Sergio Abranches, from Durban

COP17 president, South African minister of Foreign Relations Maite Emily Nkoana-Mashabane has asked a small group of parties to facilitate the final negotiations towards a package deal to be delivered in Durban. It is a sign that negotiations are moving towards a close. There still are some key issues pending a compromise solution, but all negotiators indicated they’ll cooperate to get the best outcome possible.

The outcome in Durban will be a compromise solution, and the outlines of the package deal to be agreed upon begins to show on the nuances of negotiators’ new statements to the press. Bits and pieces of a coming deal can also be collected on the corridors of the Durban Convention Center.

Connie Hedegaard, EU Commissioner for Climate Action, said the European Union is ready to take a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol (‘second KP’). She said the EU must be assured that others will agree on a new legally binding framework. Europe will sign into a ‘second KP’ even if other countries choose not to join. The EU is not requiring the ‘roadmap’ towards a future legal agreement to go into too many details. It should just show there is a firm decision to arrive at a new agreement, and a timeline with a few significant deadlines. Ideally the agreement should be completed by 2015, to be in force from 2020 onwards, replacing both the Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Accord, and the Cancun Agreement.

US lead negotiator, Todd Stern, often cited as the main opponent to the idea of a commitment to a legally-binding agreement, said his country would have no difficulty to sign into a legally-binding agreement that binds all major emitters with equal legal force. He said he wouldn’t object to agreeing on a process to lead to this agreement. The US would rather discuss the process, and let its unfolding define the legal nature of the outcome, than defining the legal form beforehand, to design a process to get to it. It seems that the EU and the US are fine-tuning their views to move towards a deal that satisfies both.

Todd Stern said he didn’t think China, India, and Brazil are ready to sign into a binding agreement that would give identical legal treatment to developed and emerging nations. No problem there, he said. Commitments  that are not legally-binding, like the ones made in Copenhagen and reaffirmed in Cancun, are politically and morally binding.

He added that the US has no quarrels with the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities, and respective capacity” under a new legal agreement, provided that ‘capacity’ is also taken into account. He said the US interprets this principle as leading to a ‘continuum of responsibilities’, rather than to as a firewall separating in absolute terms all developing countries from the developed or industrialized ones. The US major concern is with the idea that the principle be applied to prevent even the larger emerging powers to have binding emissions targets. Today, they insist their pledges are voluntary, and demand that all developed countries have mandatory targets.

Chinese minister Xie Zenhua said to the plenary of Cop17 high level segment yesterday that China wants a future legally-binding agreement under the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. He arrived in Durban saying that China could accept binding emissions reduction targets.

Negotiators were clearly more confident yesterday night that an agreement might be possible here in Durban. One of them said that the negotiations that started yesterday evening and would continue throughout the day today could be a “watershed”. COP17 will anyway close a chapter of the negotiations that has been opened years ago. It is the last stop before the first period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol ends. The mandate of the working group created in 2005, during COP11, and the first Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol to decide on other commitment periods will be completed in Durban one way or another. The Protocol will very likely be amended to have a second period to 2020.

Negotiators are clearly making every effort to prevent COP17 from failing. There is a noticeable concern to reach an outcome as significant as possible, in large part as a deference to Africa, the continent most vulnerable to climate change. They are really engaged in the efforts to ensure a second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol. The plea made by the Africans at the beginning of COP17 that Africa does not become the graveyard for the Protocol appears to have impressed them all. The risk of a breakdown of the Kyoto Protocol has been progressively reduced by intense negotiations.

The EU is conceding more than it seemed to be willing to concede when negotiations began. The BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), the stronger group within G77+China, is participating of all decisions. South Africa, presiding COP17, is doing its best to make this African climate summit to succeed. Brazil is among the facilitators in the talks leading to the completion of  a package deal. Brazilian negotiators will feel responsible for the package deal, as its coauthors. China arrived in Durban announcing it wants to play a game of cooperation, differently from previous COPs, when China blocked progress in several key issues. India has been striving to ensure parties and press that its position is not different from China’s. The BASIC will likely have a common positive standing on negotiations.

