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GISR is a global non-profit initiative aimed at moving markets to the advantage of corporate sustainability leaders.  It was launched with the aim of accrediting other sustainability ratings, rankings or indices to apply its standard for measuring excellence in corporate sustainability performance. It will not rate companies on sustainability.

Currently, more than 100 ratings, ranking and indices are evaluating the performance of more than 10,000 companies. They are using more than 2,000 indicators of corporate sustainability performance. “This abundance of sustainability information may seem to be a boon to investors”, but it produces more noise and confusion than real benefits, said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, who announced the GISR . “In the same year, companies that score high on one rating system may score low on others, often confounding investors, confusing companies and constraining ratings’ potential to move markets towards more sustainable outcomes.”

To address this challenge, GISR aims to accelerate the integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and indicators in investment decision-making. It will do so by building a new standard that equips investors, companies and other stakeholders with the tools to recognize true excellence in corporate sustainability. “GISR’s goal is to create a benchmark of excellence that will bolster investor confidence in sustainability ratings and increase their uptake,” said Mark Tulay, GISR Program Director.

A multi-stakeholder initiative with involvement from investors, companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), GISR’s standard development process includes three components: Principles, Issues and Indicators. The Principles, announced today, identify the core attributes of a ratings framework applicable to all sustainability ratings, rankings and indices.

The Beta Version of the 12 Principles includes: Transparency, Impartiality, Continuous Improvement, Inclusiveness, Assurability, Materiality, Comprehensiveness, Sustainability Context, Long-Term Horizon, Value Chain, Balance and Comparability. The public comment period will be open from June 1 – July 31, 2013. The Principles may be found at www.ratesustainability.org.

Hugo Chávez passes away at a critical moment of Venezuela’s history. He has come to power at another critical moment of his country’s history. After leading a failed coup d’état, he became the Constitutional president by winning a regular presidential election. Venezuela faced, then, a deep political crisis due to the loss of legitimacy and credibility of the traditional political parties which dominated the country for more than four decades. Chávez dies when his country faces a deep political division at the social level, without firm leadership both on the opposition, and among the “chavistas” to lead the way forward.

A long economic crisis has not been solved by recent growth recovery. Inflation is rampant, there has been recurring shortages of food and other staples since Chávez’ first term, unemployment is high, and urban violence widespread.

The key player in post-Chávez Venezuela will very likely be the Armed Forces. The true guarantors of power are the “chavistas” generals, his old pals from the times they were all colonels or lieutenant colonels. Chávez replaced the incumbent generals by his mates, as soon as he came to power. The fact that they declared their support to Nicolás Maduro and “the Bolivarian revolution”, immediately after the announcement of their commander-in-chief death is just a sign of their decisive role in Venezuelan politics.

There is a clear, non-negligible risk of a facade civilian government, controlled by the military at the backstage. To understand the uncertainties and political risks associated with Chávez’ death we should look at the context in which chavismo emerged, and developed into a mass political movement under his leadership. Chávez’ personal, physical demise does not lead immediately to the political end of chavismo. But ‘chavismo sin Chávez’, chavismo without Chávez, becomes a totally different political phenomenon. It will be, for some time, the dominant political force in the country, but without strong leadership, or politically qualified heirs. A personalized political movement without its iconic leader may likely turn into an unstable, irritable mass uprising.

Economic difficulties, violence, and continued dependency on oil revenues will only make this complex transition even more troublesome. Chávez has used oil revenues extensively to finance his politically-oriented social and economic programs. PDVSA, the state-owned oil company has been deeply politicized, and has been in a delicate financial situation for some time.

The crisis out of which chavismo has emerged was characterized by the presence of large marginalized and dispossessed masses, electoral alienation and political demobilization. The crisis Chávez leaves as one of his presidency’s legacies is marked by a deep, radical, and aggressive polarization confronting the higher and middle classes to the overwhelmingly chavistas lower classes. Chávez has come to power at the collapse of Venezuela’s traditional political elites, and failing party leadership. He dies in the absence of strong, autonomous, credible leadership both in the opposition, and within “chavismo”.

