Gilberto Câmara said that logging is increasing in areas of 25 ha or smaller. He explained on his Twitter that INPE’s system, DETER, captures trends, but cannot detect small logging. He also informed that 80% of current illegal logging activity have less than 100 ha. See below the chart he posted.

Adalberto Veríssimo, senior researcher at Imazon tweeted that, by Amazon standards, logging of areas of 12.5 ha should be considered as medium sized.

There is significant consensus among experts about what is happening, in spite of these diverging views on metrics. First, logging of large areas is plummeting. Second, the pattern of logging is changing: logging is increasing at small and medium sized plots, while large logging is decreasing. Third, deforestation is growing in the Southern part of the Amazonas state, an area where forest protection used to be more effective.

Beto Veríssimo has told me that Imazon has detected logging in areas where the forest is denser. This means that the loss of carbon and quality of forest mass by logged hectare is larger than before. Veríssimo argues that logging in the Amazon has a new pattern besides the shift of scale. The main vectors of this new pattern are the Transamazonica and BR-163 roads, agrarian reform settlements, extensive cattle raising, and land grabbing.

Gilberto Câmara is a bit more cautious and says it is too early to talk about a new pattern, solely on the basis of data generated by the SAD (Imazon) and DETER (INPE) models. He would prefer to say this is a trend already detected by the PRODES model in 2009, INPE’s measurement system based on high-resolution satellite images.

Câmara’s cautiousness is welcome. Brazil is on the last month of electoral campaign, and deforestation data have been presented with a political twist by the ministers of Environment and Science and Technology. Câmara wants to make it clear that these are preliminary data without the necessary reach and precision to support definitive conclusions about deforestation patterns.

Although lacking accuracy these observations show that there are forces in action effective enough to change the dynamics, scale and territorial distribution of logging. Câmara is right, though, to say that only the data generated by the high res PRODES model will provide accurate confirmation of these trends.

The soy moratorium and the refusal of large supermarket chains to buy meat from meatpackers operating in deforestation areas have certainly contributed to the reduction of the scale of logging. These two agreements have neutralized the main traditional vectors of deforestation: soybean plantation and cattle ranching. It is important to notice that both resulted from pressure over large consumers by the social movement, without any supporting government policy. Greenpeace, on both counts, produced information and exerted strong pressure to persuade McDonald’s, in the case of soybean exports, and the major supermarket chains – Walmart, Carrefour and Pão de Açúcar – in the case of beef. The government entered as a partner to the agreements after the deals were closed.

But it is also true that policies against deforestation and repression of logging have also contributed to this change. Beto Veríssimo, who is often consulted by policy-makers and systematically evaluates policies for the Amazon region says that measures against logging, especially those adopted during Marina Silva’s term as Environment Minister, have contributed very much to falling deforestation rates.

Imazon’s report has analyzed the situation of 41 towns listed in the government anti-logging policy as those with the larger areas and rates of deforestation, deserving particular attention from authorities. It shows that there was an average 40% reduction of logging in these “critical towns”.

They were divided into three different groups: the first comprising the towns where logging has decreased; the second encompassing towns where there has still been from low to moderate logging; the third, grouping those where logging has increased. The first group has 24 towns, 57% of the list. Deforestation has decreased on average 64% in this group. Group 2 has 8 towns, 19%, their average deforestation rate was 14%. In Group 3, with 24% of the towns on the list, deforestation has increased by 157% on average.

Falling logging rates are good news, but they do not mean the Amazon is not losing forest cover. On the contrary, the loss of forest cover is still too large for anyone to be comfortable with anti-deforestation policies. The chart below shows that the accumulated deforested area continues to grow.

I share Beto Veríssimo’s view that it is about time the Brazilian government sets zero deforestation as a target, instead of the goal of 80% reduction of logging rates by 2020. Veríssimo thinks that zero deforestation by 2014 would be perfectly feasible.

The BASIC meeting in Rio has had many new developments, but they were not mentioned in the official Joint Statement. Ministers from the BASIC countries shared a growing sentiment that it is unlikely that a second period of commitment to the Kyoto Protocol will ever be agreed by parties to the climate talks. This sense that the Kyoto Protocol is no longer a feasible route will likely change their negotiation strategy in future global climate meetings. India was rather clear about the need fort such a change, proposing that they should, from now on, work towards a single, inclusive global climate change agreement. This was one of the many turns in the discussions among ministers and negotiators that was not in the Joint Statement issued at the end of the meeting.

The BASIC ministers’ joint statement still stresses the importance of the

“two pronged approach, which envisages, on one hand, an ambitious and comprehensive outcome for the negotiations under both the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the UNFCCC and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments by Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol.”

Another important sentiment the ministers have shared in their private conversations was that the notion of “historical responsibilities” and “equitable burden sharing” could hardly lead to legally binding responsibilities for developed nations’ past emissions, especially regarding the pre-industrial and early industrial times. CO₂ was not even regarded as a polluting emission at the time. This sobering view has also been concealed by the almost meaningless diplomatic jargon of the communiqué.

“A global goal for emission reductions should be preceded by the definition of a paradigm for equitable burden sharing. They emphasized that equitable access to carbon space must be considered in the context of sustainable development, the right to which is at the heart of the climate change regime, and which demands the implementation of ambitious financing, technological support and capacity building.”

Quantified comparable pledges

What the ministers in Rio have really concluded even though tentatively was that developing nations with advanced economies will have to adequately quantify their share of the burden to curb emissions. To do that they agreed to take the initiative to develop a model to assess their pledges registered under the Copenhagen Accord. A group of high quality experts was present to the discussions and will continue to meet in order to work towards this common assessment. Although there was some opposition to the idea, especially from the Brazilian side, they decided that experts should attempt to make all BASIC pledges comparable, and equally measurable, reportable and verifiable. Ideally, they should try to find a common base to convert all pledges to a single measure.