The president of the African Group, Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, said the Africans have a “vested interest in the success of COP17”. “It is a very important meeting for us in Africa,” he added. None of the demands of the African Group he mentioned seem too difficult to get the support from all negotiators in Durban. The African Group’s minimum expectations are to have a ratifiable second period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol (‘second KP’), making the Green Climate Fund fully operational, even if some issues remain to be solved later on. “We don’t want it to be an empty shell. But let’s first make sure we have the shell, an then fill it”, he argued. He also said it would be necessary to go back to the Climate Convention fundamentals, through a process that could lead to a future legally-binding deal.

In short, to Africa, the expected package deal would be: the ‘second KP’, the ‘Cancun Package’, to make the Cancun Agreement fully operational, with special reference to the Green Climate Fund, and a ‘process’ to lead to a future common legal framework binding all. Something around these lines, perhaps with a few adjustments to reach a compromise leading to consensus, is likely to be approved at the final plenary.

The Durban outcome will very likely have all the elements demanded by the African Group. There are indications that until 2020 the commitments made in Copenhagen, and built into the UNFCCC tracks by the Cancun Agreement will be considered ‘legal’ commitments, although not ‘fully binding’ commitments. The countries that would sign into the ‘second KP would make their Cancun commitments ‘fully binding’. In other words all commitments to 2020 will be politically binding under the legal framework of the Convention, a smaller portion would also be legally binding under the Kyoto Protocol.

These commitments would be reviewed in 2015, on the basis of IPCC’s fifth report to be approved in 2013-2014. The parties could then decide to raise their ambitions regarding emissions reductions to bring them closer to the findings of climate science. After 2020, a new legal framework will be put in place to regulate actions to meet the climate change challenge.

The Durban outcome is likely to be a mix of some action, and new processes leading to future action.

Global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased by 49 per cent in the last two decades, shows study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. 

The article ‘Rapid growth in CO₂ emissions after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis’ was published online by Nature Climate Change yesterday. The study is a part of the Global Carbon Project, and shows that fossil fuel emissions increased by 5.9 per cent in 2010 and by 49 per cent since 1990 – the reference year for the Kyoto protocol. On average, fossil fuel emissions have risen by 3.1 per cent each year between 2000 and 2010 – three times the rate of increase during the 1990s. They are projected to continue to increase by 3.1 per cent in 2011.

Total emissions – which combine fossil fuel combustion, cement production, deforestation and other land use emissions – reached 10 billion tons of carbon in 2010 for the first time. Half of the emissions remained in the atmosphere, where CO₂ concentration reached 389.6 parts per million. The remaining emissions were taken up by the ocean and land reservoirs, in approximately equal proportions.

Last year’s high growth was caused by both emerging and developed economies. Rich countries continued to outsource part of their emissions to emerging economies through international trade. Contributions to global emissions growth in 2010 were largest from China, the United States, India, the Russian Federation and the European Union. Emissions from the trade of goods and services produced in emerging economies but consumed in the West increased from 2.5 per cent of the share of rich countries in 1990 to 16 per cent in 2010.

In the UK, fossil fuel CO₂ emissions grew 3.8 per cent in 2010 but were 14 per cent below their 1990 levels. However, emissions from the trade of goods and services grew from 5 per cent of the emissions produced locally in 1990 to 46 per cent in 2010 – overcompensating the reductions in local emissions. Emissions in the UK were 20 per cent above their 1990 levels when emissions from trade are taken into account.

“Global CO₂ emissions since 2000 are tracking the high end of the projections used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which far exceed two degrees warming by 2100,” said co-author Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor at the University of East Anglia. “Yet governments have pledged to keep warming below two degrees to avoid the most dangerous aspects of climate change such as widespread water stress and sea level rise, and increases in extreme climatic events.”

