Sergio Abranches

Why the Durban Platform is a political breakthrough, but a dismal outcome in the light of climate science?

The second part of the question is far easier to answer. Negotiators in Durban have agreed to review the pledges for emissions reductions in the second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol and Cancun Agreement by 2015 in the light of the fifth assessment report on the state of science, to be released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from September 2013. However, as the IPCC said on a press statement about COP17, “in its fourth assessment report published in 2007, the IPCC showed that a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius could have a damaging effect on water supplies, biodiversity, food supplies, coastal flooding and storms and health.”

Additionally, the IPCC also states that:

“The fourth assessment report shows that emissions of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming must fall by 2050 by 50-85% globally compared to the emissions of the year 2000, and that global emissions must peak well before the year 2020, with a substantial decline after that, in order to limit the growth in global average temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”

From the standpoint of science Durban has decided on too little too late.

In the political realm, though, COP17 was a watershed. First of all, it closes a whole chapter of negotiations on commitment periods under the Kyoto Protocol. There will be only a second one, with fewer ratifiers than the first. COP18 will still have to decide whether it will end by 2017 or 2020. There has been no consensus on the end date, and the alternatives ended up within brackets. But the main point has been resolved: it will be replaced by a new “protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties”, no later than 2020. That’s the core decision contained in the Durban Platform.

The above expression is a political breakthrough, one that has been progressively taking shape since COP15, in Copenhagen. There, for the first time ever, the United States and the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) have agreed to offer quantified pledges for emission reductions under the United Nations Climate Convention (UNFCCC). They were voluntary, not legally binding, but they have been formally registered with UNFCCC”s Executive Secretariat. It was a major first step and, at the same time, a frustrating decision.

Much more was expected from the leaders of both developed, and emerging world powers. Besides, the leaders left abruptly, creating an authority gap, between the political summit and the official Conference of the Parties. A weak COP presidency and the resulting authority gap led the plenary to only “take note” of what the leaders had agreed. The Copenhagen Accord was noted as a political decision, but did not become an “official” agreement under the track of the Convention.

The second step towards the breakthrough was made in Cancun. The pledges under the Copenhagen Accord were adopted by the Cancun Agreement, that has also made official several other decisions made in Copenhagen, as well as some that were left to be finalized by COP16, in Mexico. In Cancun, the voluntary commitments became official ones, under the umbrella of the Climate Convention.

In Durban, negotiators from the United States, the BASIC group, and the European Union underlined the official nature of the Cancun Agreement, as a preparation of the groundwork for the Platform to launch the process leading to the new universal agreement with legal force applicable to all parties to the Climate Convention. In a nutshell, it was acknowledged by all relevant parties that these commitments are legal, although not binding. The difference: the Kyoto Protocol, besides being a legal instrument, explicitly states that the targets for the countries (“industrialized countries”) listed on its Annex I are mandatory. The Cancun Agreement is part and parcel of the Climate Convention, therefore it has legal status, but the commitments registered by the parties are voluntary, not mandatory.

Finally, the Durban Platform takes the decisive step: it commits all major emitters outside the Kyoto Protocol to the negotiation of a new agreement with legal force, under which all commitments will have the same legal treatment, although they could be quantitatively differentiated on the basis of each party’s capacities.

This is not an easy decision to make. Even before it is formally adopted it is likely to cause the countries to start planning domestic actions to enable them to meet the targets yet to be defined. It is unrealistic to imagine, as some environmentalists do, that a “top down approach”, by which a decision under the Climate Convention would bind countries to take actions, would ever work.

Even the Kyoto Protocol praised for its “legally binding” status has no enforcement mechanism. What enforcement mechanism could lead Canada to meet its targets for the first period of commitment next year? None at all. Even with UN officials stating that although outside the Protocol it still has the obligation, Canada will likely fail to meet its Kyoto target, and there will hardly be any consequence to its noncompliance.

Politics hardly moves ahead of the facts. It is not a proactive process. It is a responsive one. Politics responds to active interests in economy and society. It seldom reflects even the “inactive majority” or the majority of “public opinion”. Political decisions respond to “active interest groups”, to economic constraints and inducements, and to the domestic correlation of power. Countries that show greater ambition of emissions reductions also have greater active political support from domestic economic and social forces to policies aiming at coping with climate change. Their domestic policies are usually more ambitious than their multilateral commitments.

If one looks at China’s domestic policies to reduce emissions and other forms of pollution, one will easily see that they are far ahead of what Chinese lead negotiators are willing to commit to at the Climate Convention.

Politics, in this sense, consolidates what countries are ripe to commit to at the multilateral level. The approach that really counts, and leads to progress in the negotiations under the Climate Convention is the bottom up one.