This goal of comparable pledges on a single base was particularly defended by India and South Africa. China gave it a reluctant support at the end, probably conditional on deliberation by the Chinese top leadership. Brazil didn’t veto the initiative, although opposed to it. The general feeling, however, was that the Brazilian government will give no material support to the group of experts.

South African experts have presented what appears to be a very interesting preliminary model, considering multiple indicators. There was a general feeling that it could serve as a starting point for the development of  a methodology to assess the pledges and measure their real implications for the continued economic and social development of the countries. The South African minister of Water and Environmental Affairs, Buyelwa Sonjica, stressed her country’s great interest on this technical work.

Less words, more numbers

What became clear from the discussions is that the BASIC countries will have to abandon rhetorical demands and start to table sound technical proposals at climate talks. Instead of saying, as they still do, that their contribution to the global goal of emissions reductions cannot impose restrictions to their development goals, they will have to show the real effect of their pledges on their economies. The Joint Statement still refers to the “equitable access to carbon space in the context of sustainable development”, but they all know this has become an empty phrase. Very soon they will have to put actual numbers on the table to add value to this demand in future negotiations. This quantification of pledges, their requirements and impact will also be necessary to assess the financial needs of these larger developing economies to contribute to global emissions reductions efforts. Finance is an important issue for South Africa and India. China and Brazil would be able to finance most of their own climate change programs, especially on their initial stages.

That is what is in between the lines of the joint statement, when it says that the ministers

“underlined the need for further collaboration among BASIC experts on this issue, with a view to understanding the economic, social, scientific and technical implications of equitable access to carbon space and strengthening a common consideration of this matter.”

MRVs

China’s top climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, has caused some surprise when he proposed that the methodology for MRVs (measurable, reportable, and verifiable actions) should be discussed and developed by the group of experts. MRVs will be on the agenda of the next meeting to be held in Beijing in October. This is another area where there is a considerable distance between what the BASIC countries actually think and what they keep saying in public.

The Joint Statement says that the ministers

“noted the distinction between MRV of emission reduction commitments by developed countries, which is related to compliance and comparability, and MRV of nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) by developing countries, which is related to transparency. Ministers emphasized that work on the MRV of international support must advance urgently, including through the development of common procedures for the reporting of finance. They underscored that only supported NAMAs should be subject to international MRV, in conjunction with the MRV of international support, while non-supported NAMAs will apply a domestic MRV. International consultations and analysis of information regarding non-supported actions would be useful to enhance transparency, through a multilateral technical exchange under the UNFCCC.”

But in their conversations the ministers have shared the conviction that the Copenhagen pledges won’t escape being submitted to some MRV procedure still to be agreed upon. They know that to “non-supported NAMAs” that were registered as official pledges under the Copenhagen Accord will apply something more than “a domestic MRV”. They therefore concluded that the best thing to do is to be proactive and forward a methodology that could meet the terms of the Copenhagen Accord. That’s the true meaning of the phrase “international consultations and analysis of information regarding non-supported actions would be useful to enhance transparency, through a multilateral technical exchange under the UNFCCC”.

It was agreed that a starting point to develop this new form of MRV to meet the Copenhagen Accord requirements could be the procedure already adopted to review the national communications of emissions. National communications are reviewed by a group composed of representatives of the developed and developing countries, an UNFCCC technical official, and an independent expert.

It is interesting that the Joint Statement does not explicitly mention the Copenhagen Accord, although most of the technical issues they have agreed to pursue are associated to the pledges made under the Accord. The only mention to Copenhagen is indirect and related to finance.

There is no reference to Copenhagen when the Statement informs their position on MRVs, and the communiqué does not convey transparently what they have really concluded about  the need to develop an MRV methodology to meet the Accord’s transparency requirements. This was an issue arduously negotiated between President Obama and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in a historical meeting of the BASIC countries at the last hours of the Copenhagen Summit. Obama and Wen Jiabao discussed for a couple of hours the MRV issue and reached an agreement with the active intermediation of India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Brazilian President Lula da Silva. It is a good sign that the Chinese government is trying to honor what they have agreed. The relevant line of the Accord in this regard reads

“Non-Annex I Parties will communicate information on the implementation of their actions through National Communications, with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines that will ensure that national sovereignty is respected.”

BASIC+

A side issue with some disruptive consequences for the geopolitics of climate change talks was whether they should move towards a BASIC+ arrangement. That is, whether other countries should be admitted as voting parties to the group. Indonesia, for instance, seems to aspire becoming a full member. The ministers have shown strong concern that such an idea could raise great difficulties with G-77 countries. South Africa’s minister, Buyelwa Sonjica, was particularly concerned that any expansion of the group could raise dissatisfaction among other parties. Since Copenhagen, the South African government has been under considerable pressure from African Union countries because of its participation in the BASIC. The living example was of the G-8 being superseded in many relevant issues by the G8+5 and, ultimately, by the G-20.

Although the BASIC countries are also a part of the G-77 all of them have it clear that their interests are becoming increasingly differentiated from the interests of the majority of other member states. They decided to maintain the BASIC original formation and to have observers and discussants at all their meetings, without decision-making power. This time, one of the invited observers was Venezuela. Yemen, now holding the G-77 chair, was also present and will be invited to all forthcoming meetings. The ministers have also agreed to always have observers from the small-island States, AOSIS, and from the African Union. Other developing countries would be invited when they could contribute to the debate of central issues in the agenda. In Beijing, for instance, one of these issues will be the impact of climate change negotiations on the international market. Argentina has been leading discussions on this issue within the G-77 and will be invited to Beijing.

Eppur si muove

There has been small, but significant, progress in the meeting of  the BASIC countries in Rio. Far more than the official Joint Statement has conveyed. Progress and consensus are stronger at the expert level. At the political level there still are important differences on the degree of conviction of each country regarding these new views. India and South Africa seemed far more convinced of the need for a change in attitude and negotiation strategy. China seems to be moving forward more cautiously. Brazil is far more reluctant to accept any change.