Glen Peters, of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Norway, and lead author said: “Many saw the global financial crisis as an opportunity to move the global economy away from persistent and high emissions growth, but the return to emissions growth in 2010 suggests the opportunity was not exploited.”

Sergio Abranches

The last official preparatory meeting to the Climate Change Convention in Durban is taking place in Panama, since last Saturday. Negotiators will attempt to arrive at feasible drafts to be tabled at the next session of the Climate Convention, COP17, in Durban, South Africa. The signs are that an agreement on the core issues deadlocking conversations is unlikely to happen.

A radical polarization between developed and developing countries emerged since the first preparatory meetings, early this year. This was somehow surprising. COP16, in Cancun, seemed to have restored confidence among parties, and to point towards a more cooperative dialogue. No party or observer would really imagine that a major deal was possible this year, or even next year, especially after the worsening of global economic conditions with a new turn of the financial crisis. But there was some hope that a few meaningful strides would be possible, until conditions were ripe for a final deal.

It seems unlikely that global climate negotiators will be able to solve conflicting views on the core issues that are deadlocking climate talks in this climate of sharp polarization. The present situation seems to indicate that countries have moved backwards to the old veto politics that impeded any significant global climate deal for one decade.

This persistent deadlock threatens the credibility of the Climate Convention (UNFCCC) as the multilateral instrument to negotiate a future, substantive and encompassing global climate deal. A deal that is binding to all major emitters, setting emissions reduction targets that meet the scientific consensus about the minimum levels necessary to achieve relative climate security.

The divide between developed and developing countries seems to have increased over the last months. On the one side developing countries say there will be no broader deal prior to the approval of a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol. The first period ends in 2012. Developing countries argue that they are already committed to reduction goals proportionate to their historical obligations, and commitments from developed countries are still lacking.

It is true that the aggregate commitment from developed countries is still behind scientific requirements. The goals set for the United States in Copenhagen are too low for the major developed emitter. There is little  room in most developing countries to implement emissions reduction policies without substantial financial and technological support from developed countries. But this is definitely not true for the larger emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and several others. These countries are doing less than they could and should, particularly when we take into account their future emissions, and the pace their emissions is increasing as their economies grow.

Insisting on the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol seems increasingly less credible as a strategy to achieve a meaningful global climate deal. The countries that owe more on the side of further commitments to reduce their emissions are all outside it, namely the United States, China, Brazil, India, and a few other G20 members.

It is more plausible to say that their concern is not really with the future of global climate change policy, but with the immediate impact of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ending, without a decision about a second one. The focus of concern is what would happen to the financial and technological cooperation mechanisms under the Protocol and to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) that allows for investments in emissions reducing ventures in developing countries to be used as offsets by developed countries.

The negotiators for the European Union said, on a press briefing in Panama, that CDM projects would continue to be accepted as offsets within EU’s own cap and trade framework, even if Kyoto Protocol’s commitments are not renewed.

While developing countries insist on placing the Kyoto Protocol on center stage of negotiations, developed countries are playing it down. U.S. chief negotiator, Todd Stern has been clear in all his statements that his country is out of it, and has no intention to approve it in the future. The U.S. stance has not changed in Panama. The representative from Japan reiterated his country will not be a party to a second commitment period. New Zealand said that they remain prepared to take on a second commitment period only in the context of a comprehensive global agreement that contains legally-binding emission reduction targets for all major emitters. Australia’s position is more or less the same, if not a bit more direct in the sense of only accepting a successor to Kyoto that reaches all major emitters at once.

A second commitment period seems far away, unless there is enough progress on the “long-term” negotiations (AWG-LCA) aiming at a concomitant and comparable deal that encompasses all large emitters, developed and emerging, especially those outside the reach of the Kyoto Protocol.  This global deal, however, is nowhere in sight.