What is meaningful and relevant about the Durban process is that over the last three years major developed and emerging countries have become readier to admit to the possibility of a single climate change regime encompassing them all. The US, China, India, and Brazil said that much several times during COP17, and signed into it at the end. This outcome was not guaranteed at the outset of the climate talks. It was the result of intense negotiation and consultation. Negotiators have likely had to obtain a specific mandate from their leaders, in mid-game, to go as far as they’ve gone.

What will happen next will depend on what happens inside each of these countries. The focus of pressure should be domestic politics, rather than diplomatic undertakings. Not that the COP process doesn’t matter. It does, very much. But its main function is not to shape climate change policies to be adopted domestically. It is to consolidate progress on domestic climate change policies at the multilateral level, adding cross-country constraints and global transparency to the agreed actions. This enables, for instance, a network of domestic and global civil society organizations to join forces to act as watchdogs, to ensure that policies are in line with targets. It does make a difference to have a global accounting system for greenhouse gas emissions, and to have a global registry for quantitative targets for emission reductions. These outcomes would strengthen the multilateral regulatory system, and would also give more punch to domestic pressure from civil society and opposition parties in overseeing their government’s implementation of climate change policies.

The year 2015 has become a new milestone for global climate change politics. Two crucial decisions shall be taken at COP21, if the Durban Platform is to be completed. Firstly, the review of the emission reduction commitments to seek coherence with the 2 degrees Celsius target. As pointed before, it is absolutely sure that the new IPCC report will show a serious gap between committed actions and warming trends. If parties are to take their commitments seriously, they’ll have to revise their targets upwards for the period 2015-2020. Secondly, they’ll have to decide on the new “protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties” to be adopted no later than 2020.

The political engine is set to move. The pace and destination it will take will depend on the evolution of domestic economic and social forces over the next three years. Another important factor will be the domestic interplay of interests, and the power of pressure and advocacy groups. Bilateral and multilateral politics do have a role, but never a dominant one. Competition and coalition among nations and groups of nations, also help in shaping decisions. They’ll help to pave the way to future outcomes. But they do so by responding to domestic interests and projecting them on the global arena.

Sergio Abranches, from Durban

The documents still circulating at COP17 show notable political progress, but fall short of adequately meeting the risks already pointed out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — IPCC — fourth assessment of climate science. They are still under discussion, and final decision may still be significantly different. It is likely, however, they will keep the general thrust of the documents.

Politics is rarely moved by the science on the issues requiring policy decisions. Politics is moved by interests, interactions, power competition, alliances, and conflicts. All that play a strong role to shape the global politics of climate change. At the political level there are unprecedented moves reflected on documents not yet approved by COP17 plenary.

Perhaps the most important one is the support from the United States, China, India and Brazil of a a “process to develop a Protocol or another legal instrument applicable to all Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change”. This process, says the draft document, shall “begin immediately and be conducted as a matter of urgency”, so that the new working group the plenary should create can “complete its work as early as possible but no later than 2015, in order to adopt this legal instrument” at COP21. It “shall raise levels of ambition and be informed, inter alia, by the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the outcomes of the 2013-2015 review”.

In short this means that by 2020 there should be a common legal regime on climate change encompassing all parties to the climate convention, that this legal instrument could even be a new protocol, thus legally-binding, it would have quantified mitigation targets for all major emitters. The new instrument should be ready to be adopted by 2015, at COP21. The quantitative targets should in line with the new IPCC assessment report, that should be used to guide the review of the commitments made in Copenhagen and reaffirmed on the Cancun Agreement.

The other breakthrough is the formal admission that there is a “significant gap between the aggregated effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emissions pathways consistent with having a likely chance of holding warming below 2°C or 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”

In other words the document formally notes, and with grave concern, that there is a gap between the commitments to reduce GHG emissions and the commitment to keep the chances of warming below 2°C or 1.5°C. The 2°C is the target approved under the Copenhagen Accord, and the Cancun Agreement. The 1.5°C is a demand from the small islands states, the African Group, and the Less Developed Countries, admitted by the Cancun Agreement.

These hard to make political steps forward are a sine qua non for a more ambitious, science-based, rule-based future global climate change policy.

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.

Sergio Abranches, from Durban

COPs look all alike, regardless the sometimes radical change of their environment, from freezing streets to sunny beach promenades. Their first week, called “technical segment” looks pretty much like their second week, called the high-level segment. The difference? The second week is more crowded, and ‘politicos’, having ministerial rank, take charge of negotiations. To expedite a solution they tend to set technical considerations aside and focus on the wording of resolutions that might appear significant enough to justify calling them an “agreement”, a “roadmap”, a “plan for action”, or a “process”. 