Jairam Ramesh, India’s Environment Minister, made a compelling defense of the benefits of giving more transparency to these shared views. He would like them to show in the communiqué. But Brazilian officials preferred a noncommittal phrasing of the joint statement.

Ramesh has also manifested his government’s willingness to lead the BASIC group into an effort to bridge the gap between them and the United States. He has also called the BASIC countries to reach out to develop countries like France and Germany that hold similar views to their own about global climate change.

It is unlikely that these changing views will be mature enough and find sufficient common ground among the BASIC countries to lead to a different attitude at COP16, in Cancun. But some of the sentiments they’ve revealed are likely to emerge more publicly in Mexico. It is likely, for instance, that they will have more technical proposals to table. It is also likely, but less probable, that their insistence upon a second phase of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol will recede to some visible degree, helping faster progress on the AGW-LCA towards a more inclusive global agreement some time in the near future. The signs of a paradigm shift on the BASIC countries’ climate change politics are becoming clearer.

There is no serious regress on climate change politics. What we see is just a reiteration of the stop-and-go that characterizes complex decision-making settings. The climate change decision-making environment is almost as complex as the climate system itself. It conforms to what I’ve called the Asimov Paradox. In brief: with so many stakeholders, veto players and decision-makers involved, there are two ways to reach a sound and sufficient global deal. Either it gets a really massive amount of support and commitment, or building meaningful consensus will take a very long span of time. So, we’ve got to keep struggling to get enough support to trigger the needed political change. We don’t have time to spare. Meanwhile we should invest on other battlefronts of the climate change challenge, while we continue aiming at achieving a global climate change policy. We must achieve an effective curb on carbon emissions sooner than later, through local initiatives before we get to a binding global accord.

There is a well financed and well orchestrated political campaign by climate deniers and fossil lobbies to discredit the IPCC and climate science. The IPCC has made some important mistakes that must be adequately addressed. It is, perhaps, time for a formal “peer review” of IPCC’s present format and procedures. It surely needs change. If IPCC could move to a new stage of its institutional life, generating more transparent, error-free scientific assessments at shorter intervals and with less political interference, that could very much help the search for a global climate change policy framework. Finally, it also has a leadership problem. A new chair could bring fresh ideas; perhaps more scientific authority; and work to better balance science and politics. The present IPCC chair won’t likely recover from the loss of confidence and legitimacy.

Is the social movement too quiet? I guess not. All major NGO’s are busy evaluating what happened last year, and designing their new short and long-term strategies. They’ve probably had their best results ever in 2009 on mobilization, visibility, and influence. Yet COP15 was probably, also, their major frustration ever. They surely have some strategic review and redesign of their own to do. They’ll need a new agenda for action. But they should do it as fast and possible, to overcome frustration, and start seriously confronting the deniers’s campaign against climate change science, policy and politics.

We are not really loosing ground, but the outcome of the Copenhagen Summit has had a depressing effect on environmentalists, concerned analysts, scientists and most government negotiators. The realization that the expectations for a fully legal, ambitious, and working deal have not been met by the world’s most powerful leaders in Copenhagen has damaged somewhat climate politics. Is has also given deniers’s the motivation and the opportunity to launch their public opinion and political offensive, particularly in the UK and the US.  But let’s look to the brighter sides.

All major countries are implementing their own climate change agenda. In the US, the EPA, at the federal level, the states, and cities are working towards better and tougher regulation of carbon emissions. The energy law is not president Obama’s top priority yet. Nor is it the top priority of US society. So, it will probably go the hard and long way to be eventually approved, rather than enter into a fast track voting process. Local initiative has not loose momentum, nor has the Federal Government been paralyzed. China is leading global investment in green energy and pollution control, for its own sake. The Chinese government has been issuing new carbon regulations at an increasing pace. India is also starting to pursue low carbon targets of its own. No major emitter has abandoned the pledges made at Copenhagen. In other words: political commitment to action on climate change is holding and there are signs of further improvement. Legally binding policies have been enacted by the rulers of all major global emitters, and several other countries.

A greater threat to short-term climate progress comes from the fact that the world is facing a new shockwave of the financial crisis. European economies were hit before they could fully recover from the original one. The crisis in Europe is not confined to Greece. Spain and Portugal are also in trouble. It is a complex, and deep financial and fiscal disarray that has strong explosive power. Major EU and the US economies are still too weak to resist a contagion effect, if the present crisis goes out of control and spreads throughout the global financial market.

This means that unless the economic downturn and its collateral damage are not fully overcome, climate change will hardly become a significant global priority this year. Not a likely prospect. Climate change will remain on the political agenda of all major economies as a serious 21^st century challenge, but comprehensive action may be further delayed.

So, the gloomier view on climate change politics results from a short-term vision mostly, but not entirely, based on appearances. We are not moving backwards, but we are stalling again. Today the conditions for a fully legal treaty are slim, if not adversary. Countries are still tackling far more pressing short-term problems

This scenario of renewed economic turmoil and delayed concern for climate change requires some strategic thinking. It would be very important to prevent COP16 from becoming another major frustration. The future of global climate change politics depends on getting the best results possible, at Cancún, under the prevailing circumstances. There are several risks to manage for the world to succeed at COP16.

There are two opposite risks to avoid, looking first at expectations. The first one would be an inflation of expectations about a legal agreement like the one we’ve had about COP15. It seems very unlikely now, but should be prevented by all means beforehand. The other one would be a self-defeating radical deflation of all expectations. A risk we are already facing today. The third risk concerns agenda setting. Depending on how the economic scenario develops, especially during the first half of 2010, it would be very risky to set very ambitious goals for COP16. A set of realistic goals would help to prevent another frustration. If the scenario doesn’t improve considerably, the goal of a climate treaty should be explicitly postponed, before the beginning of COP16.