The Kyoto Protocol has very few virtues as far as necessary climate change mitigation is concerned. It is the only legal framework we have. It helped to create a carbon market. But, alas, in spite of being legal, it reaches about a third of  the global emissions encompassed by the pledges registered under the Copenhagen Agreement. It is legal, but it is hardly binding, because there is no enforcement mechanism in place. Its compliance instruments are either lacking or too weak to make a difference. If what counts is the moral and political constraints of being a signatory, than it does not differ too much from the Copenhagen Agreement, especially after its main elements were approved into the Climate Change Convention framework in Cancun. The carbon market has so far failed to prove itself as a working mechanism to effectively reduce emissions, and is far from becoming a global institution.

UNFCCC’s executive secretary, Christiana Figueres, reported progress on the design of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Technology Executive Committee (TEC), but she raised concerns about the need for progress on monitoring, review and verification (MRV). She has also said that negotiators are for some time working against the clock under the Kyoto Protocol. On the motivational side, she said that Durban needs to address further commitments for developed countries under the Protocol and the evolution of the mitigation framework under the Convention for developed and developing countries. That is precisely the key for the deadlock.

Informally what is already under negotiation is a transition regime once the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends. The major concern is what will happen to the financial and technological cooperation mechanisms created by the Protocol and with CDM. It doesn’t seem too difficult to foresee that a legal extension of these mechanisms beyond the Protocol’s first commitment period is far more probable to happen than the approval of a meaningful second period. This transition rule and progress on the institutional design of technology cooperation and of the Green Fund seem to be the feasible goals for Durban.

The institutional rules that govern the UN’s decision-making process feeds cross-cutting vetoes and has a clear bias towards the status quo. Usually the only viable exit from a deadlocked status quo is muddling through, or accepting piecemeal, minimal changes at a time. The unanimity rule precludes substantial consensus-based decisions leading to a change of regime. This is particularly true for the global climate change regime. If unanimity is to be enforced in absolute terms, no substantive consensus would be possible in this heterogeneous assembly of 193 countries, that ranges from oil producers to small islands threatened to disappear; from giant emitters, developed and developing, to poor countries that have very low emissions. Some of the smaller emitters show nevertheless a far more consequential disposition to find a new path towards low-carbon development, than most of the fast growing large emitters.

In Copenhagen, the application of the absolute interpretation of the unanimity rule led to the collapse of a deal based on a large consensus among all relevant players. It was defeated by the veto of a handful of ideology-orientated countries, largely peripheral to global politics, and to global climate policy. In Cancun, a more relativistic interpretation of the unanimity rule allowed the waiver of a small minority’s whimsical veto, and the approval of the Cancun Agreements.

If negotiators fail to find a way to solve the gridlock within the next few years, the UNFCCC risks loosing its credibility and legitimacy. It will come to be seen as an irrelevant segment of climate politics, one dominated by diplomatic fencing. The sustainability of the Climate Convention will be in jeopardy. But, much worse, if the logjam extends beyond 2012 the danger increases of the world loosing the possibility of maintaing unavoidable climate change within relatively safe boundaries.

 Sergio Abranches

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international groups are expected to present a paper on climate finance at the G20 meeting this Friday in Washington. It recommends a sharp reduction of subsidies for fossil fuels, putting a price tag of $25 per ton on carbon emissions, and collecting a surcharge on bunker fuels to raise money for climate finance.

A draft of the paper leaked this week says the starting point should be a review of fossil fuel subsidies, amounting to $40 billion to $60 billion a year, reports Associated Press’ Arthur Max. Many of those subsidies, however, go to poorer people in less developed countries to help them, for example, to buy cooking gas. Still, subsidy reallocation in advanced and emerging economies could contribute $10 billion a year to a climate fund.

Charging $25 per ton of carbon emissions from the so-called bunker fuels (aviation and shipping) could raise $40 billion a year by 2020. Part of that would have to be earmarked to compensate poor countries for higher import costs, but about $25 billion could go toward climate change, the paper says. It also would lead to a reduction of 5 to 10 percent of the greenhouse gases emitted by aircraft and the merchant marine, the study estimates.