COP17 high level segment started yesterday in Durban with a call for action from all speakers, from the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to South African president, Jacob Zuma. But it seems the parties to the Climate Convention are not ready for action. They’ll choose ‘process’ over action. The final outcome will very likely be a downsized second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, covering about 15% of global emissions, and a ‘process’ to guide negotiations to a post-2020 legally-binding agreement, to cover more than 80% of global emissions. Intense negotiations by the ‘politicos’ are trying to break the many interconnected gridlocks to make this happen.

By mid-week, last week, negotiators of the so-called technical segment were hopeful they’d be able to close a package deal to make the Cancun agreements fully operational. The ‘Cancun Package’ should deliver a fully operational Green Climate Fund, with assurance from donor countries that cash deposits would be forthcoming in the first weeks of 2012; financial and  policy mechanisms to support adaptation of developing countries to climate change; put in place a Technology Center and Network ready to start operations; set up a global accounting system for greenhouse gas emissions and a mechanism for the reporting and evaluation of parties’ emissions reduction pledges. But last Friday it was clear they’d failed to close the package deal.

Intense negotiations on these ‘technical’ matters continue, while negotiators keep trying to solve the major political hurdle of this COP17. The hurdle? How to ensure a second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, even though a quite lean one, and how to move on towards the dreamed goal of having a rules-based agreement binding all major emitters, developed and developing. Parties want this “second KP”, as they call it because it would keep alive the legal structure and the operational mechanisms for finance and technological cooperation that are a part of the Protocol. Its contribution to the fight against climate change, though, would be a modest one. The second round of commitments will make legally-binding the pledges to reduce emissions made in Copenhagen by the countries that are a party to it, and reaffirmed in Cancun under the track of the Climate Convention.

The future treaty should replace the Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Accord, and the Cancun Agreement by 2020. As anyone who browses COPs agendas will immediately see these issues are not new at all. COP 11, in Montreal, in 2005, created the “ad hoc working group” (AWG-KP) to decide on the second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol. The ‘Bali Action Plan’ decided at COP 13, in 2007, to create the “ad hoc working group” (AWG-LCA) to undertake “a comprehensive process to enable the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention through long-term cooperative action, now, up to and beyond 2012”. The decision also determined that the working group should “complete its work in 2009 and present the outcome” to the COP15, in Copenhagen. In other words, a ‘process’ was defined to lead the working group to propose the draft of a legally-binding agreement that should be approved by the parties at COP15, in Copenhagen, in 2009.

Neither group has fulfilled its mandate. COP15 failed to decide on both issues, and the mandate of the two working groups was extended for one more year, so that they could report to COP16, in Cancun. Negotiators in Cancun did little more than make the Copenhagen Accord official, by bringing its decisions into the UN negotiating tracks, and to fill in a bit more of detail on the ‘work in progress’ towards a second period of  commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, and a future binding agreement. Sure, the mandates of the two working groups were again extended until COP17, in Durban.

We are now at COP17, in Durban, and the best scenario for the outcome taking shape here would be a second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, with fewer parties signing into it, than those who agreed to the first one. This ‘second KP’ would cover about 15% of global emissions, down from the 26% covered by the ‘first KP’. Parties will obviously cheer the full accomplishment of the mandate given to the ‘ad hoc working group’, and praise the work done by its chairs, and co-chairs, and all the parties who ‘constructively’ contributed to the successful closing of their work. From what they’ve been saying on side events and press conferences so will a good part of the environmentalists here in Durban. On the future treaty, COP17 would likely decide on “a comprehensive process to enable” the drafting of a comprehensively legally-binding agreement to be in force no later than 2020. There level of ambitions has been significantly lowered by both governments and many environmentalist organizations. The present level of ambitions may be more realistic. This outcome is nevertheless very frustrating, and severely enlarges the gap between commitments to action and the scientific requirements to meet the climate change challenge.

Connie Hedegaard, EU Commissioner for Climate Action, has said on the official opening of the high level segment that the EU is ready to take a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol. But, she added, the EU must be assured that others will agree on a new legally binding framework. Framework, not agreement, one should be reminded.

The best-case scenario has become one in which the EU and a few other countries sign into a ‘second KP’, and the other major parties agree to ‘framework’, with some comfortable deadlines.

There is a worst-case scenario, but they’ll work hard to prevent it from happening. If it nevertheless prevails, a group of parties demanding more concrete results might not be happy with just a ‘framework’, and with the looks of the ‘Cancun Package’, and would rather veto a decision. If this ‘kamikaze’ attitude is interpreted by the presidency as ‘lack of consensus or unanimity’, the ‘second KP’ might become a ‘unilateral declaration’ by parties; and the ‘future agreement’ would remain a rather fuzzy promise.

