Daily Summary Wednesday, 5 Dec 2012
COP18 is entering its final stages, and the barriers to a successful outcome are emerging. The president of the COP, Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah of Qatar, called a high-level Ministerial plenary to take stock of progress under the various workstreams. The stock take revealed that some areas are moving along well, like establishing a scientifically robust review of the 2 degree C goal, and increasing the share of proceeds from clean development mechanisms. The work on the Durban Platform (ADP) has been proceeding well, with good outcomes for Vanuatu in terms of shared vision for a post 2020 and relatively ambitious workplan for pre-2020 activities.
The high level stocktaking revealed that some areas are clearly stalled, like the Kyoto 2nd commitment period and setting up a loss and damage mechanism. Negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol and the Long Term Cooperative Action have been moving at a snails pace. At meeting of the ADP yesterday, several parties stated that we cannot leave Doha unless a 2nd commitment period of the Kyoto is agreed and the work of the LCA is wrapped up. All agreed to temporarily suspend the work of the ADP until some progress is seen elsewhere in the convention.
The Kyoto protocol is in serious trouble, as now the only Annex I parties include the European Union and Australia. These two groups only represent about 15% of global emissions, which means most emitting countries are not bound by any international agreement. Most of the big emitters: United States, Canada, Japan etc have either never ratified it or are refusing to take a 2nd commitment period after 2012. The developing country emitters like China, India and Brazil claim that historical emissions are not their fault and so should not have a large burden in solving the problem. If a continuation of the Kyoto is not agreed here, there will no longer be any legally binding international agreement on climate change, and this would mean starting again at zero to draft another treaty. Vanuatu is negotiating hard to increase ambition under the 2nd commitment period, even if we have to have a longer, 8 year, period.
With the surplus emissions credits (AAUs) if a party does not decide to accept an amendment to cut out this ‘hot air’, they would still keep their surplus credits but there would be no market for them, because that do ratify an amendment to CP2 would not be allowed to buy them! So Vanuatu is looking good in achieving its position to cancel these surplus credits and cut out 13 gT of ‘hot air’ from the atmosphere.
The big problem in the LCA at the moment is the disagreement on the call for developed countries to make big and ambitions emissions reduction pledges (from 40-50% above 1990 levels). Developed countries seem not to want to go in any direction that would mean stricter, more transparent and common accounting rule and methods on green house gas emissions.
Vanuatu is making good progress in pushing for climate finance reform and upscaling. That is to say, calling for more appropriate ways for developing countries to directly access funding, and increasing the amount of money that is available. Yesterday, the president of the COP18 organized a special ministerial consultation on climate finance, in order to seek consensus on the ways to operationalize the existing climate funds (especially the now empty Green Climate Fund) and get numerical post 2012 financing on track. Developing countries are facing strong opposition by developed country Parties to set any timeline for the full operationalization of the Green Climate Fund, including initiating its first replenishment process. Vanuatu is pushing to a) have a clear post Fast-Start commitment and b) continue the technical work program on long-term financing for another year to ensure we have high level ministerial support for expanding financial flows.
Vanuatu lead negotiator Brian Phillips spent another late night session fighting to ensure that an international loss and damage mechanisms is set up, and deals concretely with the issue of compensation for countries like Vanuatu that are hit hard by climate extremes.
At side events, Vanuatu has been engaged in forums on improving NAMA implementation by developing countries, increasing the role of Vanuatu’s scientists in the IPCC review process, new and innovative web based climate information platforms, and finding more space for women’s involvement in and contribution to climate solutions.