A charge on all carbon emissions, would lead to a 10 percent reduction of global emissions, and raise at least $230 billion. Most of that revenue should be used to reduce other taxes or compensate poor families, but allocating just 10 percent to the climate fund would meet nearly one-fourth of the goal set in Copenhagen to reach $100 billion a year by 2020.

It is a sensible proposal, attuned to the action needed to face the pressing financial problems that will be at the core of the agenda for this weekend Finance Summit. The simultaneous gathering of Finance Ministers, Central Bankers and finance experts, the Board of the World Bank and IMF governors happens amidst another round of  global financial turmoil. Climate finance is the least of their worries now, but the fact remains that G20 governments will need to have something new to say about the climate fund in a couple of months, at the Climate Summit, COP 17, in Durban, South Africa.

Last year, investment in renewable energy, energy efficiency, electric cars and other forms of green technology totaled $500 billion, including more than $200 billion in developing countries. Private capital can benefit from public finance through concessional loans or grants, that help to reduce risks and compensate higher initial costs for adoption of new technologies (AP).

Redirecting public subsidies is fully compatible with the debt and fiscal deficit reduction targets most economies will have to meet, in order to appropriately address the debt crisis that has triggered this new round of financial instability. The new green tech sectors are more dynamic and likely to generate more and better jobs than traditional industries. The Brookings Institution has recently released a study on the green economy in the U. U. showing that: it employs more workers than the fossil fuel industry; the newer “cleantech” segments produced explosive job gains and the clean economy outperformed the nation during the recession; it offers more opportunities and better pay for low- and middle-skilled workers than the national economy as a whole.

The social and climate welfare gains of subsidies directed to these industries are higher than the gains from subsidizing fossil fuels.

Sergio Abranches

The last official preparatory meeting before COP17, in Durban, South Africa, has started yesterday in Bonn pointing to more problems than solutions. Christiana Figueres, top UN climate official, warned the parties about the risk of inaction, but realistically acknowledged that there will likely be very few substantial decisions in Durban. She finally admitted that there is not enough time left to approve the text for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. A regulatory gap is already unavoidable.

Warning statements by the top climate official always precede the final preparatory meetings. Yvo de Boer used to do that before Figueres. It is also on the script to voice some realistic assessments about what is possible to accomplish. Realism helps to manage expectations.

“We are putting ourselves in a scenario where we will have to develop more powerful technologies to capture emissions out of the atmosphere,” said Figueres. “We are getting into very risky territory,” she concluded to stress that time was running out.

She has also sided with the less developed countries and the small island-states observing that the target agreed upon in Copenhagen to limit global warming to around 2C is unsustainable. She supported the small countries’s plea that the world targets 1.5C instead. In Cancun, there was an agreement that at some point the 1.5C target will be considered.

“In my book, there is no way we can stick to the goal [2C] that we know is completely unacceptable to the most exposed [countries],” Figueres said, according to the Guardian.

By pushing for the 1.5C goal Figueres may get a broad majority support among the parties, but runs the risk of creating an unresolvable polarization between the smaller countries, the U.S., China, India, and Brazil. A polarization that may lead to a deadlock in negotiations. Besides, several climate scientists have told me that this is an unrealistic target given the level of GHG already accumulated in the atmosphere and the present path of emissions. Some of them think we’ve already passed even the point where the 2C limit would be feasible. Based on their opinion it seems that either 2C or 1.5C would only be achievable if we have better technology to capture GHG from the atmosphere, as Figueres suggested.

On the side of realistic statements, Figueres has finally acknowledged that an agreement is unlikely in Durban on the second period of commitment for the Kyoto Protocol. “Even if they were able to agree on a legal text”, she said, as Reuters reports, “that requires an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, it requires legislative ratifications on the part of three-quarters of the parties, so we would assume that there’s no time to do that between Durban and the end of 2012.” A post-2012 regulatory gap is already unavoidable, and may further destabilize the already fragile carbon market. There is a broad perception among climate negotiators that no binding agreement to replace Kyoto is likely to be agreed upon before 2015.