When unable to agree on a decision, negotiators use to write the clauses under brackets. If one peruses the “amalgamation document” with the views of parties on a future agreement, one will see the same brackets at the same places for about five years. There has been no major breakthrough on relevant issues.

Decisions are not forthcoming even on what has already been decided before, requiring only a few relatively simple operational details to be implemented. That’s what is holding the implementation on finance, technology, and adaptation. On the transparency regime, brackets tell us they can’t even decide whether accounting will have a ‘framework’ or a ‘system’. On the Green Climate Fund they are struggling to determine whether it will work under the ‘guidance’ or under the ‘authority’ of the COP.

How to explain this resilience of the status quo ante, COP after COP, this slow incremental progress of political decisions aiming at a global climate change governance regime? They all know the science. They all know they’re dealing with a global threat. Most of the countries that are parties to the Climate Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, have faced some hardship caused by extreme climate events. They are all implementing carbon reducing policies at home. Most know how urgent it is to achieve a level of cooperation among high emitters to act together to cut emissions. And all of them would acknowledge that on their press conferences. But they all behave conservatively in the conference rooms. They are still captured the the dominant interests of the high carbon economy. But there are other domestic forces already interested to move towards a low carbon economy. Market forces are changing, and social support to change is already a majority of public opinion in most countries. Public opinion has not turned into active political opinion yet. However, on balance, most governments have more room to change policies today than governments had ten years ago. Yet they are still resistant to change views in multilateral negotiations.

EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard complained on her twitter @CHedegaardEU that “sometimes messages are more progressive at public press conferences than in negotiation rooms…”

A journalist asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon yesterday if there is something wrong about the UN process, given that the parties are dealing with the same deadlocks for years. He said there is nothing wrong with the UN process. Negotiators are dealing with difficult decisions for their countries. Sometimes member countries the political will to move forward, he argued.

There is, however, something deadly wrong about the UN process, and not only on UNFCCC. The Security Council has been criticized for not being able to adequately deal with global security issues. A thorough UN reform has been on the agenda for years to no avail. The UN has become a machine that works almost always on low gears, having enormous difficulty to deliver meaningful and prompt decisions. Its rules are end up by maintaining the status quo, rather than promoting change. Even its own reform tends to stall.

The UN decision-making process is based either on an unanimity rule, the case of the UNFCCC, or on a regime of “selective veto power”, as in the Security Council. The unanimity rule gives, in principle, a veto power to all parties, since any country’s positive vote becomes pivotal for a decision to be made. In the case of the Security Council, a few countries have veto power since the times of the Cold War. This distribution of veto power didn’t change, although global geopolitics has thoroughly changed since the 1980’s at the very least.

The United States, one of the beneficiaries of the immutable status quo in the Security Council, strongly criticizes the ‘1992 division between developed and developing countries’, arguing that domestic and global realities changed very much, and this firewall is no longer acceptable.

China, is perfectly comfortable to be treated as a full power in the Security Council and as a developing country under the UNFCCC. This means it has the same voice as the major developed powers, and benefits from a veto power several developed countries don’t have, when deciding on global security matters. But it can, at the same time, demand differentiated obligations regarding global climate security, as a member of G77+China. Washington, and most of the EU, would like China to be treated as a full power both at the Security Council and at the UNFCCC. Connie Hedegaard referred today to the “real developing” countries, meaning of course that that are countries that are no longer truly “developing”. They belong to an intermediate category of emerging powers, China on the topmost position.

We live in a changing world. There are new threats to global security, that go far beyond the nuclear threat of Cold War times. Several studies show that climate change has become a major threat to global security. Yet the UN rules ‘freeze’ the players into outdated positions. The players’ stakes in decision-making do not match their real stakes regarding present global threats. An uneven playing field and rules that multiply veto players make it extraordinarily difficult to change the status quo. They contribute to maintain the status quo, or what, in the language of climate change modeling would be called ‘business as usual’. The reference used in the  IPCC scenarios, for instance, to determine the likely consequences of no new action is ‘business as usual’, aka the status quo. Yet the rules of global climate change politics strengthen the resilience of the status quo. They favor a ‘business as usual’ attitude.

Action to meet the climate change challenge will hardly come from the UNFCCC decision-making. The Climate Convention will always reflect with some delay what countries are already doing domestically. A ‘top down’ approach is unlikely to ever meet the scientific requirements for global climate change policy, especially if countries are doing less than science tells them they would need to do. Besides, some countries resist to write into an international treaty even what they are doing domestically. This is the case of both the US and China.

China has been doing more domestically that it has pledged to do in Copenhagen. One can no longer infer China’s progress on curbing emissions and building a low-carbon economy from what Chinese negotiators do and say at the Climate Convention.  It would be no sacrifice for China to write its Copenhagen pledges, officially reaffirmed in Cancun, into a multilateral legally-binding instrument. As it would not be any harder for China to review these targets upwards by 2015.