It would be better instead to work towards bringing the original “spirit” of the Copenhagen Accord into the framework of UNFCCC’s working documents, in both the Climate Convention (AWGLCA) and the Kyoto Protocol (AWGKP) tracks. To reconcile the original aims of the Copenhagen political accord and the UNFCCC legal process is doable, but will require long and hard negotiations. It would not be feasible to form the necessary consensus to effectively close a fully legal agreement this year. The goal should be to align the political and the legal tracks as much as possible. Having a treaty drafted, approved and signed does seem, at the moment, to be out of the reach of COP16. Another important goal would be to deepen major countries’s commitment to the political accord.

Strengthening the Copenhagen Accord could be an appropriate issue for the agenda of G20 and Major Economies Forum (MEF) meetings. Clearly, the first issue on their agenda will be, again, the economy. Leaders of this major league of countries cannot, however, disregard climate change and pending questions about the Copenhagen Accord. Climate change will very likely be on their agenda. The best way to deal with the Accord is to take it seriously. The Copenhagen Accord can yet gain greater political density. Targets can be improved or reviewed, within the next three or five years. Commitments could be clarified, helping to bridge the gap between the political and the legal tracks in the future. The BASIC countries’ association to the Accord is still lukewarm, and China has only declared to be “supportive”. US support could also be made more assertive.

Progress on the preparation for a legally binding agreement, and strengthening of the political accord, could be a realistic and relevant agenda for 2010 and COP16.

While the U.S. and the European Union embraced the Copenhagen Accord with no reserves, the BASIC countries said the Accord is not legal. The only legal instrument they accept is the Kyoto Protocol. Does it really matter if they adhere and record their quantitative voluntary actions? Is this an important divide between developed and emerging powers?

I feel increasingly inclined to answer no to both questions.

Let’s be practical. The Kyoto Protocol is legal, but its targets were set so low that they became utterly ineffective. The U.S. didn’t ratify the Protocol. The BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) are “non-Annex I” parties, meaning they have no binding obligations.

As a result, the Protocol has a very partial coverage of total GHG emissions. Being legally binding made almost no difference to the trajectory of emissions or to the behavior of the Parties to the Protocol. To the BASIC countries, the legal character of the Kyoto Protocol serves only to make it sure they have no legal obligations, because they do not belong to the Annex I. The U.S. will never ratify it. There has been little progress in the negotiations regarding its Phase 2. The Post 2012 Kyoto Protocol will not have China, Brazil and India among Annex I countries, and without the U.S. as well, it will remain a poor instrument to tackle the global climate change threat.

Now, let’s look at the Copenhagen Accord. With the adhesion of the U.S., the European Union, Canada, Australia, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa it covers most of the global GHG emissions. Add Japan and Russia, and it reaches the level of emissions that, if appropriately regulated, can do the job of preventing a climactic cataclysm. This select group of countries represent most of global political, economic, and scientific power as well.

The Accord is not legal indeed. It is political. With all these countries saying they’re politically committed to its terms, and publicly recording their voluntary actions to reduce emissions, it, nevertheless, gets substance and relevance. All of them are recording quantitative goals. To call them binding targets or voluntary actions seems so far a matter of lesser importance. Just look at what happened to Kyoto’s binding targets. To me it is more important that, for the first time, the U.S., China, Brazil, and India are making political commitments for emissions reductions. And they come with a number attached.

These targets still fall short of responding to scientific requirements. But the Accord also provides for performance reviews to conform actions to the requirement of maintaing global warming near 2^oC. This is already more than the Kyoto Protocol has accomplished. It has also resolved some decade long deadlocks on finance and technology transfer.

What the Copenhagen Accord lacks, the Kyoto Protocol also doesn’t have: a working enforcement mechanism. We are far from having an adequate framework for global climate governance. And we will have to eventually arrive at one.

The Copenhagen Accord can move forward along two different tracks. The first one, would be to enter the diplomatic track of the Climate Convention. Its terms and targets/actions would have to be transcribed into an official document tabled by the Working Group on the Climate Convention (AWG-LCA) to be unanimously approved by the plenary of 192 countries, hopefully during COP16, in Cancun, Mexico.

The alternative route would be to keep going on its own. The countries that have adhered to the Accord would continue to negotiate an appropriate and acceptable legal statute. Negotiations should also address the governance regime that would make this statute enforceable and policy-relevant.

The first road seems to be the harder one. The history of the Climate Convention has showed how difficult it is to reach consensus within such a large and heterogeneous group of countries.

The Copenhagen Accord has gained some new substance with the adhesion of the “carbon powers” of the world. A smaller group of countries, even if a polarized one, is more likely to reach a meaningful agreement than a large group of more than 100 nations with disparate interests.

The convention plenary is so divided that it is even hard to form polarized coalitions within it. What we’ve seen in Copenhagen was the fractionalization of previous clusters of countries, as the likelihood of an agreement increased. That’s how the G77 and China broke down, the BASIC, the AOSIS, and the African block replacing it. These three blocks have proved to be far more politically productive than the G77.

That the Accord is still alive, in spite of the frustrations it has raised at the dismal closing of COP15, seems a good omen. A global climate change deal is still possible.

Sergio Abranches

It is an extensive and complex law with many stakeholders. During the legislative process a few amendments have improved it to some extent. One of them, for instance, has included the emissions reduction targets as a “voluntary contribution” from Brazil to the global fight against climate change.  There were also a few important setbacks, however. President Lula has vetoed three articles. One on constitutional grounds, the other two conceding to pressure from his Minister of Energy.

Lula vetoed the provision that the country should gradually abandon fossil fuels. As there was no time frame, nor any description of actions that should be taken to that end, it amounted to no more than a future policy indication. But the Minister feared that by maintaining it, an enabling decree could make provisions that would do harm to the fossil energy industry. He only accepted that priority should be given to renewable energy sources.

The Minister of Energy has also persuaded President Lula to veto article 10, that restricted government incentives to small hydropower plants, wind, solar, biomass and other alternative sources. He argued that it would impede incentives to large hydropower plants.

The veto damaged the economics of the new law, by removing the structure of incentives to promote non-fossil energy.