When Hugo Chávez won the presidency, Venezuela was facing the decline of a clientele-based, oligarchic, stable semi-democratic order established by the Pact of Punto Fijo, in 1958. The main players in forging this pact were  Rómulo Betancourt and Rafael Caldera, representing the two main parties. The pact had the support of all existing parties but the Communist, and was backed by the military. It prompted four decades of stable bipartisan domination whereby the two major parties, the AD (Acción Democrática) and COPEI, have alternated in power, and controlled  all economic, social, and political power resources, including oil. In 1998, when Chávez was first elected president, electoral abstention was larger than the sum total of votes given to the traditional parties. It was the final sign indicating the collapse of the old Venezuelan political order. Chávez ended a four decade long cycle of Venezuelan politics. His death ends prematurely the cycle of chavismo under his self-centered, fierce, and charismatic control, supported by extremely loyal, and passionate popular masses.

Venezuela was a social time bomb when Chávez took power. High population growth (131% between 1961 e 1999), fast urbanization (40% increase of urban population between 1950 e 2000), and exponentially rising popular discontent made fertile ground for a personalist, charismatic, popular leadership. Add to these macro-social elements extreme marginalization of recently urbanized indigenous masses, and political demobilization, and one gets the full recipe of the emergence of chavismo. Chávez failed to seize power by a coup de force, in 1992, only to succeed with his “bolivarian” discourse to please the masses, six years later. He raised to power with a clear hegemonic calling, mobilizing the dispossessed, and feeding the deepest and most aggressive class-based political polarization the country has ever had.

To get full backing for his bolivarian project Chávez was aware he needed more than popular support though. The attempt to oust him by force, in 2002, made clear that aggressive political polarization was a double-edged sword. From the beginning of his presidency, he began to obtain full control, and to further develop, another critical political resource: the armed forces. After all, he was of military origin, a former colonel, whose military carrier was interrupted when he led the failed 1992 coup. If left on their own, the military might become a weapon of hostile conservative political elites, despite the culture of military respect for the constitutional order. He couldn’t afford that. Chávez forced the incumbent generals to retire, and promoted the colonels, and lieutenant colonels of his generation to the top of the military hierarchy. Several of them had sided with him when he tried to seize power in 1992, and were acquitted because Chávez assumed full and personal responsibility for the coup. With his brothers in arms settled as generals and commanders of strategic military units, Chávez imported top of the line armaments and other military equipment from Russia, transforming the Venezuelan armed forces into the most well and fully equipped in the continent.

Finally, he established a decisive and strategic link between the military and his social project, transferring the control of his “Misiones Sociales”, the numerous social projects destined to transfer income and social services to the impoverished masses, to military units. The “Misiones Sociales” are more than instruments of social policy financed by oil revenues: they have a strong political content, although operated by the military, rather than by the party or civilian politicians like in traditional populist governments so common in Latin American history. Social gains are undeniable, and they have supported Chávez’ control of power for 14 years.

This strategic construction of the bolivarian political system is key to understanding why all civilian leaders within chavismo are nothing but satellite leaderships, dependent on the power and light of the now dead president. This is true for the three main present political players: vice-president Nicolás Maduro, former vice-president and presently minister of Foreign Relations, Elias Jaua, the head of the Parliament and vice-chairman of the ruling party, the “Partido Unido da Venezuela” (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello,. They were brought up by Chávez. Chávez made Jaua to leave the vice-presidency to run for the government of the state of Miranda against Enrique Capriles, main leadership from the opposition, who challenged Chávez in the last presidential elections. Capriles has lost to Chávez, and Jaua to Capriles. Chávez did no longer have the physical strength to effectively campaign for Jaua. When the president was already dying and incapacitated, Maduro, as interim president, appointed him as Foreign Minister, the post that was Maduro’s when Jaua was the vice-president. Cabello, who has been with Chávez since the 1992 coup, was reelected as head of the Parliament. Cabello is the only of the three presumed heirs to have a direct linkage with the military. He has more power than the other two. It was his the call to keep Maduro as vice-president although they were never inaugurated after the last election, because Chávez was already in treatment in Cuba. But he faces very serious charges of involvement with organized crime. Organized crime has increased significantly over the next half decade in Venezuela, especially fed by drug trafficking.