Negotiators are even more skeptical about getting any relevant outcome from Durban because of the attitude of the South African presidency. Critics say the presidency lacks initiative. No informal meeting has been organized so far to consult the parties on a viable set of decisions that could prevent COP17 from being a total failure.

Asked about this absentee presidency, Figueres said that “South Africa has been very carefully listening, trying to understand where there are commonalities and where the weaknesses are.” It seems too little given the amount of negotiations still required to reach a consensus on a few points.

Less developed countries are very concerned about the mitigation and adaptation fund. In spite of a commitment made in Copenhagen to implement the fund, and the decision made in Cancun to put it in place, there has been no institutionalization of the fund or disbursement of money. Finding a way to make the fund real could be a fair outcome for the Durban climate talks.

A qualified and active presidency is key to prevent failure of climate talks. The transparent and pluralistic informal meetings convened by the Mexican presidency of COP16 were decisive to get the Cancun Agreements. Prime Minister Rasmussen’s attitude in the presidency of COP15 has contributed in no small amount to the crisis of confidence among parties that led the Copenhagen final session to the well-known dismal ending.

Another critical factor at climate negotiations is some degree of understanding among countries that have a leading role in the different groups among which the Parties are organized: the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China); AOSIS (small island states); African Union; and Less Developed Countries. The three BASIC big players, the U.S., and the European  Union are always decisive players. If they reach some understanding with opinion makers among the other groups, and are able to take these countries’ major interests into account, some progress could be achieved. It is the COP presidency that has the political and institutional means to propitiate situations where this preliminary understanding could be pursued. Apparently this is not happening at all.

Years of deadlocks, paralysis, and muddling-through outcomes, if and when there is some progress, have led several analysts to propose that the UNFCCC ceases to be the main forum for global climate policy-making. Some of them defend the creation of an agency similar to the World Trade Organization to become the global climate change regulatory agency. Others think that sectoral agreements and bilateral deals could pave the way to a multilateral agreement encompassing all major carbon emitters. This deal could be done within G20, and be more effective and binding than any UN-sponsored agreement.

I agree that the UNFCCC is unlikely to yield a broad and bold binding agreement in any foreseeable future. Climate change challenges us to do the maximum possible under the present technological and social conditions, as well as to keep searching for stronger technological means, short of geoengineering. The UN rules could only lead to consensus around an acceptable minimum. But , its weaknesses notwithstanding, the UNFCCC still has an important role to play.

It creates an environment where the key actors of the global society can interact and learn the ways towards global democratic governance. Government officials, NGOs, scientists, business, and the media get together to debate all topics relevant to climate change. This continuous interactions create connections, networks, allowing  all players in this complex and decisive global political game to be exposed to each others’ views and values. It is an exercise fundamental to the future of democratic and pluralistic global governance without government. An important environment to test everyone’s capabilities to become a part of this cosmopolity, of this global poliarchy. Perhaps it is not the appropriate mechanism to provide us with a strong and binding legal framework for global action on climate change, but is is a necessary piece of this machinery, in itself a work in progress.

Are people who write about climate change and environmental issues destined to become doomsayers?

This question returned to my mind while I was reading the World Meteorological Organization’s review of 2010 significant weather and climate events. I was looking for a broader context to comment on the major weather-related tragedy on record that happened in Brazil. Three weeks ago more than 1,000 people died from flash floods and mudslides in three cities located on the hills near Rio de Janeiro, where I live.

I was startled by the number of extreme weather events listed. Individually, they were no news to me, but together they provided a larger, more dramatic picture of the encounters between human populations and the wild forces of nature.

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Sergio Abranches (for The Great Energy Challenge)

When president Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen for the Summit of chiefs of government, Congress was still discussing a comprehensive climate and energy bill. Expectations were set too high for COP15. Most delegates and environmentalists hoped that Obama would lead the way towards a global climate agreement. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson explained on a side event her agency would soon start regulating carbon emissions.

