The formal plenary has now been convened and the Cancun Agreement has been adopted.
Bolivia has said that it opposes the deal, and that the compromise is not a step forward but a step backwards. However, the other countries are overwhelmingly in favour and it is adopted.
Now the hard work starts to turn this by next year into the ambitious, legally binding deal that is needed.
Earlier, at the informal plenary, the UN climate talks chair Patricia Espinosa got a standing ovation.
The vast majority of those who took the floor were in favour of the compromise package, while recognising that it is not their ideal.
Bolivia said it was not prepared to sign a document which means an increase in the average temperature.
Parties applauded as first China then US then Japan say they will back the deal.
Venezuela proposed to go back to the working groups and from there to the plenary.
Saudi Arabia seconded the proposal tabled by Venezuela and this is what happened. Bolivia makes it clear they were not part of the consensus.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
State of play 10.12.2010
At the EU press conference this morning which has just finished Connie Hedegaard has stressed that the EU wants a good outcome and a balanced package including solutions to both easy and difficult questions.
In answer to questions on a range of issues Commissioner Hedegaard and Minister Schauvliege said that text is almost ready on many of the easier issues but that, as Mrs Hedegaard put it, countries are hesitant to put pen to paper on these issues until they see the overall shape of the package. A new text is due shortly. When negotiators see this latest version of an overall text they can then begin to look possible compromises. “that is then the endgame” says Commissioner Hedegaard.
In their opening statements to the press conference both Commission and Council made clear what the difficult issues are from their viewpoint. The EU would find very difficult to sign package that does not address such issues as MRV, ICA, the gigatonne gap and the legally binding form.
Behind this Cancun speak lies the reality of how a compromise may be shaping up. The US could possible agree to more transparency on both their emissions pledges and on the finance they will give, but only if China and India allow some kind of international monitoring of the actions they will take to reduce emissions. MRV is the buzz word for this transparency - it means monitoring, reporting and verification. MRV in some form would apply to both developed and developing countries.
However, The emerging economies, and especially China have made very clear all along that they will not submit to the same kind of monitoring system as the developed countries. The developing countries need to have a system of what is known as ICA or international consultations and analysis, but there has been deadlock about what form this would take
Recently, Indian Prime Minister Ramesh set out in a letter a possible compromise on such multinational monitoring through ICA and now it seems that this could be a vital second leg of the overall compromise deal to be signed tonight or tomorrow.
The deal will finally hang on how the existing Kyoto Protocol (KP) which the US is not part of and the track on long-term cooperative action (LCA) under the convention, which came out of the Bali Action Plan and which the US is part of, will be merged.
Or in other words how the EU, and possibly even Japan or Russia, could sign up to a second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol knowing that they would not stand alone in facing legally binding targets while the US faced none.
And this, of course, bring us to the last element of a possible deal here, what will be said about what is being called the ‘gigatonne gap’ or in other words the fact that the pledges made at Copenhagen last year are totally insufficient to meet hat science tells us is need to prevent catastrophic climate change.
At the press conference this morning, the EU made it clear they will need some wording in any final text that makes clear that the Copenhagen pledges are a starting point and not an end point and that they will have to be built on. A reliable need needs also a timetable on how these pledges will be both implemented and improved upon.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Cancun, Day 4
A piece on the UNFCC website entitled "the importance of informal meetings" says:
" Most people would think that conferences like COP16 happen exclusively inside plenary rooms. The truth is that most of the conversations take place during informal meetings celebrated all around the venues.
In lobby bars, coffee shops and lounge rooms, delegates from every country, gather between the formal sessions, to discuss issues about their position as a nation or even as a group of nations. Those moments, are also helpfull to distress them from the hard work."
Eating lunch at a communal table outdoors at the Cancun Messe conference centre we meet with Eva Maria Filzmoser, Programme Director of CDM Watch, which is scrutinising carbon offsets.
She is wearing a badge that highlights the problems regarding financing of projects to get rid of HFC - 23. She gathers from our conversation that we are from the European Parliament and begins to tell us of the problem. She also asks us if Mr Skylakis MEP is here in Cancunan as she has spoken with him on this issue before.
