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CLIMATE CHANGE: 200 Days to Copenhagen

Matthew Berger

UNITED NATIONS, May 20 2009 (IPS) - With exactly 200 days to go before December’s crucial climate talks in Copenhagen, progress is steadily, though slowly, being made. Some issues, however – namely financing and the relative roles of industrial and developing countries – are likely to remain on the table until the end of the year.

“There is a constructive atmosphere in the negotiations and I’m very encouraged,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), in a press conference at U.N. headquarters last week.

“What I find very positive is that industrial countries are finally giving developing countries some credit for what they’re already doing to address climate change,” he said.

The 15th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC is set to take place in Copenhagen from Dec. 7 to 18. Knowing the financial and policy commitments of governments ahead of time is seen as vital to the success of the talks, said Danish Minister for Climate and Energy Connie Hedegaard, who will head the conference, in a press conference here on May 6.

Following a session in early April in Bonn, four more preliminary rounds of negotiations will be held before December.

Last week, the 2,500 scientists at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen concluded that rates of observed emissions point to climate change scenarios worse than those anticipated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in early 2007.


“For many key parametres, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived,” a small delegation from the conference said in a presentation at the U.N. on May 12.

Scientific consensus and the acceptance of the scientific findings is no longer an issue. The main snag to any comprehensive global plan appears to be the issue of financing, particularly the funding of climate initiatives in developing countries by public or private backers in industrialised countries.

De Boer said the U.S. and other industrialised countries would not be able to ratify an agreement without corresponding commitments by developing countries.

“Developing countries are saying, ‘Yes, we want to take action, but this time we want to be sure the financing comes’,” he said, “We’ve had a bit of a chicken-and-egg story with some countries saying, show me your money and I’ll show you my plan. I expect we will agree to both issues at about the same time at Copenhagen.”

Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defence Council, also used the chicken-and-egg analogy in an interview with IPS, describing the richer and poorer nations as “waiting for each other to act”.

Financing is “the heart of much of the negotiations,” he said. “It is a crucial issue, but very political. There hasn’t been a tonne of progress the past couple months.”

On Thursday, de Boer pointed out that previous funding mechanisms have not been bringing in the amount of capital countries had committed themselves to providing.

Hedegaard recalled last week how, not that long ago, some developing countries thought of climate change as a luxury to be dealt with only after more immediate problems, like economic development, had been solved. Now, those countries see it as tied up with those very development issues, and are working to create growth plans that take climate issues into account.

One way in which these objectives have been combined is through the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows industrialised countries to invest in greenhouse-gas-reducing projects in developing countries in lieu of reducing their own emissions. The CDM, however, has come under criticism for having very few projects in Africa, in comparison with Asia, and for being difficult to implement effectively.

In an interview with IPS’s Julio Godoy on May 2, Lambert Schneider, an expert with Germany’s Institute for Applied Ecology, explained how the CDM stipulates that a project must prove “it can only be implemented through the incentive of selling CDM carbon credits,” but that this judgment “is very subjective.” He also pointed to problems with the certifiers of the projects.

Despite its problems, though, de Boer contended that the CDM shows it is possible to marry the two objectives of economic development and climate change.

In de Boer’s view, the essential outcomes from Copenhagen are to set the amount by which industrial nations will limit emissions by 2020, to determine what developing nations are willing to do, to secure financial support for the adaptation of these plans, and to set up international governance structures to oversee long-term climate regimes.

The consensus seems to be that the parties are gradually coming together on these objectives along the road to Copenhagen, but with just 200 days left there is a feeling that time is running short.

“Progress is not being made as quickly as people would like,” concluded Schmidt.

Since the Kyoto Protocol entered into force in 1995, there have been major changes in the political will and technical expertise that affect climate change policy. For instance, according to de Boer, every government has accepted the scientific findings of the IPCC.

More recently, there have been at least two obvious developments – the present global economic crisis and the new U.S. administration.

On this, de Boer said, “I’m very glad climate change has remained on the agenda despite the economic recession.” Many countries, he continued, are even trying to include green initiatives in their economic stimulus packages.

He singled out China’s “strong focus on sustainable building” and, last week, Hedegaard pointed to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as two unlikely but apparently willing leaders in moving toward less oil-dependent economies.

“I think it would be stupid for countries like India and China to pursue the path of developed countries. As developing countries, we have to find our own paths; we don’t need our buildings to be air-conditioned all the time,” said Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, in a discussion at Columbia University’s School of Journalism Tuesday.

Regarding whether President Obama is as committed to climate change action as he appears to be, de Boer said, “I’m convinced, yes. I think he sees it in the long-term interests of the U.S. to act on climate change.”

 
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