After Chávez burial, next Friday, which will surely have scenes of despair and sadness among the popular masses, and very likely, moments of violence against Chávez “enemies”,  Venezuela will probably plunge into instability and uncertainty. The mobilized masses will gain the streets without a leader to lead the way. It is unlikely that the political nucleus of chavismo, Maduro, Cabello and Jaua; Adán Chávez, the president’s brother and governor of the state of Barinas, a founding father of the ruling party, PSUV, and a historic leftist militant; and Jorge Areaza, Chávez son in law, presently minister for Science and Technology, will remain united. They will very likely fight for Chávez legacy in the near future. It is questionable whether any of them has the capacity to control and keep alive chavismo, now orphaned of his creator and undisputed boss. A mobilized, frustrated, enraged, and saddened people occupying the streets without a clear centralized command have never paved a firm way to democracy and stable governance.

Venezuela will likely leave turbulent moments without Chávez, and the final result final is unpredictable. What is predictable is that the country will navigate stormy waters looking at a densely cloudy horizon, before a new and stable political order settles down. The next relevant political event after the grand burial will be the new presidential elections, to take place within 30 days as the Constitution determines. Maduro will start as the frontrunner, due to his relations with Chávez during the campaign and his illness. Capriles may run again. His public statement yesterday sounded like a first movement in that direction, when he said that he and Chávez “were adversaries, but never enemies”. He has the advantage of strong recall. He got a surprisingly high vote, running against the all-powerful, though already physically fragile, Chávez. His main disadvantage is being anti-Chávez, hence his statement. Maduro has the advantage of being pro-Chávez, and having being declared by the dying president as his replacement in the presidency. His disadvantage is the lack of charisma, and, most importantly, his lack of credibility among the masses. He is considered to be an able infighter. He may win the elections, but fail to be an effective president to lead the country in these troubled times.

Nothing is guaranteed in Venezuela, after 14 years under the firm grip of a self-centered, bright, charismatic, bombastic, ironical, and histrionic personality like Hugo Chávez.

A balance of the decisions made at the Climate Convention (UNFCCC) since Bali, in 2007, would show that there has been little more than formal progress. The most concrete outcome so far has been the result of the frustrated COP15 held in Copenhagen, in 2009. Large emitters outside the Kyoto Protocol have pledged to reduce their carbon emissions for the first time. Among them The United States, China, India, and Brazil.

They presented modest emissions reduction targets, considering their contribution to past (U.S.), present, and future emissions (all). But these commitments have, nevertheless, a political and symbolic meaning, because it was the first time these countries have formally admitted to take emissions reduction goals within a multilateral framework.  The Copenhagen Summit, ended abruptly with the exit of the political leaders, and the Copenhagen Agreement was not adopted by the Convention plenary session. It thus remained outside the framework of the Climate Convention. This inconsistency of the status of an agreement closed by the most important world leaders of the time was solved by the Cancun Agreements of 2010. Negotiators agreed to incorporate the Copenhagen decisions in the text of the new agreements thus making them legal. Now the commitments to reduce emissions are legal, under an international law, although not binding. There are no mechanisms for reporting, monitoring, and verifying these emissions. There is no accountability to them. In Durban, last year, negotiators have approved a second period of commitment for the Kyoto Protocol, although even less representative of bigger emitters than the first one. The new addendum to the Protocol will hardly cover more than 13% of global carbon emissions. Some analysts see the maintenance of its legal framework as an important gain, because it might serve as the basis for a new and more encompassing global agreement in the future. The Kyoto Protocol has been and continues to be irrelevant, as far as climate change is concerned. Although legally binding it also lacks mechanisms of enforcement and does not ensure the accountability of the pledges.