There is some room, however, for improvement and correction through carefully drafting the enabling decree. The law can only be enacted after this enabling legislation is published. It can de done through a series of presidential decrees. Presidential decrees are not reviewed by Congress and can be enforced immediately.

The battle around the enabling decree is about to begin. An official source has told me today that they will not try to write all enabling rules at once. They’ll selectively pick the issues and areas they deem to be the most important and try to set the rules to allow their prompt enforcement. Some issues are almost certain to be in this first batch, because they are instrumental to the implementation of the emissions reduction targets that will be offered as the Brazilian contribution to the Copenhagen Accord.

This strategy of partial enablement aims at reducing the scope of conflict of interest and infighting to prevent a decision-making paralysis.

Another source told me they’ll also work on other parts of the enabling legislation with a longer-term perspective, leaving the groundwork done for the next Administration, to take office on January 1^st ,2011.

People at the Environment and Science and Technology ministries want to expedite the approval of the enabling decree, because ministers and higher officials who will run for elective office on October elections will have to leave the government within the next two months. They want the same people who negotiated the Law of Climate Change to lead the deal on the enabling legislation. It is very likely that Lula will replace his political ministers by technical and managerial people who lack the political savvy to tackle the complex and contentious issues the decree will have to address.

A source told me the ideal timing would be to have the enabling legislation approved by right after Carnival.

Sergio Abranches

If 2009 was the Year  of Twitter, it was also the year Twitter has become a solid journalistic tool to cover climate change, and a widely used resource for climate change advocacy and militancy, pro and con.

As Alfred Hermida observes (@Hermida)

there has been a rapid uptake of Twitter by journalists, provoking somewhat of a Twitter frenzy in some quarters of the media.

He also notes that

Twitter has been quickly adopted in newsrooms as a mechanism to distribute breaking news quickly and concisely or as a tool to solicit story ideas, sources and facts.

I saw that happen in the Media Center. Tweets were used to break news everyone knew would become updated in a matter of hours, if not minutes; to socialize sites and Twitter accounts that were good sources of info; to opine about events; to comment on the experience and ambience of COP15 coverage. It as like a TwitterBabel, a multi-language ongoing dialogue and information sharing experience.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy spread his own impressions, infos, and ideas through a Twitter account specifically setup for COP15: @ElyseeCop15. UK Prime minister Gordon Brown used the regular @10DowningStreet account to tell about his impressions. They both became very useful sources.

A typical tweet representing Sarkozy’s views would be

PR : “les difficultés de cette conférence, c’est la preuve d’un système onusien à bout de souffle”, about 13 hours ago from Seesmic. (“The difficulties of this Conference are proof that the UN system is exhausted”.)

A typical tweet reflecting Gordon Browns’s views would be

PM: Negotiations fraught, but determined to get this done. Leaders must put cards on table. 8:12 AM Dec 17th from web

When I look back at the hectic days in the Media Center, during COP15, one of the sharpest images I get is of thousands of journalists frantically looking for information, checking and verifying what they get by all means possible, a large number compelled to report real time.

The intermediation of Twitter turned this rather common situation, into one which best expresses the new emerging forms of what Hermida has called ambient journalism.

(A)mbient journalism – an awareness system that offers diverse means to collect, communicate, share and display news and information, serving diverse purposes. The system is always-on but also works on different levels of engagement in terms of awareness.

COP15 was the first COP in which Twitter was an integral part of media coverage. I guess it was also the height of blog climate journalism. I can’t show any evidence of that, but I can tell about my own experience: I got info from more blogs than online conventional news sites, except for Reuters and The Guardian. Sure, I’m counting blogs hosted by newspapers sites, such as @Revkin’s Dot Earth, or The Guardian’s Environment Blog .

Twitter was also a crucial resource for climate policy advocates, militants, and NGO’s. They served advocacy or militant purposes, but they were also good sources of information. I found Adopt a Negotiator’s use of blogging, facebooking and tweeting particularly interesting. It was probably educational to the participants, and was also a source for journos.

Twitter is today the single most important source for information about climate militants still detained by the Danish police.

And Twitter has become an unavoidable tool for research and journalism.

In fact, Twitter can be a serious aid in reporting. It can be a living, breathing tip sheet for facts, new sources and story ideas. It can provide instantaneous access to hard-to-reach newsmakers, given that there’s no PR person standing between a reporter and a tweet to a government official or corporate executive. It can also be a blunt instrument for crowdsourcing. (Paul Farhi – The Twitter Explosion, AJR)

Hashtags were widely used, but the dominant ones became #COP15, #Copenhagen, and #climate.

Hashtags are just one of the tools that bring coherence to what can seem like Twitter’s tower of Babel. (Paul Farhi – The Twitter Explosion, AJR)

The flow of tweets under #COP15 continues unabated and remains as a good source for journos, policy advocates and militants. The number of silly tweets has increased, it is true, but the meaningful and interesting outnumber the useless. My guess is that #COP15 will continue full of life and content until it transforms itself seamlessly into #COP16.

There are several interfaces between journalists, climate policy advocates and green militants. One of them is certainly Twitter. While policy advocates and militants can be sources for journalists, they are also among the most frequent visitors of news site and news blogs, looking for aggregate information and analytical opinion.

All of which means that Twitter attracts the sort of people that media people should love — those who are interested in, and engaged with, the news. (Paul Farhi – The Twitter Explosion, AJR)

Those who are still debating whether Twitter will replace blogs or other social networking resources, even some news sites, are missing the point. What we are looking at is a closer integration among them all. Each performing the function it is best suited to perform.

The change that made me see real value in Twitter came about a year ago, when the people I had learnt to know and appreciate from their writings in blogs started to have conversations on Twitter. At that time, I had been a frequent blogger for a couple of years and had been conversating with other bloggers via my own blog and via the comments on their blogs. Gradually I noticed that the conversations which previously were held on blogs and blog comments were moving to Twitter. So I started following the people whose blogs I subscribed to on Twitter. I hadn’t search for them before on Twitter, but now most of them exposed their Twitter name on their blogs. (Oscar Berg – “Why 2009 was the Year of Twitter”, The Content Economy)

For some purposes, Twitter works better than RSS Feeds. As blogger Oscar Berg says, blogs are personal, while Twitter is  collective platform, a sort of commons. Twitter, blogs, and social networking will be central to the continuation of the processes of aggregation, segmentation and specialization in the Websphere as well as in the media world.

