they accept a merger of the protocol that is currently in use, with a new agreement.

In a statement to mark the end of their Second Technical Meeting in Addis Ababa, the negotiators said successful negotiations should produce...

They want sections of the Kyoto Protocol on the developed countries to be amended to include further commitments for a second and subsequent commitment periods.

Africa also wants a separate legal instrument to be developed based on the outcome of the negotiations of the Bali Action Plan under the Climate Change Convention.

The statement reiterated that Africa should be equitably compensated in the context of environmental justice, for environmental resources, economic and social losses considering developed countries historical responsibilities on climate change.

"In this respect, Africa requires new, sustained and scaled-up finance, technology and capacity for adaptation and risk management," the statement read in part.

Africa wants the outcome of the Copenhagen convention to provide new, additional, sustainable, accessible and predictable finance to support a comprehensive international programme on adaptation, that reduces vulnerability and increases resilience.

The provision of financial, technological and capacity building support by developed country parties for adaptation in developing countries, they argued, is a commitment under the climate change Convention that must be urgently fulfilled.

The second technical meeting in Addis Ababa brought together about 150 African lead negotiators and high level experts on climate change from all African countries.

It is an initiative of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment and the African Union, (AU), in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Environment Programme.

This was one of the last meetings the continent is holding to consolidate consensus on its common position and was held in the backdrop of new developments in the ongoing negotiations on climate change, which tend to suggest the replacement or the merger of the Kyoto Protocol, among others.

The updated and consolidated African Common Position will be submitted to African Ministers and Heads of State on the eve of the COP- 15 in Copenhagen. The negotiators' statement said that the post-2012 regime should be based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"Africa's shared vision calls for a fair, inclusive, effective and equitable new agreement in Copenhagen that will benefit the climate and vulnerable countries and be undertaken in the context of poverty eradication, sustainable development and the need for gender equity," the statement said.

The negotiators said that as the most vulnerable continent, Africa deserved the right for full support to adapt to climate change.

This is also due to the continent's least contribution to the global greenhouse gas emissions yet its communities stand to suffer the most.

Concerning mitigation, the African negotiators would like to see a firewall maintained between mitigation commitments by all developed countries and mitigation actions by developing countries.

While developed Countries must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 80 per cent to 95 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050, in order to achieve the lowest level of stabilisation assessed by the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, mitigation actions for Africa should be voluntary and nationally appropriate and must be fully supported and enabled by technology transfer, finance and capacity building from developed Countries.

Other key messages are related to institutional arrangements that must be equitable and transparent; Technology deployment, diffusion and transfer and institutional capacity in Africa.

China, India Sign Climate Change Cooperation Accord

If China and India get to speak the same language a whole (rather than quarreling over trivial boarder issues...) with the richer nations, agreements that favors developing countries might come easier!!
As I had just discussed this with my IR professor and wanted to share it with folks from IYCN, I came across the following piece of news.


China, India Sign Climate Change Cooperation Accord (Update1)

By Gaurav Singh and John Duce

Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- India signed an agreement with China, the world’s biggest polluter, to increase cooperation on tackling climate change after the countries rejected calls from rich nations to set binding caps on carbon emissions.

The memorandum of understanding was signed today in New Delhi by India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh and Xie Zhenhua, vice minister at China’s National Development and Reform Commission. The agreement comes ahead of a United Nations climate-change summit in Copenhagen in December.

The world’s fastest-growing major economies called on rich nations to slash carbon dioxide output while refusing to accept binding reduction targets that they say will hurt development. Chinese President Hu Jintao said last month his country will cut emissions in proportion to economic growth, without outlining specific goals.

“The two countries have in recent weeks said what they’re doing to tackle climate change and the aim of the talks is partly to help consolidate their negotiating position ahead of Copenhagen,” said Yang Ailun, a spokeswoman at the environmental pressure group Greenpeace in Beijing. “There’s no way developing countries will accept caps.”

More than 190 nations are set to gather in Copenhagen starting Dec. 7 for the final round of talks on a climate accord to replace the Kyoto Protocol, expiring in 2012. China and India say wealthy countries including the U.S. should lower emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 and share technology with poorer nations to help them fight climate change.

Copenhagen Contribution

“India and China are most vulnerable to climate change,” Xie said today. “Both countries are in the process of rapid industrialization and urbanization. I am confident China and India will make a positive contribution to Copenhagen.”

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto protocol are the most appropriate framework for addressing climate change, according to the copy of the agreement given to reporters in New Delhi.

“Both India and China are collaborating to ensure a fair and equitable outcome at Copenhagen,” Ramesh said. “There is virtually no difference in Indian and Chinese negotiating positions.”

China and India will cooperate on energy conservation and efficiency, renewable energy and forest management, according to the accord, which is valid for five years. It calls on rich nations to provide funds and transfer technology to help developing countries.

South Asian Treaty

India will consider outside measurement and verification of its efforts to tackle climate change if they were supported by international finance and the transfer of technology from developed nations, Ramesh said in a statement yesterday.

India and neighboring countries plan to make a joint statement at Copenhagen on their actions to combat climate change and may sign a regional environment treaty next year, Ramesh said in a separate speech at a meeting of officials from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

“A regional environment treaty will be finalized, to be signed at the next Saarc summit at Thimpu in April 2010,” he said in New Delhi yesterday. Thimpu is the capital of Bhutan.

The South Asian grouping, called Saarc, includes India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives and Bhutan. China is not a member.

Do More

China’s Xie will hold talks with Ramesh to discuss prospects for the Copenhagen summit, according to the government statement.

“India and China’s emphasis now is putting more pressure on countries like the U.S. to promise to do more in terms of emission cuts and technology transfer,” Yang said.

Ramesh suggested earlier this month that only a limited agreement would emerge in Copenhagen and that the conference should focus on rich countries financing and aiding poor nations affected by climate change.

Trust between rich and developing nations had “broken down” at recent UN negotiations in Bangkok, he said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Gaurav Singh in New Delhi at gsingh31@bloomberg.net; John Duce in Hong Kong at Jduce1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 21, 2009 02:16 EDT