We tell her Mr Skylakis is not here but assure her he put down an amendment to the European Parliament resolution on the Cancun talks on this issue which was accepted.
Before long we are not only exchanging visiting cards but also getting and posing for photos with badges highlighting the misuse of credits from industrial gas projects, including HFC-23.
Meanwhile, we are getting closer to the end of the week without a clear sign of what substance there will be in any of the texts.
Optimisim fades when you try to put your finger on what it means to have made progress. Yes the atmosphere is better than in Copenhagen, yes the process is more transparent but the number mounts of issues that won't be decided before Durban next year, if even then.
It is not enough to have an agreement that doesn't rule out a second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol without guaranteeing that there will be one. It is not enough to see some progress on long term action without knowing what the legal form of the LCA outcome will be.
It is not enough to make progress on options for tackling issues unless there is some way of deciding which option will be chosen.
It is not enough to talk of finding a way to anchor pledges made in a formal text without recognising that these pledges are not even enough to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, much less to the 1.5 degree Celsiius that is needed.
We need to acknowledge the gap in ambition and to close it.
It is not enough to keep changing the name of a possible fund to which developed countries would contribute unless the fund is actually established by the end of this week and unless there is some way of monitoring the finance with some kind of common reporting format.
It is not enough to talk of who is blocking what bit of text or what bit of process unless we have a real visioin of where we aim to be on Friday.
Is the ambition of finding a new way of working that moves away from a dirty development path and enables developing countries to avoid that path altogether to give way to an ambition not to be the one to be blamed for a negative outcome of these talks?
Are we really talking only of avoiding failure by having a shell to be filled at a later point? How much later would that be? What would be the effect of such an outcome both on confidence in this negotiating format and in the daily lives of vulnerable poeple suffering from the impacts of climate change?
" Most people would think that conferences like COP16 happen exclusively inside plenary rooms. The truth is that most of the conversations take place during informal meetings celebrated all around the venues.
In lobby bars, coffee shops and lounge rooms, delegates from every country, gather between the formal sessions, to discuss issues about their position as a nation or even as a group of nations. Those moments, are also helpfull to distress them from the hard work."
Eating lunch at a communal table outdoors at the Cancun Messe conference centre we meet with Eva Maria Filzmoser, Programme Director of CDM Watch, which is scrutinising carbon offsets.
She is wearing a badge that highlights the problems regarding financing of projects to get rid of HFC - 23. She gathers from our conversation that we are from the European Parliament and begins to tell us of the problem. She also asks us if Mr Skylakis MEP is here in Cancunan as she has spoken with him on this issue before.
We tell her Mr Skylakis is not here but assure her he put down an amendment to the European Parliament resolution on the Cancun talks on this issue which was accepted.
Before long we are not only exchanging visiting cards but also getting and posing for photos with badges highlighting the misuse of credits from industrial gas projects, including HFC-23.
Meanwhile, we are getting closer to the end of the week without a clear sign of what substance there will be in any of the texts.
Optimisim fades when you try to put your finger on what it means to have made progress. Yes the atmosphere is better than in Copenhagen, yes the process is more transparent but the number mounts of issues that won't be decided before Durban next year, if even then.
It is not enough to have an agreement that doesn't rule out a second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol without guaranteeing that there will be one. It is not enough to see some progress on long term action without knowing what the legal form of the LCA outcome will be.
It is not enough to make progress on options for tackling issues unless there is some way of deciding which option will be chosen.
It is not enough to talk of finding a way to anchor pledges made in a formal text without recognising that these pledges are not even enough to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, much less to the 1.5 degree Celsiius that is needed.
We need to acknowledge the gap in ambition and to close it.
It is not enough to keep changing the name of a possible fund to which developed countries would contribute unless the fund is actually established by the end of this week and unless there is some way of monitoring the finance with some kind of common reporting format.
It is not enough to talk of who is blocking what bit of text or what bit of process unless we have a real visioin of where we aim to be on Friday.