Where no other resource still competes with Twitter is on what Cloud9Media has aptly called Realtime Magic. Be it real time search, or breaking real time news, or getting real time reactions or fulfilling any other real time info or social communication need one can imagine, Twitter works better and more economically than any other available tool.

Twitter is amazing as its the most efficient mechanism I have ever seen to allow me to peruse the thoughtstreams of others who live all over the world. (Vivek Wadhwa – “Twitter and Me! Why It’s The Only Social Media Tool I Use”, TechCrunch)

Sergio Abranches

And failure it was. A clear failure of collective leadership. In spite of individual efforts, the most powerful and influential incumbent world leaders failed to reached a common understanding of their domestic and planetary responsibilities. They left, as we say in Brazil, à française, without a word to close the meeting and the deal. Presidents Obama and Sarkozy talked to their countries’ media in their hotels before leaving to the airport. They said almost the same thing: the better deal possible was done, and it was a meaningful one. But it was not.

Technically they’ve left the result of their talks in a political void. As a political outcome negotiated above and beyond UN rules, the only way to actualize it would have been to hold a press conference, explain the accord and make it public. To leave the final terms to be negotiated within the UN track was both a violence to established rules, and a major political mistake.

A mistake that led the majority to cry failure. Within the formal gridlocked tracks of the Climate Convention it would have the same fate as prior efforts have had: watering down to the point of becoming meaningless.

The plenary has done the only sensible thing to do about it: to take note and adjourn. It could not veto it: delegates did not have the authority to formally undo or reject what represented an accord by their chiefs of state and governments. They could not vote it either, because, from the standpoint of UN rules, the Copenhagen Accord was a “non-paper”. A document that did not go through the formal channels of the Climate Convention. It was not tabled by any of the Working Groups Chairs for discussion and deliberation. When the Chair of COP15, prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, tried to table it somewhat irregularly at the end of the day, literally, he faced strong open and veiled opposition.

Then, the professionals came to the rescue. The plenary could not deliberate about such a “non-paper”. Delegates could not use the rules either to support or to reject their leaders doings. They could only take note of the Copenhagen Accord, with its meaningful parts, the appendices with the countries’ commitments of emissions cuts, as blank tables. This draft belonged to the politicians that started to negotiate its terms and abandoned it before it was completed. They can now complete it, fill in the blank tables, and adhere to it.

If they do it, and the tables show a meaningful effort on the part of the world’s bigger emitters, even if they fall short of the scientific requirements, than it becomes a meaningful deal. And only then, it could provide a guideline to a legal accord to be drafted and adopted by the Climate Convention, in Mexico City.

If there is progress, the promise of a midyear summit in Bonn, could even become an extra session of COP15, to vote a second Protocol that would either replace or complement the Kyoto Protocol. Today, it seems unlikely that there will be progress enough for a legally binding agreement in June or July. Let’s hope an agreement becomes possible until COP16.

Copenhagen has not ended only with this half blank “non-paper”. There was meaningful progress, not enough, not enduring if nothing else is done, not to meet the expectations, or the dimension of COP15. Yet there was visible and tangible progress.

This meeting was unprecedented in almost everything. It was the largest gathering of global civil society ever in the history of the Conference of the Parties. It was the largest and widest media coverage ever of a COP. It briefly hosted the larger number of heads of state and governments for an environmental summit ever, since Rio ’92.

COP15 began on a very different political note. It was clear that diplomacy and formal UN procedures had been taken by politicization. The first day was marked by the leakage of the so-called “Danish document”. On the second day, Tuvalu provoked a political maelstrom that would never dissolve. It was only fair that Tuvalu should start the movement that led the final plenary session to reject the attempt by COP15 president to table the Copenhagen Accord.

A delegate from the IPCC told me during the moments of perplexity and dismay, after the leaders left Bella Center without addressing COP15, that “it was no longer about science, but about politics”. COP15 was never about the science, it was always about the politics of climate change.

From the point of view of the science of climate change, Copenhagen was a major failure. From the perspective of the politics of climate change, there was important progress.

First, for the first time since the climate talks have been gridlocked, I’d say since COP4 in Buenos Aires, the governments of the world largest emitters have committed to mitigation actions. Their targets may not be in line with the science of climate change, but they’ve crossed the crucial political line separating denial from commitment.

Second, the Copenhagen Accord, if honored by the leaders that have negotiated it, if the countries fill in the tables with their quantified national actions, can serve as an instruction to delegates to draft a formal proposal for a legal document to be adopted by the Conference of the Parties. This document could then be adopted by the plenary of the next COP.

Third, there were minimal, yet meaningful, advances on the positions of the two major emitters: the US and China. Brazil and India have also changed their attitudes and assumed commitments they have also consistently denied before.

Fourth, the target of 2^oC has been accepted and institutionalized as a global mitigation goal.

Fifth, the finance deadlock has been solved. If the blanks on the Copenhagen Accord are filled by the first quarter of 2010, the fast-track US$ 30 billion for 2010-2012 will be available. If an agreement is formally reached in Mexico City or before, a long-term fund will be created, and by 2020 there will be a significant sum of at least US$ 100 billion a year to finance mitigation and adaptation actions by developing countries.

Sixth, there was progress on technology transfer, another point of stalemate.

Seventh, there was progress on monitoring, or rules on measurable, reportable and verifiable actions. An issue that almost led to a political incident between US and China. The two countries negotiated the issue, with the intermediation of Brazil and India. Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao talked during a meeting of the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) at Bella Center. President Lula intermediated the talks. India prime-minister, Manmohan Singh, proposed an WTC like solution for reporting and verification, that was acceptable by both parties.