The United States is in a more awkward situation. Brazil and China can say their Copenhagen/Cancun commitments are legally-binding domestically, because they are a part of their climate change laws. The US Congress failed to approve such a law. US negotiators impose several conditions to move forward, but offer very little as a quid pro quo. The US senate is known to be very reluctant to ratify international treaties. It has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and negotiators can do nothing to assure the other parties a new treaty would be ratified. All US negotiators can say is that their Copenhagen/Cancun commitments are “politically and morally” binding. Todd Stern, US lead negotiator said that much on his press conference today.

The structural political foundations of the UN system do not enable the parties to the Climate Convention to decide on effective and urgent action to face risks created by climate change. Why it would still be advisable to keep the UNFCCC alive and working? First of all, because it has value as a place to consolidate an institutional framework that could lay the foundations for a future regime for climate change governance. This regime will come from a bottom up process whereby increasingly more robust domestic climate change policies are incorporated into UNFCCC’s system of rules. Decisions on domestic policies will  come faster than consensus can be built at COP plenaries. Secondly, the UNFCCC provides an important environment for global political interaction, promoting tolerance towards the diversity of points of view, arguments, and cultural references. It  exposes parties to each others’ realities and  enhances solidarity.

One could say that the UNFCCC belongs to the pre-history of a cosmopolitan global democracy, supporting the global governance of several key global issues, especially climate change. This regime of governance without government will benefit from this pluralist environment with some capacity to prevent extreme positions and reduce radical polarizations that tend to cause systemic breakdowns.

Sergio Abranches

As the first segment of COP17 comes to an inconclusive closing, negotiators are adding the bits and pieces coming out of their talks to figure out where they stand. They are working to narrow down the options to be presented to the ministers for further deliberation during the political segment, starting on Monday.

Although there has been fair progress on several technical matters, consensus is still lacking on the fundamentals. Nobody expects grand decisions to be made here in Durban, but a reiteration of a complete deadlock might severely damage UNFCCC’s credibility. All parties know they’ll need to arrive at a package deal with meaningful and practical results on finance and technology, as well as clear guidance as to future steps towards building a global climate change regime.

A second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol seems hard to obtain. Negotiators are considering some legal solutions to avoid a gap among commitment periods. There has been considerable agreement among parties that this gap should be avoided. Although a fully ratifiable amendment seems unlikely, negotiators could still decide on a transition mechanism to keep the Protocol alive.

Japan has insisted yesterday that the way forward is to start working immediately on a new comprehensive legally-binding agreement. Japan chief envoy Masahiko Horie proposed that COP17 establishes a new working group to draft this agreement that should be completed as soon as possible. The baseline for the agreement would be the Cancun Agreement.

A delegate from one of the BASIC countries said that it is imperative to look for a suitable solution to get the United States aboard, and convince the EU and other parties to agree to a second period of commitment. He hinted that there has been some work towards devising a legal form as strong as possible but short of requiring ratification. The negotiator said many feel uneasy with the possibility of deciding on a new treaty, even with support from the US, only to see the Senate in Washington refusing to ratify the treaty later on.

A non-ratifiable agreement would seem a more practical and working solution than the demand for a fully legally-binding agreement.

According to Reuters, China’s lead negotiator Su Wei said yesterday that “since the EU is the only group of parties that is ready to consider a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol we are ready and willing to engage constructively with the EU.” Su Wei is also reported to have said that China does not “rule out the possibility of [a] legally binding [agreement]. It is possible for us, but it depends on the negotiations.”

Finding a middle ground on major issues seems unlikely on the light of what has happened during the first week. Usually deferring decisions to the ministers at the political segment is no solution. Countries will hardly change their views on relevant issues on the spot. If there is any card to play on the second week, it has already been decided ahead of the meeting, at home. Ministers may or may not play these cards depending on the moves from other key players. But they will hardly change game at this stage of the process.

Sergio Abranches, from Durban

The United States has voiced the first clear objection to Europe’s proposal for a Durban roadmap toward a future legal agreement to reach all relevant parties on its first press conference after COP17 has officially opened.

US negotiator, Jonathan Pershing, said today that his government would not decide on the formal nature of such an agreement without first knowing its content. He also said that “any post-2020 agreement would have to bind all significant players.” Post-2020 agreement was the catch-phrase Pershing has used to mark the US stance on the negotiations. His reasoning was quite clear: countries representing 80% of the emissions have already registered their commitments to reduce emissions to 2020. All of them have taken actions, and in the near future these actions will lead to a deceleration of greenhouse gas emissions. The US does not intend to change commitments made in Copenhagen to 2020. These commitments have become official under the Climate Convention in Cancun. As to post 2020 “what we are asking is whether is this the time to start talking about it.”