Is the ambition of finding a new way of working that moves away from a dirty development path and enables developing countries to avoid that path altogether to give way to an ambition not to be the one to be blamed for a negative outcome of these talks?
Are we really talking only of avoiding failure by having a shell to be filled at a later point? How much later would that be? What would be the effect of such an outcome both on confidence in this negotiating format and in the daily lives of vulnerable poeple suffering from the impacts of climate change?
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Cancun blog 08.12.10 - day 3
At a plenary session this morning we get a report back from the chairs of the two UNFCC working groups,
In the report back from the working group on the convention on long term action (AWG/LCA), the Chair The Chair of AWG LCA reports:
- a lot of progress on adaptation and on REDD,
- on MRV there is a set of options,
- on technology progress doesn’t allow for a compromise solution on and the text remains unchanged.
Active engagements from Ministers will be needed on the following:
- mitigation commitments of developed countries,
-mitigation actions of developing countries,
- MRV on mitigation by developed countries,
- MRV on actions by developing countries, including ICA,
-financing.
In addition the issue of vulnerability needs to be addressed. The draft text she presented also continued a proposal for the extension of the AWG/LCA, whose mandate would otherwise have ended here..
In the meantime, Bolivia has entered an objection to the Mexican C0P 16 Chair proposals on moving to small groups.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Climate change demonstration, Cancún
TUESDAY DECEMBER 7th STARTS AT 9am at Unidad Desportiva Jacinto Canek, Cancun
Event: INTERNATIONAL DEMONSTRATION
"This morning sees an international demonstration in the centre of
"The main slogan will be: "SYSTEM CHANGE INSTEAD OF CLIMATE CHANGE".
The demonstrators want to stress that techological solutions are not enough. There needs to be a change in the economic system that leads to a completely unsustainable way of living - unsustainable for both people and for nature. We must alter the patterns that got us into this mess in the first place"
Day 2 in Cancún
We will meet this morning with local NG0s in Puerto Morales a few kilometres from where we are staying and from where the negotiations are being held. They will give us presentations on local REDD+ projects (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation).
Up to 20% of global C02 emissions are due to tropical deforestation and forest degradation but this is not directly addressed by the UNFCC and Kyoto Protocol.
The project we will see this morning centres on preserving the remaining existing mangroves, while developers have their eye on the area to build even more of the hotels for which Cancun is famous.
We will also discuss with NG0s how this whole issue is being dealt with in the negotiations, which centre on a mechanism to combat these emissions due to tropical deforestation and forest degradation, including incentives to leave forests standing.
The opening of the high level segment of the UN Climate talks takes place this afternoon (Tue).
REDD is one of the issues that is fairly advanced in the negotiations in terms of the practicalities, even though there are differences of opinion on how this should be approached. But of course 'balanced package' is a buzz word we hear again and again in Cancún, and if some groups of countries feel their issues of concern are not being addressed they may hold up progress on other issues until that changes, and this is happening with Saudia Arabia and REDD. Also, the ALBA countries in Latin America oppose links between REDD and carbon markets.
Mexican Chair of the UN talks, Ms Patricia Espinosa is trying an interesting way of seeing what might be possible on outstanding issues.
She has asked ten Ministers, five sets of two Ministers, one from a developed country and one from a developing country in each pair, to see what is possible on a given issue. They won't be calling negotiating meetings or producing texts, but will walk the corridors talking to people and getting a sense of what might fly. That will then go to a high level plenary session tomorrow that will also hear from subsidiary bodies that finished their work last week.
Ms Espinosa stresses again and again that there will be no separate or Ministerial process and no sudden production of hidden texts and that this is not what these pairs of Ministers are about.
The pairs of Ministers are:
Sweden and Grenada on matters related to shared vision; Spain and Algeria on adaptation; Australia and Bangladesh on finance, technology and capacity building; New Zealand and Indonesia on mitigation, including MRV (measurement, reporting and verification) and Britain and Brazil on items under the Kyoto Protocol. Other Ministers may be asked to take up other issues if needs be.