The Copenhagen Accord fell short of expectations, but Obama’s last minute deal with the leaders of the emerging powers was pivotal to its approval. The Cancun Agreements would not be possible without the groundwork done in Copenhagen. One of its major achievements was to make core elements of the Copenhagen Accord official. The most important were mitigation pledges and provisions for transparency.

On the eve of COP16, there was generalized concern that parties from the developing world could refuse to close a deal because the U.S. failed to approve a legal framework to enforce federal climate policy. U.S. top climate negotiator Todd Stern stated repeatedly that a climate law was Obama’s final goal, but there were other means to enforce domestic mitigation actions. EPA’s forthcoming rules on carbon emissions were mentioned as part of a broader climate change policy.

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Sergio Abranches

Lack of a Federal climate bill in the U.S. is likely to jeopardize Cancun’s climate talks.

In an interview with ClimateWire, U.S. chief climate negotiator Todd Stern said the Obama administration is “not backing away” from its Copenhagen pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels in the coming decade and more than 80 percent by mid-century. This is good news, but not enough to push Cancun’s climate talks beyond the Copenhagen Accord.

Stern has also tried to ease concerns that Obama’s failure to get Congress to vote an energy and climate legislation would impair negotiations at COP16, in Cancun.

“People who frame this all around whether there is U.S. legislation or not, that if there’s legislation we’re in the end zone … I don’t believe that. It’s not the magic bullet, and it’s also not the thing that sinks the ship.”

The above statement amounts to nothing more than good old diplomatic damage management. He knows that the without a legally binding domestic climate program the U.S. will hardly be able to play an effective role on global climate talks. Moreover, the lack of a clear political decision by the U.S. Congress on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions mitigation is likely to contribute to a deadlock in Cancun. A final global deal will probably be delayed for at least one year more.

Let’s talk plain politics: it is not possible for the U.S. to play a leading and decisive role on global climate politics without having in place a clear and legally binding domestic portfolio of actions on climate change. Every player needs a bill at home to back its pledges at the international level.

A recent BASIC meeting, in Rio de Janeiro, has showed that the major emerging economies are rethinking the nature and scope of their responsibilities regarding global climate change. They seem more prepared to move forward and turn most of the Copenhagen commitments into institutionalized global policies, provided the U.S. shows more concrete and effective commitments.

The Brazilian government remains the major exception today. It opposes any change of attitude from the BASIC countries. But India, South Africa and China are already more willing to admit the fact that they will have to assume more responsibilities in the near future. It is, however, unlikely that they’ll accept any change in the status quo, before the U.S. Presidency and Congress are able to give legal form to the country’s commitments in the Copenhagen Accord and signal they’re willing to go beyond that in the future.

Writing internationally assumed commitments into law will turn them into domestic obligations, and give them full credibility. An international protocol, like the Kyoto Protocol, without legal domestic backing means close to nothing.

Stern knows that. And because he knows it, after making the usual disclaim, he acknowledged that

“The fact that we don’t have it [the legislation] right now will certainly affect the atmospherics of the negotiations, but the fundamentals of it aren’t different. (…) The President has made it perfectly clear that he’s committed to energy and climate legislation, and we will press on.”

This means that the U.S. will arrive in Cancun with nothing more than Obama’s word that he’ll keep fighting for energy and climate legislation. Nothing very different from what has happened in Copenhagen, at COP15. As several negotiators have told Climate Wire they are compelled to trust President Obama’s word. But the fact remains that the U.S. will not have moved one single bit ahead after Copenhagen. On the contrary, in Copenhagen there was hope that the U.S. federal climate legislation would be forthcoming soon in 2010. Now it failed to pass, and the prospects for another try are unclear so far. The next move on climate legislation in the U.S. will very much depend on the results of midterm elections, and right now the outlook for the government’s majority is rather bleak.

The setback for climate legislation in the U.S. and Brazil’s refusal to support other BASIC country’s proposals for a change in the terms of negotiation will likely block any real progress in Cancun. If nothing changes until the end of November, COP16 is likely to be one more of an already long list of deadlocked meetings of the parties to the Climate Convention. That’s what diplomats and observers from Brazil, China and India are saying.