He lectured the audience of journalists on the constitutional balance of powers in his country, to say that any international treaty has to be ratified by two thirds of the upper house, the Senate. “If there is an agreement binding the US, that does not bind other major emitters, Congress will never approve it.” And the Executive fully agrees with this position, he added. “We will only support any agreement that binds all major parties.”

Underneath these objections, there is considerable agreement between what Jonathan Pershing said today, and Arthur Runge-Metzger, the European Union chief negotiator, said on two press conferences, one yesterday, the other today. They agree that a new binding agreement has to encompass all major emitters. They used the same example to show that the Kyoto Protocol is not enough to face climate change. Pershing said that the Kyoto Protocol covers about 20% of the emissions. The US, he adds, covers more or less the same. The major part of the remainder comes from “a handful of large developing countries”. What is required is a “global collective engagement”, he concluded.

There is also agreement among the US and the EU on the need to make the Cancun Agreements fully operational, comprising a global transparency regime; the technology executive committee, the Technology Center and Network; and the Green Climate Fund. As to the second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, Pershing adopted the usual attitude: “although we helped to negotiate it, we ultimately did not ratify it, so the United States is not a party to the protocol.”

Pershing warned that the United States has real objections to the report on the Green Climate Fund, “but we are sure these problems can be solved”.

Runge-Metzger announced on the press conference today that Europe will present its new report on fast start finance pledges and disbursement tomorrow. Pershing also announced the US report on its contribution to fast start finance. Both said it is a demonstration of transparency regarding their financial contributions to mitigation and adaptation in the developing countries for the period 2010-2012, and that their countries are delivering the money that have pledge to contribute to the fast start finance.

It appears that there is a fair chance that divergences on what negotiators are calling technical issues (Green Climate Fund, Technology and, perhaps transparency – MRV) could be solved, assuring a substantive content to the Durban package. One that can be immediately implemented. The core difficulty to challenge the negotiators’ skills, and the propensity of the countries to compromise will be the second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, and a new global legally binding climate agreement.

Sergio Abranches

I’ve arrived in Durban on Saturday, and found that the transportation services are not working well. You are welcomed by several nice and helpful young South Africans who are doing their best to help who arrives. But information is lacking.

Everybody wanted to know how and where to get tickets for the hotel shuttle. Actually the shuttle takes everybody to the Convention Center, the ICC, where there are vans servicing the several routes to the official COP17 hotels. They would explain that to those arriving, and take them to the counter where the tickets are sold.

I used the link on the official UNFCCC-COP17 page to buy mine in advance. I had the impression I was the first to appear asking for prepaid tickets. It took them 25 minutes to figure out what to do, before they handed me the two tickets.

When we finally got into the bus, the driver didn’t know what to do with the tickets. She would let some people keep the full tickets, took a detachable part from others. She was very confused and concerned about the tickets, and kept counting them time and again. Everybody wanted to go to the hotel, meaning to get as fast as possible to the ICC, in order to take the specific shuttle for their respective hotels. But she would make all preprogrammed detours and stops although all passengers were heading to the ICC, and had told her so.

When we finally arrived at the ICC, more than one hour after we left the airport, a crowd of helpful  guys came to our rescue indicating others, dressed like them, who would indicate others who would indicate each passenger which line of vans to take to get to their hotels. There is a map and a chart on the COP17 page showing the lines and the list of official hotels to be served by each one. But the near two dozen guys who were there to indicate people which van they should take to get to their hotels didn’t know the location of several official COP17 hotels listed by the UN. In this case, they’d start a conference among themselves, in their language, and when one explanation seemingly prevailed, they’d point the chosen line to the person. Several were redirected by the van’s drivers. After a conference of their own, they would decide the route to some hotel was a different one, and would redirect the person. As one can imagine, the process consumed considerable time. Those who were already settled, and had already been introduced to the vans’ roadmap would show their exasperation with the delays. In my case, a delegate kept asking the driver to drop him first, instead of distributing the others, who where tired of their travel from home and were heading to hotels that were apparently closer his. Not a very cooperative spirit.

My hotel, the Durban Manor, is located about 1.5 miles from the ICC, in the central area of the city. It was my fourth choice after trying other hotels first, because they looked better, and were nearer to the venue, but they were all fully booked. The Durban Manor lies in front of Durban’s marina, on a large, and busy four lane road, in the central area of the city, but not even the drivers had heard of it. I had to show the route on Google Map on my iPhone to the driver before he accepted me as a legitimate passenger of his van, serving the Central line. As a result, I landed in Durban at 6:10 pm, after embarking in Brazil 10:00 hours earlier, and arrived at the hotel, exhausted, at 10:00 pm.