In Durban it was decided that this year the two workgroups that have centralized climate change negotiations for more than a decade should finish their job. The group in charge of negotiating a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol has finished its job, by delivering a weaker protocol, and by leaving some important questions unresolved. The group in charge of long-term action, and drafting a new global agreement closed shop by just forwarding key unresolved issues to the plenary of the parties. The second period of commitment for the Kyoto Protocol will make no real difference. The drafting of a new global treaty, or protocol, binding all big carbon emitters has been postponed to 2015, to be in force by 2020. This had been already decided in Durban, last year. Thus delayed, the agreement risks making no difference either. COP18, in Doha, this year, was a clear failure. Some analysts contend it wasn’t a total failure only because it avoided the collapse of the UNFCCC process. An argument that was also used to justify not declaring the Copenhagen, Cancun, and Durban meetings a complete failure.

It is this somber balance of many COPs (conferences of the parties do the Climate Convention) that is leading experts and scientists to ask for the end, of these meetings or, at the very least, that they be convened every five years or so. Their argument is that deadlock and muddle-through are preventing building new momentum for climate change action. Some also say that the goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees Celsius has become much too central. This goal is likely no longer attainable, and the focus on emissions reductions has inhibited more significant action to protect societies from unavoidable effects of ongoing climate change, i.e. adaptation.

The point that we should pay less attention to reductions of emissions, and invest more on preparedness to inevitable climate change makes sense. My problem is not with the need to prepare our nations to inevitable extreme climate events. We must do it. What is highly debatable is the argument which some defending this point are making, that investment in preparedness should replace investment on emissions, because the former that can be quicker, cheaper, and more effective. These actions should be complementary and viewed as equally necessary goals. Otherwise this point would amount to surrendering to the inevitability of extreme climate change.

The goal of reducing carbon emissions has been delayed by deadlock and muddling-through at the UNFCCC, but it cannot be abandoned. We should continue to aim at building a low carbon society. Delayed decisions at the Climate Convention have been used as an excuse for inaction. The transition to a low carbon society will hardly come out of these negotiations. To move the focus to domestic decision-making does indeed make sense. To invest more political and financial resources on local action, and to abandon expectations of timely decision from Climate summits is a sensible advise, provided we push for a twofold policy strategy. One which the main purpose is moving towards a low carbon society, while adapting our countries to the ill effects of inevitable climate change.

UNFCCC negotiations will hardly deliver an ambitious and both politically and legally strong accord. They’ll always decide only what has already decided at home. They’ll always aim at the common ground among domestic decisions. Every critical decision will be first made and adopted domestically prior to becoming a commitment at the international level. Only domestic policy-making will bring real change. So the main focus of political pressure, and civic action, should be domestic rather than international. But global civil society cannot abstain from acting at the global arenas. Climate change is a global threat, although solutions are only viable at the domestic front to begin with. Nevertheless we will need a future framework for global climate governance. It is not the case of abandoning any of the issues or leaving any of the arenas. It is the case for redeployment of resources, and redirection of the focus of major political activity towards domestic politics, without leaving the global arena.

A maneuver to introduce a clause about Internet governance on the International Telecommunications Treaty led to protest and several democratic countries declined to sign the document. They have strong reasons to refuse. The Internet was born to be self-governed. Not to become the subject of some organization’s dominance, be it multilateral or domestic.

Governance is a fickle word. It fits many different narratives. Words do not have a life of their own – although authors, especially fiction writers may tell you they do. Fickle words are used at the whim in charge of the narrative. They can be used deviously to mask the real purposes and the real attributes of the narrative. They can be used fairly and transparently to convey meaning and informative content to the narrative. If governance is to be a virtuous citizen-based mode of regulation, and transparent inclusive decision-making it has a positive value. If it is a fashionable word to cover authoritarian rules, manipulation and censorship it has a negative value.