Eight, the practical disruption of G77, and the new roles assumed by the “African” group of countries, the AOSIS (small island states) and the BASIC countries allowed a new geopolitics of climate change to fully emerge. These new groupings are more coherent and their interests are clearer. This new division largely prevents emerging powers to manipulate small country’s veto powers on their favor.

Ninth, it has become clear, as president Sarkozy has stated, that the UN process is on the verge of exhaustion. The climate change issue is bigger than the institutional arrangements under which it has been negotiated. A new system for climate change governance is needed. However, a new institutional setting, particularly a new climate change multilateral organization cannot be created before we have a new legal agreement that encompasses all major nations of the world. It seems likely that this new framework for the global governance of climate change is finding its place in the global agenda.

These contradictory results; the extraordinary display of vigor by global civil society in Copenhagen and around the world; coverage by about 3500 accredited journalists and many thousands of citizen journalists; the unprecedented presence of more than 100 chiefs of state and governments and their dismal achievement; real progress towards solving the complex net of issues and interests gridlocking a global climate change deal, all are ingredients of a historic event. Two weeks not to forget.

Sergio Abranches

The chairperson and co-chairperson of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) will work overnight to finish a new version of a document that may serve as an official guideline for the climate change negotiations.

The Brazilian top climate change negotiator, ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, also co-chairperson of the LCA has said in a press briefing today that he hopes the document will be ready by the morning and helps to focus the negotiations, so that they can move forward toward the desired goal: a robust agreement. LCA’s chairperson, Malta’s negotiator, Michael Jammit Cutajar, has been apparently persuaded to table the document no later than tomorrow.

The Parties’ ministers will be arriving this weekend, and it is expected they could have working documents upon which to decide on further instructions to negotiators.  These instructions will be a crucial element of next week’s decisive tough talks.

This will very likely be the first encompassing formal document to reach the negotiation table. It can either help the process by pointing to constructive ways of dealing with the main gridlocks blocking an effective deal, or further contribute to the gridlock.

Right now, the corridors of Bella Center are vibrating with the repercussions of polarizing and divisive arguments. Some of them were brought to the fore by the so-called “Danish non-paper”. The leaked document was viewed as an attempt at “greenwashing” or a save-face solution to prevent Copenhagen from openly failing. Other extreme notions emerged from the “Chinese non-paper”, defending that the legal instrument for developed countries which have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol should be framed the same way as the Protocol when addressing mandatory emission reduction targets. It also exempts the advanced economies of the developing world, emerging powers such as China, Brazil and India, of any legally binding commitment. The document inspired and drafted by the Chinese government was partially endorsed by the other BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, and India).

Us top climate change negotiator Todd Stern added his own to the stockpile of extreme statements. He made quite an entry to Copenhagen, on his first press briefing, rejecting the idea that developed countries have an historical responsibility for greenhouse gases accumulation in the atmosphere. This is a central principle of emerging countries’ climate change politics.

I actually completely reject the notion of a debt or reparations or anything of the like.

The notion of debt or reparations comes out of the principle of historical responsibility.

Stern argued that

the fact that emissions caused a greenhouse effect is a relatively recent phenomenon.

The challenge of the negotiators in charge of drafting these preliminary documents is to find a common ground that could persuade those parties now holding extreme positions to move to this more central point.

Contradictory ideas regarding some of the most divisive issues are still leading the conversations. On the Kyoto Protocol, for instance, there is the standard emerging countries view that the Protocol should be the single legal instrument. Hence countries which have not ratified it should abide by the same rules, even admitting a proper legal ad hoc instrument for them. A growing number of developed countries would like the Kyoto Protocol to be abandoned before it enters its second phase of commitment. They want an entirely new legal instrument.

Japan and Russia, for instance, have already declared that their new emissions reduction commitments are not meant to be filed under the Kyoto Protocol. They are intended for a new legal regime to be defined in Copenhagen.

There also is a compromise solution put forward by UN top climate change official Yvo de Boer, among others. This third way would maintain the Kyoto Protocol as the valid regime for the Annex I countries that have ratified it. A new legal regime would be defined for Annex I countries that have not ratified the Protocol, such as the US, and for the “advanced economies of the developing world”, meaning China, Brazil, and India, among others.

The emerging countries could accept this compromise solution, provided it maintained the idea of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, by defining different levels of “measurable, reportable and verifiable” commitments for developed and developing countries under this new regime. It should also establish equitable commitments to the developed countries under the new regime when compared to those under the Kyoto Protocol.

The major question continues to be what degree of flexibility the US will show at the negotiation table. The US is expected to increase its commitment, so that it levels with those of the other developed countries. So far, the US delegation while admitting its commitment is not at the same level as EU’s by 2020, it does converge by 2050. The other parties will very likely ask for more.

The reaction of the other developed parties will very much depend on the final decision to be reached in Brussels tomorrow by the EU on what to bring to Copenhagen. The emerging countries fear the European Union will lower the bar, to fit the US into the climate change policy regime. I’ve heard from other sources it might actually raise the bar from 20% to 30% of unconditional emission reduction, and 40% under the condition the other large emitters also raise theirs proportionately.

The US could probably raise its target from 17% of reduction from 2005 levels to 2020, the House has already voted, to the 20% pending a Senate vote. But it is unlikely president Obama would feel comfortable to go beyond what Congress is about to approve. The alternative would be to present an estimate of additional emission reduction to come from new EPA rules. This number could not, however, be filed as a formal commitment under an international regulatory regime. There are some experts saying this additional reduction could be greater than what would be obtained under the new Climate change Act still to be voted by the US Congress.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson hinted that much on her presentation in Copenhagen, saying that the utility of the new act would be to eliminate any legal uncertainty. It would make it clear once for all to US corporations that there will be a cap on emissions no matter what.