The U.S. is the key to unlock global climate talks. If Washington moves, than it is likely that the BASIC countries will move, and the probability of a legally binding accord increases significantly. The Brazilian government would have to follow suit independently of the outcome of the October presidential election. The Chinese government, already showing more propensity to change than the Brazilian, would not be able to resist the pressure. India and South Africa are already persuaded they’ll have to move forward.

To make it short and blunt: no U.S. climate bill, no global climate deal.

Sérgio Abranches

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.

Sergio Abranches
The Major Economies Forum – MEF, held in Rome between June 30 and July 1, used the Copenhagen Accord as a central reference regarding global climate change policies. At UNFCCC’s Bonn discussions last April, however, the Copenhagen Accord continued to be a matter of controversy and disagreement among the parties.

The MEF gathers seventeen major economic powers, not by chance also major carbon emitters. The “chair’s summary” of the “Seventh Leaders’ Representative Meeting” meeting mentions the Copenhagen Accord several times as a guideline for further progress. It says that “participants emphasized the importance of quickly implementing the Copenhagen Accord’s Fast Start financing provisions.” The communiqué also stressed the need for transparency and maximum clarity to build international confidence as a requisite for a balanced outcome in Cancun. Many participants argued the need to focus adaptation efforts on less developed countries particularly vulnerable to climate change. The note also informs that member countries “provided updates on their actions to meet their fast start financing commitments under the Accord.”

The MEF has also discussed the divisive issue of “monitoring, reporting and verifying” (MRV) emission targets, i.e. the transparency of emission reductions commitments. According to the chair’s summary “it was suggested that, per the Copenhagen Accord, there are essentially three areas of MRV to be addressed”, namely mitigation efforts of countries that are in Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol; financial and technological support of mitigation efforts of “non-Annex I” countries; and mitigation efforts of “non-Annex I” countries.

“Participants noted the various mitigation targets and actions listed under the Copenhagen Accord. They further discussed how such targets and actions might be reflected in a future outcome, including with respect to whether or not they should have a legally binding character, whether there should be a single instrument or two instruments, the timing of reflecting mitigation targets/actions, the application of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, and other aspects.”

The paragraph above shows that the Copenhagen Accord although a political signpost has left several crucial questions open to doubt or contradiction. The two-instrument issue, was clearly not adequately solved by the Accord. The doubt remaining is whether there should be an additional legally binding agreement for “non-Annex I” countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and for countries that have not ratified it, like the US, and have registered emission reduction targets under the Copenhagen Accord, or a single new treaty binding to all and superseding the Kyoto Protocol.

This contradiction between the political support to the Copenhagen Accord by the leaders of the world’s major nations, and the resistance of the parties to UNFCCC to admit it into the official proceedings of the Climate Talks is a central issue the new climate secretary Christiana Figueres will have to deal with. If the Accord does not become an integral part of the Convention, it will always serve as a an escape route for countries that are associated to it and have registered their commitments in its annexes to avoid further binding commitments under the UNFCCC. It will also be used by recalcitrant parties to veto any progress supported by the majority of the parties at COP-16.

The Copenhagen Accord is clearly not a finished job. But is has a critical advantage over the UNFCCC. The Accord has the formal commitment of the major carbon emitters, with quantified targets for emission reductions. It represents the first portfolio of national actions ever to commit large emitters as the United States, China, India, and Brazil, among others. It covers over 80% of total emissions, far more than the Kyoto Protocol. It is clearly not sufficient to reduce carbon emissions to the safety level. But it is a major political resource that should not be neglected.

Although not legally binding, it has been adopted by the major developed and emerging powers as a politically biding reference. The UNFCCC’s Executive Secretary’s challenge is to find a way to positively use this political commitment to remove vetoes and to ensure that deals closed in Copenhagen are not reopened in Cancun. The Copenhagen Accord is a political tool that should be used to help nations move towards a new future climate treaty.