The controversy over Internet governance in Dubai, during the WCTI conference emerged after the term appeared unexpectedly on a draft resolution of the ITRs. This sudden appearance on a narrative in which it wasn’t expected to be a part caused a breech of confidence. Many feared that it was a cunning maneuver to introduce it as a principle among the rules of the new treaty. Suspicions were supported by the fact that the draft gave ITU a mandate “to play active and constructive roles in the development of broadband and the multi-stakeholder model of the internet”. Another controversial clause says that “the Internet is a central element of the infrastructure of the information economy, and recognizes that all governments should have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance, the security and stability of the Internet, and its future development.”

The draft was supported by a coalition of authoritarian nations, most of them well-known for their a long tradition of repression of civil liberties and censorship, among them Russia and China. Censorship never succeeds to mute the voice of dissidence and the manifestation of difference. In the late Soviet Union, for example, no degree of repression and censorship was enough to eliminate the “Samizdat”. The volume of circulation of “Samizdat” was impressive, and they ended up on the hands of publishers outside the USSR. Some of their authors became icons of resistance to totalitarianism and literary prowess. But it would be dreadful if we would be forced to devise new “Samizdat” models as a tool to elude a censored Internet. Censorship would certainly provoke a cyberguerrilla warfare. We’ve already had examples of creative ways to elude censorship in Egypt, Iran, Cuba, China, and wherever governments tried to prevent citizens from expressing their opinions on the Net or to hide the atrocities they were committing against their people or internal minorities.

There is a virtuous mode of Internet governance, and it is necessarily a mode of self-government based on a free and active cybercitizenry, open, transparent and free networking, capable of self-regulation. Those who declined to sign the new treaty are right. It may not have an authoritarian narrative yet, but it carries its seeds in dubious clauses that can be interpreted at the whim of any dictator. ITU’s secretary general, Hamadoun Toure, was surprised with the strong opposition to the decision. He said the conference was a success and that the changes “to the international telecommunications regulations (ITRs) introduced new protections for consumers around the world, and would help billions more get online”.

TechNet CEO Rey Ramsey strongly opposed the changes, stating that:

“The ITU is government-centric, lacks transparency, excludes key stakeholders including civil society, and fails to promote a multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance that was embraced by the world’s governments at the 2005 World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), and has been a pillar of the industry’s innovation and growth,” he said. “While it is our understanding that the resolutions made at the WCIT are non-binding, the Secretary-General might treat them as binding, which effectively creates a dangerous mandate for the ITU to continue to hold discussions about Internet policy into the future.”

Ed Black, speaking for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, said that “the controversial circumstances that gave rise to yesterday’s Internet power grab should be illuminating. Giving this body control over the future of greatest input to the world’s economy should be a non-starter.” To him, “under no circumstances should the stewards of the Internet be forced to hand over the keys to Internet governance mechanisms to a body where the short-sighted political considerations of morally questionable regimes hold more weight than concerns of the very engineers and programmers who have built and maintained the Internet since its birth.”

The Internet is a network of networks born to be self-governed. Any delegation of governance power to any agency, multilateral or domestic, would become a clear and present danger of authoritarian manipulation and censorship based on a plethora of moral, political, and practical arguments that may appear to make sense to some. At the end of the day, however, they simply carry the same ideas that led to book burning, the Inquisition, witch hunting and mccarthyism.

The decision rules of the conference gave the power of the majority to countries that have no democracy at home. They benefit from global democratic institutions to foster their undemocratic purposes. This is the major contradiction of UN institutions. All multilateral conferences that follow the general assembly model run the risk of spurious coalitions blocking measures aiming at increasing democracy and freedom of opinion, and making decisions that represent a danger to democracy and freedom. These majorities based on spurious coalitions work against the general will and the collective wisdom. I’ve seen that happen in many conferences of the parties to the Climate Change Convention.