If by tomorrow morning a meaningful document is served at the breakfast table of COP15 negotiators, the talks might definitely move forward. If it fails to provide the right directions towards a common ground, nervousness and turbulence will dominate the scene, heating up, once more, the cold weekend in Copenhagen.

Sergio Abranches

The ruling greatly strengthens the Federal Government capabilities to mitigate GHG emissions. One of the main lines of the off the record comments by negotiators, observers, and analysts in Copenhagen on the first day of the conference was the relatively weak contribution by the US to the global mitigation efforts. This conclusion was based on the White House’s announcement of the quantitative targets president Obama would bring to the negotiation. The17% reduction over 2005 emissions was considered too small compared to EU’s, or even most of the emerging economies’ proposals.

A negotiator told me that the US target would be a factor for his country’s standing in the climate talks. His government will carefully ponder whether the US is making a contribution at the level considered necessary from large developed emitters. If not, they’ll downsize their own commitment.

EPA’s announcement led to immediate reactions. All parties are assessing the agency’s capability to move beyond the targets to be voted by Congress that are serving as a guideline for President Obama’s own commitment.

The general opinion is that EPA’s mandate is a broad one, and has been reinvigorated by the Supreme Court’s decision requiring the agency to investigate whether greenhouse gases were a danger to the human health and the environment and take action accordingly.

EPA’s ruling might give the US Federal Government a different route to join the global endeavor to curb carbon emissions, using its own autonomous means of regulation.

The US government has obviously timed the announcement to coincide with the opening of COP15’s talks. And it got the full desired effect.

There is much side talks, maneuvering and political wrestling outside the formal trek of the conference, and EPA’s ruling adds new data to these political moves preceding the moment when decisions will begin to take shape.

COP is not only multilingual. It has its own language. It divides the official world, for instance, between the “diplomats” and the “politicians”. The diplomats have the stage for most of the meeting, until the last day, when the politicians arrive. One cannot be effective without the other. But the politicians have not only the final word. They can modify long matured diplomatic decisions on the spot. This ability is a source of both risk and hope.  Right now, the bets along the corridors of the Bella Center, where COP15 takes place, take the politicians more as a source of hope, than risk.

Sergio Abranches

The fundamental issue about large scale risk is the uncertainty about the probability of the chain of events that will trigger the transition from the status quo to another, very different and more hostile, state. The core of climate change risk is this combination of the identification of the possibility of a catastrophic risk and the uncertainty about the likelihood of its realization within a given time frame.

Events with high probabilities are not technically risks. They are dangerous or hazardous events with high probability, hence low uncertainty. Risk emerges out of uncertainty. Harmful unexpected surprises pose a risk worse than well-known, highly likely, dangers. The reason is that uncertainty may breed complacency and inertia, whereas present and visible dangers tend to stimulate preparedness.

As the negative consequences are formidable, that science says there is a small chance it will happen should be reason enough to take strong action to try to prevent it from happening or to reduce its intensity. All controversy about probabilities, model accuracy, data quality is academic and scientific and should not be stopped. It is a prerequisite for the advancement of knowledge. Science advances through doubt and contestation. Certainty stalls scientific inquisitiveness.

At the practical level, however, once the existence of risk is asserted beyond a reasonable doubt, there is ground for action. Societies cannot afford to wait until uncertainty is eliminated to take action against catastrophic risk. They should act under uncertainty to prevent the worst scenarios. A decade long political deadlock has been impeding the world from taking effective global action to face climate risk. The knot is political, not scientific. If the politics is not solved, there will be no incentive to develop innovative policy that meets the scientific requirements to manage global climate risk. No adequate regulatory framework to provide inducements and constraints to the markets to look for new technologies and new patterns of production will be defined without previous global and domestic political accords.

Let’s consider the following quote from Mark New, Diana Liverman and Kevin Anderson’s “Mind the Gap”, just published by Nature:

While adapting to a 2°C temperature rise may mostly involve adjustments of existing practices, a world at 4°C presents large and complex challenges that are likely to require fundamental socioeconomic and technological transformations, rather than adjustments assuming such transformations are achievable through planning at all. Moving from 2 to 4°C would also bring, for any particular location, an accumulating load of increasingly severe impacts. While one or a few impacts considered in isolation may be manageable, a ‘perfect storm’ of multiple severe impacts may be catastrophic.

It is a synthesis of scientific evidence beyond reasonable doubt in spite of an important degree of uncertainty about the specifics – the CRU Hack episode notwithstanding – that points to a catastrophic scenario.

The conclusion is rather straightforward:

The challenges involved in reducing emissions soon and fast enough to have even a small chance of keeping temperatures below 2 °C are much larger than most people realize, requiring unprecedented collective will among the governments of both the developed and developing world. Ongoing climate negotiations offer little to suggest that sufficient collective will currently exists to meet this mitigation challenge. Yet aiming to reduce emissions to keep the average temperature below 2 °C remains a crucial political objective. To try and possibly fail at achieving this goal is better than to renounce the effort, as the larger the gap between the 2 °C target and the final temperature change, the more catastrophic the consequences. The risk of allowing the world to experience 4 °C of warming this century demands both accelerated efforts at effective mitigation and serious planning for adaptation to changes that may be larger than those usually considered.

COP15 is about breaking the political deadlock that is impairing a more consequential global discussion about global policy mitigation and adaptation action. There is a clear imbalance between the politics and the science of climate change. While the science has become clearer over the next decade, the politics has been deadlocked by a decade of denial. The first political step to make the politics of climate change to converge to the scientific requirements for mitigation and adaptation is breaking the deadlock. The Copenhagen summit should focus more on the binary and extraordinarily difficult political operation of switching from “Nay” to “Aye”, from political denial to political engagement.

This shift requires hard political negotiation, facing strong lobbies both domestically and globally by all major developed and developing powers. It will bring about a power shift from old high carbon coalitions to emerging low carbon coalitions. It requires an enormous feat of political engineering. I don’t think we should underestimate the possibility of this happening in Copenhagen. If so, it will be the first and crucial building block for a new political architecture of climate politics.

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