I thought that was a bad omen, and it was. The hotel has had better days. It is a derelict old house, smelling of mildew all over, needing urgent refurbishing, hopefully a retrofit. The hotel is really old, the room is small, but the bed is comfortable and the shower is decent. There is neither wifi or cable Internet connection on the rooms. The concierge told me that there was an wifi hotpoint in the sitting room, actually a cafe-bar. I tried it and got no signal. Breakfast is quite poor.

I left towards the ICC at 9:00 the next morning to register at the media registration desk. I couldn’t find the shutter stop indicated to me by the driver that took me to the hotel the night before. I walked all the way to the big white tent, built before the ICC, where they are registering delegates, and is the doorway to the venue. There were several working people still working on the final preparation of the site. It was clearly a soft-opening with lots of things still requiring fine tuning.

Registration was fast and kind. I passed by a G77+China meeting and got the impression that there were more Chinese than G77 delegates there. I found the press room small. What they actually did was to line up working benches across the corridor  on the second floor of the building where the plenary rooms are. If the number of seating positions was calculated to match the number of registered journalists, coverage is set to be less than it was for COP16, in Cancun. The Internet connection worked well for me. There are a few positions with both wifi and cable. I didn’t feel the need to use cable. The wifi was fast enough. Let’s see what happens, when the place gets filled up.

Durban is mobilized to COP17. On the flight from Johannesburg I read a story on the Independent saying that last Friday there was a huge traffic jam, because of the “blue lights” securing preference for delegates and a large amount of people trying to leave town for the weekend. Traffic officials are expecting heavy and slow traffic in the central area of Durban, and are asking drivers to have patience, to be friendly with each other, and to drive carefully. On Friday drivers were reported to ride on the sidewalks, trying to get off the lines. But people are welcoming COP17, and locals are ostensibly nice and cooperative with delegates, environmentalists, and everyone else they think are related to the meeting.

The real test begins tomorrow. It will test the organization of the meeting, but even more seriously the attitude and will of negotiations. And there will be a lot to talk over before any meaningful result comes out of Durban.

Sergio Abranches

COP17 in Durban is braced to start dealing with a deadlocked agenda. Negotiators will have to find a middle ground to prevent the talks to collapse and wreck the United Nation’s architecture for climate change policy and politics.

The central focus will be the second period of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol. Developed countries will arrive at Durban with diverging positions among themselves on this issue. U.S. negotiators simply say that Kyoto is not on their agenda because the U.S. Congress chose not to ratify the Protocol.  Some parties to the Protocol are saying they will not adhere to a second period of commitment. Their priority is a new international binding agreement that reaches all large emitters, including the U.S. and the major developing economies. According to Bloomberg’s Kim Chapman, Todd Stern, U.S.’s lead negotiator, told reporters during a Nov. 18 briefing in Arlington, Virginia that “it’s premature to decide on what the ultimate legal form [of a new international agreement] might be until you have a much better sense of what the content would be”. Stern said that any binding accord in which the U.S. participates must be “highly symmetrical” and require mandatory action from all major emitters, such as China, and not only from industrialized economies.

The European Union is open to commit to a second phase for the Kyoto Protocol, but wouldn’t risk to be alone, as the other parties maintain their decision to stay out of it. European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard said that the EU won’t commit to a new set of targets under Kyoto unless countries including the U.S., China and other big emitters agree on a pathway to a new binding treaty.

There is a clear and present risk that developed countries fail to reach a consensus on a second period of commitment. In other words it is not only a divide between developed and developing countries that is preventing parties to break the logjam on the Kyoto Protocol.

This divide does exist though. Developing countries say they will not start talking about a new international deal before there is a second period of commitment. There appears to be a strong consensus among them regarding the centrality of a second period of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol, as a sine qua non for the continuation of the talks. All the relevant groups representing developing countries have decided on their preparatory meetings that their priority, and imperative condition, in Durban would be the approval of a second period of commitment.

But this consensus is one of the few points that hold together the sum total of developing countries. These countries under the umbrella of G77+China comprise a very heterogeneous group. Whenever the G77+China speaks for them all it will defend only a few broad points that are able to reconcile very different clusters of interests, diverse needs, a wide spectrum of financial, technical, economic, and political capabilities, and contrasting levels of vulnerability to climate change. One can expect a more coherent framing of  substantive negotiating positions, that could better represent these contrasting domestic realities, when these groups break into more compatible representations such as the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), the AOSIS (small island states), the African Union, and the LDC (least developed countries) during negotiations.