European Commission’s vice-president and commissary for the digital agenda, Neelie Kroes, also reacted to the decision:

“While we do not believe that Internet governance should be under the ambit of the ITRs, this does not mean the EU wants to “set in stone” all current governance practices. New trends in traffic volumes and new demand for assured quality of delivery, may lead to new solutions, but I am confident that our current European and international frameworks allow more nimble and appropriate commercial reactions than any international treaty. We also want to support developing countries to build capacity and infrastructures for the Internet.”

This debate is not over yet. It will continue over the next years and we can expect tough encounters between those willing to control the Internet, and those who want a free, self-governed Internet. The Internet will change a lot and very fast, as it has been doing since its very beginning. The Websphere will expand and diversify through many unexpected and mostly unpredictable ways. Thus has been its history so far. And the history of its future will show even more change and much faster. Any attempt to guide or program change brings serious dangers to freedom of opinion and creation. Those potential restrictions to freedom and creativity are unacceptable and could lead to technical stagnation and clog the extraordinary channels for networked democratic intercourse. Free expression through the social media and other channels available on the Web have a relevant role that cannot be curtailed. They allow watchdogs to blow the whistle and give transparency to violence, repression, corruption, plots, and all sorts of deviations from democratic and humanitarian principles. They are the best tools of the network society we have to  monitor political, social and economic processes both locally and globally.

A free Internet is today a prerequisite for increasing the quality of domestic and global democratic institutions. Most contemporary democracies are reverting to oligarchies. The channels for representation have been sequestered by special interests, lobbies and specialized advocacy groups. The parties are controlled by internal oligarchies. Only the social networks give citizens the means to express their preferences and defend their interests. A free Internet has become the main tool of the networked society to progressively build a new democracy, a more transparent and autonomous citizen-centered poliarchy.

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2012/15/ST

IPCC STATEMENT 

14 December 2012

Unauthorized posting of the draft of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report 

GENEVA, 14 December – The Second Order Draft of the Working Group I contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (WGI AR5) has been made available online. The IPCC regrets this unauthorized posting which interferes with the process of assessment and review. We will continue not to comment on the contents of draft reports, as they are works in progress.

The Expert and Government Review of the WGI AR5 was held for an 8-week period ending on 30 November 2012. A total of 31,422 comments was submitted by 800 experts and 26 governments on the Second Order Draft of the Chapters and the First Order Draft of the Summary for Policymakers and Technical Summary. The author teams together with the Review Editors are now considering these comments and will meet at the Working Group I Fourth Lead Author Meeting on 13-19 January 2013 in Hobart, Tasmania, to respond to all the comments received during the Expert and Government Review.

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The unauthorized and premature posting of the drafts of the WGI AR5, which are works in progress, may lead to confusion because the text will necessarily change in some respects once all the review comments have been addressed. It should also be noted that the cut-off date for peer-reviewed published literature to be included and assessed in the final draft lies in the future (15 March 2013). The text that has been posted is thus not the final report.

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Sergio Abranches

After a week of informal conversations in Bangkok, Thailand, negotiators already know what stumbling blocks they will face on the way towards  a successful meeting of the parties to the Climate Convention, COP18, in Doha, Qatar, November 26 to December 7. Most of the obstacles come from an old quarrel between the US and Europe, on the one side, and China, India and Brazil, on the other, on the meaning of the principle of common but differentiated obligations under the Climate Convention.

Negotiators who participated to the Bangkok talks told me they were quite satisfied with progress towards closing the loopholes on the agreement on a second period of commitment for the Kyoto Protocol. But they’re worried with the still existing deadlocks on the conversations to close the details for an agreement on Long-Term Climate Action (LCA). Both belong to an agenda scheduled to be closed in 2009 at the Copenhagen summit.

Meanwhile, a third line of negotiations has already started that presupposes an end of these two other lines that belong to the pre-Durban Platform agenda, they explained. This third parallel group is discussing a plan for implementation of the process leading to a new global climate change agreement binding all countries that has been decided at COP17, in Durban, South Africa, last year.

