LITTLE LANGUAGE FORMALLY AGREED TO AS DOHA TALKS WRAP UP

Familiar Gridlock Characterizes Debate over Rich, Poor Commitments to Reducing Climate Change 

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
12/7/12

Negotiators from nearly 200 nations scrambled to finalize some sort of text during the final hours of the Conference of Parties’ climate change summit in Doha, Qatar, as diplomats aimed to find something to show for two weeks of largely gridlocked negotiations. As of press time, delegates attending the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting had yet to cement some sort of agreement on the last day of negotiations as some feared that nothing concrete would come out of the summit. Media reports throughout the week indicated that talks were behind schedule and on the verge of collapse on multiple occasions. “Time is running out. I’m getting concerned that ministers are not stepping up to the mark and providing solutions that we need at this stage of the game,” Gregory Barkey, U.K. Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press on Dec. 6. “We need increased flexibility on all sides and a higher sense of urgency.”

Expectations for the meeting were relatively low to begin with given that no new major breakthroughs on climate deals were expected, but negotiators were hoping to make some sort of incremental progress on the details of a new binding emissions agreement for 2015 agreed to in principle in Durban last year. The world’s developing countries continued to push for large emitters like the U.S. and China to make deeper emissions reduction commitments, but neither country indicated publically that they would do so. “Countries began the negotiations on the new ‘legal agreement’ to be agreed by 2015. These discussions are still at a very early stage, but countries began to set the right tone for that negotiation,” Jake Schmidt, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s international climate policy director, said in a blog post yesterday. “Those discussions were surprisingly uncontroversial. No country backslid from the agreement in Durban.” Earlier this week, carbon capture and storage advocates underscored the need for governments to finalize some sort of binding emissions reduction scheme in order to help accelerate the deployment of CCS and other low carbon technologies.

Green Climate Fund Sees Some Discussion

Reports this week indicated that much of the debate in Doha centered on the future of the Green Climate Fund. At the COP meeting in Copenhagen in 2009, the world’s richest countries agreed to raise $100 billion annually for the Fund, which aims to help the world’s poorest nations protect against and adapt to climate change, by 2020. Rich countries reportedly met their initial short-term pledge of allocating $30 billion to the Fund between 2010 and 2012, but the future of their commitments remained an outstanding issue during the talks this week.

Developing countries and environmental NGOs wanted rich countries to develop some sort of roadmap for financing pledges through the end of the decade. “How many more glaring reminders, how many more lost lives, how much more suffering is it going to take for rich countries to accept that this is a planetary emergency for the world’s poorest people?” Celine Charveriat, director of Advocacy and Campaigns for Oxfam International, said in a statement this week. “The Doha talks are in crisis over climate finance, as in 25 days developing countries do not know how they will be supported to adapt to climate change.” While some nations within the European Union pledged nearly $11 billion in new commitments over the next three years, neither the U.S. nor Japan offered new money for the Green Fund beyond the end of the year. Negotiators for both countries said that they would continue providing aid to the Fund but would not specify how much they would give.

Meanwhile, delegates continued negotiations on the future of the Kyoto Protocol. As of press time, no statements were made public regarding the length of a second commitment period to the scheme, as well as the amount of emissions reduction agreements agreed to by involved parties. “We are at a make-or-break point. Kyoto is the key to unlocking the deal,” Chairperson of the Alliance of Small Island States Kieren Keke was quoted as saying by the AP late this week. “The second commitment period must have true environmental integrity and raise ambition now.” The first commitment period of the binding emissions reduction scheme ends on Dec. 31, and the European Union, Australia and some other small nations have indicated that they would like to continue to participate in the program. However, few other details have been made public. Other former signatories including Russia, Japan, Canada and New Zealand said that they would not participate in a second commitment period under Kyoto, leaving only about 15 percent of the world’s global CO2 emitters entered under the scheme.

Delegates, NGOs Urge for Major Action

Despite what appeared to be the lack of much reported progress, delegates and stakeholders throughout the week emphasized the importance of striking a major international agreement on limiting climate change. In an unusually emotional and frank speech, Naderev Sano, head negotiator for the Philippines, broke down and described how an unusually strong typhoon hit his country last week and caused widespread destruction, which he linked in part to climate change. “We have never had a typhoon like [this], which has wreaked havoc in a part of the country that has never seen a storm like this in half a century. Heartbreaking tragedies like this are not unique to the Philippines, because the whole world, especially developing countries struggling to address poverty and achieve social and human development, confront these same realities,” he said. Sano added: “I appeal to all, please, no more delays, no more excuses. Please, let Doha be remembered as the place where we found the political will to turn things around.”

A coalition of NGOs, including the World Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace and Oxfam, issued a joint statement earlier in the week calling for a robust deal to come out of Doha. “The reality is that this year, people in rich and poor countries experienced the full force of climate change. Extreme heat waves, drought and storms hit people’s livelihoods, lives and the environment on which they depend….The gap between this reality and the political commitment to address climate change is just too large. This is being reflected in the shamefully weak deal being negotiated in Doha,” Samantha Smith, head of the Global Climate and Energy Initiative at WWF, said in a statement.