HIGH HOPES, LOW EXPECTATIONS FOR UNFCCC CLIMATE CHANGE MEETING IN GERMANY

Tamar Hallerman

GHG Monitor

05/18/12

International climate negotiators headed into a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) planning conference in Bonn, Germany earlier this week with the hopes of building on the modest progress made at the previous meeting in Durban, South Africa. However, it appeared apparent almost immediately that the gridlock that characterized previous negotiations would likely return for this two-week planning meeting ahead of the larger UNFCCC climate change summit in Doha, Qatar scheduled for November. Little progress appeared to be made during the first days of the meeting in Bonn, according to news reports.

Delegates from the nearly 200 nations met in Germany for the first time since they worked overtime in South Africa to craft what became known as the Durban Platform, an agreement to finalize a legally-binding emissions reduction scheme by 2015 for both rich and poor countries, with implementation beginning in 2020. The platform was notable in that it got the United States, China and India, none of which were signatories of Kyoto, to all agree—in a non-binding manner, for now—to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future. However, few further details were agreed upon, leaving much of the negotiations for subsequent summits. The European Union and developing nations also agreed to extend the Kyoto Protocol into a second commitment period beyond 2012.

Media outlets reported an impasse this week between the European Union and the world’s least developed countries over the length of the second commitment period for Kyoto. While the developing nations reportedly advocated for a five-year enforcement period, the EU pushed for an eight-year compliance schedule, to the criticism of the poorer nations, which warned that the longer time period could prompt rich countries to delay action on climate change. The Guardian reported that the EU pushed back, arguing that the eight-year timeframe was easier since it brought countries to 2020, when the Durban Platform is supposed to go into effect.

Negotiators Urge Others to Work Together

During the inaugural meeting of an ad-hoc working group on the Durban Platform, French news agency Agence France-Press quoted South Africa’s Maite Nkoana-Mashabane as telling negotiators to set aside “old and unhelpful negotiating practices” that could lead to gridlock during talks. “Time is limited and we need to take very seriously the desperate calls of some of our brethren, especially the small island states,” she was quoted as saying.

Nkoana-Mashabane’s remarks echo those made by U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern last month, who said he hoped negotiations would not devolve into a fight over the agenda for the Doha meeting like what occurred during much of last year in the lead-up to the Durban summit. “This is going to be a process. This is not going to be steady onward and upward progress. This is going to be steps forward, steps back, that’s the nature of this,” he said. Stern added that he did not expect much concrete work to come out of the ministerial meetings this year. Instead, Stern said he expects more conceptual work to occur, such as workshops and roundtables. “I don’t think anyone is thinking that there’s going to be a big deliverable in Doha or that there’s going to be negotiating text or anything like that. People are quite mindful that we’re entering quite new terrain here,” he told reporters.