What the parties have decided in Durban was that in Doha the long overdue job of these two Working Groups should be closed, and the groups dismissed: the AWG-KP – set up at the Montréal Climate Summit, COP11, in 2005, to negotiate a second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol –, and the AWG-LCA – created by the Bali Action Plan, at COP13, in 2007, to “conduct a comprehensive process to enable the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention through long-term cooperative action, now, up to and beyond 2012”. In Bangkok, China and India have used a set of clever arguments, according to a diplomat, to stall the negotiations to complete LCA’s job. The duration of both groups have been successively extended since Copenhagen due to deadlocks preventing negotiators to close a final deal under each one’s job definition, or mandate.

From the Doha Summit onwards, countries should dedicate their time solely to the tasks set by the Durban Platform. In Doha, the the expected outcome according with the Platform should be to approve a work plan for 2013 and 2014 to implement the process leading to a new legal instrument on climate change. This means to agree on the form and content of a new global deal to be approved in 2015, and to be in force by 2020. Negotiators are also expected to start discussing how they will review the emissions reductions targets presented at the Copenhagen Summit, COP15, and adopted by the Cancun Agreements, at Cop16, as a legal, although not binding, decision under the Climate Convention. This review should be based on IPCC’s new report on the state of climate science to be issued in 2014.

Some of the diplomats that were at the Bangkok talks say that they sensed a convergence towards a new protocol to be adopted by 2020. This convergence, they claim,  raises the importance of formally approving the second period of commitment for the Kyoto Protocol in Doha, because it would keep standing the legal framework and the instruments upon which the new and more encompassing protocol could be built.

But several countries are still against a new protocol, claiming that this was not agreed upon in Durban. The phrase approved in the early morning of Sunday, December 11, last year, after three sleepless nights of negotiations, is rather ambiguous on the status of the new agreement. The decision was to “develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force”. One of the difficulties in Bangkok came directly from disagreement among countries regarding how to implement the decision to “launch a process” to develop this legal instrument. Europe and some other countries would like to start negotiations by defining the legal nature of the outcome: a protocol. China and India negotiators, among others oppose this starting point, and are not ready to accept negotiating a new protocol. They propose, instead to start the process by discussing what substantive subjects should be included in the new agreement, before defining its legal status. The reason is that only at the table of conversations about the Durban Platform many countries came to realize how far it could go. They need time to fully evaluate how deeply its future consequences and implications could impact their domestic policies.

The most optimistic diplomats think that Doha’s COP18 could be the last of a cycle of negotiations that has begun in the early 2000’s. The Durban Platform should start a new cycle of negotiations leading to a new global climate deal to be closed in 2015 and implemented by 2020. The first delicate task would be reinterpreting the principle of “common but differentiated obligations”. The understanding that lead to the Kyoto Protocol was that this principle implies legally biding obligations to developed countries, and voluntary actions by developing countries. This interpretation precludes a new agreement that would be binding to all. Some diplomats are proposing a paradigm shift that would reinterpret the principle as “common and binding obligations to all, but quantitatively differentiated by level of development and degree of emissions of greenhouse gases”. “Common legally binding obligations to all” is a sine qua non for the United States to ratify a new protocol. The main target here is China. “Quantitatively differentiated obligations” is a formula aimed at convincing China, India, Brazil, and some other countries to accept legally binding obligations, knowing they will not be required to meet the same targets ascribed to developed nations. This will very likely be the core of the major political confrontations at the next climate summits, from COP18 in Doha this year to, at the very least, COP21, in 2015, whose host is not yet defined.

In Doha, negotiators will try hard to close the job of the two long-standing workings groups on the Kyoto Protocol, and on long-term climate action. Their idea is that from Doha onwards they should only deal with the process  to develop the terms of a new agreement, and to prepare for the review of emissions targets offered in Copenhagen, and legally adopted by the Cancun Agreements, by 2014, on the light of the results of the IPCC new report, to be issued on September of this same year.

Closing the serially extended working groups would create the basis for a series of concrete actions to 2020 that would strengthen UNFCCC, a negotiator told me. Among them the full implementation  of the Green Climate Fund – with donors’ actual contributions –; of the fund and plan for the adaptation of vulnerable small nations to climate change; and to put in place the Climate Technology Center and Network. They are all part of a delayed agenda, already decided since the Bali Roadmap of 2007.

