Yvo de Boer. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch
By Terna Gyuse
COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) A negotiating text produced by the Danish government, leaked by the UK newspaper the Guardian, received plenty of attention at the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen today.
Discussion of the text has been floating around for several days, with murmured disapproval over the idea that what it outlined might be imposed on the meeting after having been agreed by a few powerful countries without consulting more widely.
In a press statement issued Tuesday, UNFCCC executive chairperson Yvo de Boer said that “this was an informal paper ahead of the conference given to a number of people for the purposes of consultations. The only formal texts in the UN process are the ones tabled by the Chairs of this Copenhagen conference at the behest of the Parties.”
The document itself is truly an outline – and without firm numbers to attach to its various pledges and commitments, it offers few real surprises. A statement from the Danish climate ministry denied the document is a draft proposal, saying it is in fact no more than one of many negotiating texts.
The draft acknowledges that developed countries have contributed the most to climate change; and that developing countries have poverty eradication and their social and economic development as “first and overriding priorities”.
It also calls for a political agreement as the outcome of COP 15, with a legal framework to be agreed at a future date – which would fall short of the urgent desires of the many who are in Copenhagen pressing for a binding agreement on action, fearing the world has already run out of time to avert catastrophic climate change.
The set of broad commitments for such an agreement are familiar: mitigation, adaptation, a system for financial support for development, and technology transfers for low-carbon development.
Mention is made of the importance of limiting global warming to two degrees, with the suggestion that a peak level of emissions should be reached “as soon as possible, but no later than 2020,” after which steep reductions in production of greenhouse gases should achieve a 50 percent reduction by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.
It is accepted that different countries have different responsibility and capabilities in achieving this overall target, but that eventually per capita emissions should be equal.
Finance, technology and assistance to strengthen capability are needed to adapt, the poorest countries should be prioritised, and existing channels such as the Adaptation Fund can be used to get this money to them.
In this draft, countries of the North will commit to individual national targets for reducing emissions, and carbon credits will supplement actual reductions. Possibly contentious is the statement that developing countries – with only the least developed countries exempted – will also have to commit to limiting and eventually reducing emissions, with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to register national plans for mitigation.
While the text calls for more public spending on developing clean technologies, it seems to say current framework on intellectual property rights will stay the same, likely pricing their use beyond those who need them most.
A climate fund is to be set up, run by a board elected by all members of the Conference of Parties; this board will set guidelines and manage allocation of the money through multilateral institutions or directly to nation states.
Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the head of the G77 group of developing nations, called the leaked text a “serious violation that threatens the success of the Copenhagen negotiating process.”
But Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace International climate political advisor, said the negotiating text was a “distraction.”
“(Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke) Rasmussen needs to get serious and focus on solving the roadblocks that have been caused by the industrialised countries refusing to agree on deep cuts in emissions, long term finance for the developing world, and a legally binding outcome in Copenhagen,” said Kaiser.
Mclay Kanyangarara, a climate change advisor for the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) shared Kaiser’s idea that this leaked text is of little relevance. COMESA’s own proposal, the Africa BioCarbon Initiative (ABI), is not without its critics.
The regional African body wants global markets in carbon credits significantly extended to include afforestation, reforestation, agro-forestry, re-vegetation of degraded lands, reduced soil tillage and sustainable agricultural practices, enabling Africa in particular to have access to much-needed funds for development.
This has been criticised by indigenous groups wary of loss of access to their traditional land and livelihoods as well as by EU observers who doubt that the benefits of such a wide range of practices can be accurately measured and monitored.
Kanyangarara, however, stresses that decisive action is urgent. “If we don’t do something about this… the house, as I said, is on fire. Literally on fire. And if we don’t do something about it, this has got dire consequences for the survival of the species.”
The outlines of the leaked negotiating text, he said, betrayed a blinkered approach.
“We’re putting this (ABI) on the table as good global citizens, but if you’re not prepared to do the right thing, so that what we’re putting and what you’re putting on the table adds up to a global solution, then we withhold our contribution; then we’ll walk out of Copenhagen.”
Negotiators from the South walked out of preliminary talks in Barcelona, so this may not be idle speculation.
“Who wins?” Kanyangarara asks. “This is a lose-lose situation. We don’t want to move to a lose-lose situation. We’re putting this on the table in good faith.”
The Fifteenth Conference of Parties has ten days left to avoid either extreme, and agree a concrete plan of action to avert catastrophic climate change.
(END/2009)