I heard the cynical view first that this was a way of giving Ministers something to do, but it seems now to be building on something that worked recently in the UN talks on biodiversity in Nagoya. We will know soon if it has helped unlock any thorny issues.
Meanwhile, on 'shared vision', another buzz word of COP 16, NG0s are critical that in spite of the possible progress on specific issues in these UN talks, an overall shared vision of where we want to get to is missing. Partly this is because there is no agreement yet on whether there will be a legally binding agreement even by next year. But more worryingly it is also because the steps that countries may agree this week fall far short still of where science tells us we have to be if we are to meet the challenge of tackling climate change.
Up to 20% of global C02 emissions are due to tropical deforestation and forest degradation but this is not directly addressed by the UNFCC and Kyoto Protocol.
The project we will see this morning centres on preserving the remaining existing mangroves, while developers have their eye on the area to build even more of the hotels for which Cancun is famous.
We will also discuss with NG0s how this whole issue is being dealt with in the negotiations, which centre on a mechanism to combat these emissions due to tropical deforestation and forest degradation, including incentives to leave forests standing.
The opening of the high level segment of the UN Climate talks takes place this afternoon (Tue).
REDD is one of the issues that is fairly advanced in the negotiations in terms of the practicalities, even though there are differences of opinion on how this should be approached. But of course 'balanced package' is a buzz word we hear again and again in Cancún, and if some groups of countries feel their issues of concern are not being addressed they may hold up progress on other issues until that changes, and this is happening with Saudia Arabia and REDD. Also, the ALBA countries in Latin America oppose links between REDD and carbon markets.
Mexican Chair of the UN talks, Ms Patricia Espinosa is trying an interesting way of seeing what might be possible on outstanding issues.
She has asked ten Ministers, five sets of two Ministers, one from a developed country and one from a developing country in each pair, to see what is possible on a given issue. They won't be calling negotiating meetings or producing texts, but will walk the corridors talking to people and getting a sense of what might fly. That will then go to a high level plenary session tomorrow that will also hear from subsidiary bodies that finished their work last week.
Ms Espinosa stresses again and again that there will be no separate or Ministerial process and no sudden production of hidden texts and that this is not what these pairs of Ministers are about.
The pairs of Ministers are:
Sweden and Grenada on matters related to shared vision; Spain and Algeria on adaptation; Australia and Bangladesh on finance, technology and capacity building; New Zealand and Indonesia on mitigation, including MRV (measurement, reporting and verification) and Britain and Brazil on items under the Kyoto Protocol. Other Ministers may be asked to take up other issues if needs be.
I heard the cynical view first that this was a way of giving Ministers something to do, but it seems now to be building on something that worked recently in the UN talks on biodiversity in Nagoya. We will know soon if it has helped unlock any thorny issues.
Meanwhile, on 'shared vision', another buzz word of COP 16, NG0s are critical that in spite of the possible progress on specific issues in these UN talks, an overall shared vision of where we want to get to is missing. Partly this is because there is no agreement yet on whether there will be a legally binding agreement even by next year. But more worryingly it is also because the steps that countries may agree this week fall far short still of where science tells us we have to be if we are to meet the challenge of tackling climate change.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Cancún, Day 1
The UN Climate talks in Cancún started later than expected for me. The flight to Cancún hit a technical problem and the hundreds of passengers, including Ministers and Prime Ministers ended up 24 hours in Gatwick instead of in Cancún.
I am told by those that were here that on the surface at least there has been a more positive atmosphere in the plenary session, including more positive signals from G77 + China.
People were shocked at the hard line taken by. Japan in stating that they wouldn't sign up to a second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol, given their role in negotiating this and their very positive recent role on the question of biodiversity in Nagoya. However, I am also told that Japan has been softening this stance a little since. So, we will have to wait and see.
At the Interparliamentary Union meeting this morning, COP 16 Chair Patricia Espinosa stresses that Mexico is trying to be more open and transparent in the way the negotiations are being carried out. She tells us there will be no hidden texts and no sudden production of texts produced in a hidden way for adoption.