Several negotiators are convinced that the 2014 release of the new IPCC report on climate change will give a boost to global climate negotiations, and they would like to invest in preparedness in 2013 and 2014, to fully profit from this push when the time comes. This means to pave the way towards a new agreement by changing some conceptual paradigms that have led negotiations on the past agenda, and preparing the technical and substantive elements of a new climate deal, leaving the hottest political issues to be settled at the end, perhaps by 2015.

The Bangkok meeting has also revealed new divisions within the G77+China aggravating a crisis that has been apparent for at least half a decade. I wrote about the crisis within G77+China, an enormous agglomerate of countries with disparate interests, on my book Copenhague Antes e Depois (Copenhagen Before and After), published in Portuguese in 2010, and also here. Even among the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China)  there are sharp divisions regarding the next decisive steps of negotiations under the Climate Convention. The BASIC countries will convene this week in Brasilia, to try to find a common ground for Doha, and will have a second meeting, prior to COP18, in Beijing.

COP18, in Doha will be threading a narrow path between a stalemate that would make it a void dot on the agenda of climate politics, and successfully closing a cycle of climate negotiations, becoming a landmark in the history of global climate politics. Whether it will flop, or mark the end of a long diplomatic cycle we will only know perhaps in the first hours of Sunday, December 9.

A Technical Note on the Brazilian negotiation strategy at Rio+20

Sergio Abranches

How to postpone decisions and yet have an outcome? The Brazilian strategy at Rio+20 was a model of strategic postponing of substantive decisions on a multilateral political setting marked by polarized conflict.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said about the outcome of the conference, that he expected more ambition at Rio+20, but conflict was very difficult to deal with. There were a few alternative political strategies to deal with a highly conflictual agenda. The Brazilian diplomacy has chosen to use time as a political tool. They have done it in two ways: setting an almost inflexible deadline to have a document approved, and replacing decisions with processes that would take place over time. In other words, time was rigid to negotiate and outcome, and elastic to make substantive decisions. Therefore, Rio+20 has become a meeting to set an agenda for discussions not a meeting to make actual decisions as Rio 92 was.

The high conflict situation was clearly caused by an agenda that was too broad to be tackled at the time frame set for the conference. Even fractioning it out would not work in such short a time frame. Postponing decisions always works when deadlines are rigid. This happens frequently at UN meetings. It has happened, for instance, in Durban, at the climate change meeting, COP17. Negotiators have decided to launch a platform – i.e. a process – of negotiations to seek a global climate deal by 2015, to be implemented from 2020. The process was, however, set as a task for future COPs – the convention of the parties – under the UNFCCC. In other words negotiators have decided on a future task for themselves. In Rio, they did it differently: they transferred future decisions to the United Nations General Assembly.

This solution represents a clear example of a “shift the burden” strategy. Instead of attributing the burden of future decisions to themselves, a Rio+23 meeting, for instance, they shifted the burden to the UN General Assembly. By creating a process of negotiation instead of making decisions, negotiators have transferred conflict-resolution to future meetings and shifted the burden from Rio+20 to the United Nations General Assembly meetings.

The solution Brazilian negotiators have sought was a political one, opting for procedural decisions, rather than substantive ones. Whether the processes agreed will deliver future substantive outcomes only time will tell. In this sense it was an empty document, one devoid of substantive decisions.

As a procedural decision, it was also lacking. The mandate to negotiate sustainable development goals, corresponding targets, and means of implementation was not a fully specified one. It left too broad a margin of discretion to future negotiators. The mandate to strengthen and upgrade UNEP, the UN environment program, may have been too narrow and fail to create enough room for the negotiation process that could lead to its upgrading to a specialized agency.

In short negotiations aimed at a political, not a policy outcome. Policies will be a matter of future negotiations, in another, non specialized forum.