There is a growing uneasiness with the idea that developed countries are negotiating among themselves a new climate change agreement to become operational in 2020. This behind the scenes negotiation risks to create a grave crisis of confidence that could further endanger the Durban talks. It was the realization that a Copenhagen agreement was negotiated within a small group of developed countries through an initiative of Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Denmark’s prime-minister at the time, that triggered a crisis of confidence that ultimately led Copenhagen to fail.

The solution to this logjam has a double path. One to take steps to ensure all parties that no deal previously closed within closed doors among a few parties will be tabled. The other to set a new roadmap having on its design both a transition period for the Kyoto Protocol and a frame of reference for a future all-encompassing binding protocol or treaty.

South Africa’s Environment Minister Edna Molewa recognized “that a comprehensive legal agreement will not be reached,” in Durban. That said, “South Africa envisages that” negotiations “pave the way for a comprehensive multilateral, rules-based climate regime.”

This is a tricky move. There already is a roadmap, drawn in Bali, which has not been completed, and it is unlikely it will ever be. A new roadmap would have to somehow be stronger, more doable, and substantive than the Bali’s work plan to gain credibility.

Two operational points could help to wrap up the new roadmap on a satisfying, though meager, package deal. Some progress on the transparency issue – monitoring, reporting, and verifying mechanisms – that has started to be negotiated in Copenhagen, was rediscussed in Cancun, but still has a long way to go. Both were an important part of the Copenhagen Agreement , and further reinforced by the Cancun Agreements. They are: the full operationalization of the Climate Technology Centre and Network, and the  Green Climate Fund. Finishing the job on both would represent an important step forward, and could help the parties to agree on a frame of reference and a time frame for a new climate change accord.

The Green Climate Fund is additionaly related to a crucial issue regarding global climate change policies: that of adaptation. Channelling public, multilateral, and private long-term financing towards developing countries for greenhouse gas emission reductions, and new clean technologies (mitigation) is not really difficult. Finance for adaptation, that is to deal with the effects present and future of climate change has been lacking. There is a permanent complaint from developing countries that negotiations have been giving far more weight to mitigation than to adaptation. And the poorer or more vulnerable countries desperately need money and technology for adaptation.

Mitigation is an issue for the big players, developed and developing. To put it simply it is an issue for the G20 or Major Economies Forum (MEF). Adaptation is a critical issue for the long-term well being of the majority of the developing countries.

The roadmap, as well as the financial and technological mechanisms, would have to be more clear and direct in addressing adaptation needs for a new deal to become possible.

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.

Major climate talks in South Africa at year-end will be unlikely to strike agreement on a new pact, but will be important in determining the shape of long-term efforts to tackle climate change, a senior U.N. climate official said on Tuesday.

The future of the Kyoto Protocol, the existing U.N. binding framework which imposes targets for greenhouse gas emissions cuts to about 40 industrialized nations until 2012, is widely seen as under threat. Japan, Canada and Russia have said they will not extend it, while the United States never signed up to it and will never do, as the White House top climate change negotiator, Todd Stern has stated in more than one occasion.

“It’s too early to call the Durban result, expectations are not high at the moment,” said Adrian Macey, chair of U.N. Kyoto Protocol (AWGKP) negotiations, referring to the Nov 28 to Dec 9 talks in South Africa. Macey has also been New Zealand climate change ambassador since 2002.

“Whatever happens, I don’t see all 191 parties under the U.N. abandoning efforts” to develop a comprehensive accord “in the longer term for climate change action,” Macey told a climate conference in Wellington, New Zealand.

There would be a gap after the first Kyoto Protocol commitment period expires at the end of 2012, Macey said, with a number of issues remaining outstanding.

“It’s become clear that what we might be looking at in Durban is a transition to a more viable long-term architecture,” Macey said.

Last week, New Zealand’s Climate Change Negotiations Minister Tim Groser told Reuters the global community was accepting the reality that there would be no deal in Durban but there has been and there will be some progress, and a global deal is still within reach.

Global negotiations have faltered because of a gulf between developed and developing countries about who should shoulder the burden of reducing emissions blamed for stoking global warming.

Kyoto does not oblige developing nations to take on binding emissions cuts and these countries now produce more than half of mankind’s greenhouse gas pollution. The problem lies on emerging, not developing countries. China is the world’s top emitter, followed by the United States and India. Brasil, Mexico, and Indonesia also have significant emissions and a large potential of future emissions. Smaller economies among developing countries present no threat of major growth of GHG emissions now or in the future.

Intractable issues in international negotiations ahead of Durban include aviation and maritime emissions and how to manage carbon markets in developing countries, Macey said.

“It’s not going to be the final answer and it will be very difficult to get anything like a treaty,” Macey said, referring to the Durban talks.

Source: Reuters