Ms Espinosa tells us that possibly for the first time coming out of COP 16 in Cancun there will be mechanisms on adaptation, technology and capacity building especially for the very vulnerable countries and those with less resources. She also forsees for the first time mechanisms for financing in the long-term, so that governments are able to ensure the continuity of those efforts.
Mr Saber Chowdhury, an MP from Bangladesh, sounds a more sober note about the scepticism of vulnerable developing countries. Developed countries have never fulfilled their pledges on Official Develpment Assistance, so how are we to believe that this will be any different?
He stresses that we need to change the development paradigm. Until now, developing
countries were seen as passive recipients of aid. Now, he says, massive transfer of technologies and of the requisite finance must allow developing countries to leapfrog in their development onto a clean, green economy.
This theme is taken up by Dr Kumi Naidoo, Head of Greenpeace International who slams the lack of progress on the fast-start financing promised last year at Copenagen. In all our languages, 'fast' means 'quick', he says, so why the foot dragging on this $30bn 'fast-start' finance for 2010-2012.?
He also stresses the need to help developing countries to by-pass the dirty development pathways of the industrialised countries, asking why the world cannot mobilise for this even a fraction of the trillions mobilised to meet the financial crisis.
Meanwhile, the positive signal from G77 at the outset of these UN climate change negotiations indicates they are ready for a legally binding agreement. Ms Espinosa, Chair of these UN negotiations, takes up this point this morning, saying there is a need for action by ALL countries, developed and developing countries. She stresses, however the difference in the nature of commitments needed from developed and from developing countries.
I look forward to discussing more the details of the progress made to date when we meet with UNFCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres later this afternoon
I am told by those that were here that on the surface at least there has been a more positive atmosphere in the plenary session, including more positive signals from G77 + China.
People were shocked at the hard line taken by. Japan in stating that they wouldn't sign up to a second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol, given their role in negotiating this and their very positive recent role on the question of biodiversity in Nagoya. However, I am also told that Japan has been softening this stance a little since. So, we will have to wait and see.
At the Interparliamentary Union meeting this morning, COP 16 Chair Patricia Espinosa stresses that Mexico is trying to be more open and transparent in the way the negotiations are being carried out. She tells us there will be no hidden texts and no sudden production of texts produced in a hidden way for adoption.
Ms Espinosa tells us that possibly for the first time coming out of COP 16 in Cancun there will be mechanisms on adaptation, technology and capacity building especially for the very vulnerable countries and those with less resources. She also forsees for the first time mechanisms for financing in the long-term, so that governments are able to ensure the continuity of those efforts.
Mr Saber Chowdhury, an MP from Bangladesh, sounds a more sober note about the scepticism of vulnerable developing countries. Developed countries have never fulfilled their pledges on Official Develpment Assistance, so how are we to believe that this will be any different?
He stresses that we need to change the development paradigm. Until now, developing
countries were seen as passive recipients of aid. Now, he says, massive transfer of technologies and of the requisite finance must allow developing countries to leapfrog in their development onto a clean, green economy.
This theme is taken up by Dr Kumi Naidoo, Head of Greenpeace International who slams the lack of progress on the fast-start financing promised last year at Copenagen. In all our languages, 'fast' means 'quick', he says, so why the foot dragging on this $30bn 'fast-start' finance for 2010-2012.?
He also stresses the need to help developing countries to by-pass the dirty development pathways of the industrialised countries, asking why the world cannot mobilise for this even a fraction of the trillions mobilised to meet the financial crisis.
Meanwhile, the positive signal from G77 at the outset of these UN climate change negotiations indicates they are ready for a legally binding agreement. Ms Espinosa, Chair of these UN negotiations, takes up this point this morning, saying there is a need for action by ALL countries, developed and developing countries. She stresses, however the difference in the nature of commitments needed from developed and from developing countries.
I look forward to discussing more the details of the progress made to date when we meet with UNFCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres later this afternoon
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