Australia: climate negotiations circuit breaker or circus booster?

Some people have called it a circuit breaker, others a circus booster. Either way, the announcement that Penny Wong, Australia’s Climate Change Minister made in Washington, DC last Friday was significant.

Wong is in the United States to attend a number of climate related meetings. Last week it was the Major Emitters Forum (MEF) in Washington, where she gave a presentation on a possible framework for what the legal architecture of a new global climate change treaty could look like.

While the media heralded this as a new announcement and one that has the potential to move the international climate talks forward, it is the one and same proposal that the Australian government delegation held a seminar on during the UNFCCC meetings in Bonn, Germany in August and have been working on for months now. (See my previous blogs)

This proposal, often referred to as a scheduling approach, requires countries to make their emission reduction commitments against agreed timetables. Unlike the Kyoto protocol, which allows for only one sort of target, the Australian proposal would allow for multifaceted commitments.

The Australian government have referred to this as an inclusive model, one which will allow for both developed and developing countries to make commitments to tackle the global challenge of climate change, whilst taking into account differing levels of historical responsibility and economic capability.

On the surface this proposal sounds pretty good, and as key climate policy and international law experts have noted that it does have some attractive points:

1. This proposal builds a bridge between the Kyoto world and the new post-2012 world where fair, international commitments from a broader range of countries will be essential if an effective binding agreement is to be reached.
2. It could also provide the vehicle for future “rounds” of emission reduction commitments without having to renegotiate the entire system each time, which as I am sure you will all agree, is an very timely procedure which seems to move with the pace of a tortoise minus the unwavering dedication.
3. Lastly, the scheduling approach, if carefully designed, would allow country’s efforts to be built upon quickly, as countries can increase, but not decrease, their commitments at any time.

Wong has said that the announcement was met favourably in Washington but political and NGO spokespeople back in Australia haven’t been completely enthusiastic.

Erwin Jackson from the environmental policy think-tank, The Climate Institute, said, “the credibility of this approach will depend on its ability to strengthen global action and not lead to a system that just sees countries registering existing national commitments.” We don’t have to look far into the past to see that countries, no matter what the subject (aid, trade) will take any opportunity to weaken their own commitments.

Greens leader Senator Bob Brown said that Australian Government has set domestic targets so low that the proposal has ‘failure written all over it’ and will only amount to a ‘race to the bottom.’ Brown said that with such little action from wealthy developed nations developing countries are asking, ‘well, why should we bother to have targets at all?’

International aid organisation Oxfam said that while the Government’s proposal of offering developing countries a more flexible way to meet emissions reductions is a step towards removing one of the obstacles in the lead-up to the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen, it fails to address the key sticking point of financing for developing countries.

While the legal architecture proposal put forward by the Australian government may lay a useful foundation for a global climate treaty, asking a developing country to adapt to climate change and contribute emissions reductions without the financing on the table is like asking them to take out a mortgage on a house without ensuring they have the means to make repayments. It’s simply not fair.

Later this week, at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, climate finance will be high on the agenda when heads of state, including Kevin Rudd, meet. It’s essential that Australia continues its work as a global trend setter on climate change and puts necessary figures on the table. See my previous blog for more details.

Just this morning, in a door step interview in NYC, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong was asked by a journalist: “are we at a point where at the G20 we need to get firm commitments from developed countries about contributions that they make to a fund to finance developing countries?”

Wong responded with: “This is a discussion that is still going on. Obviously the formal negotiating process is the UN process but financing is an enormously complex issue because it is about the whole package. It’s about public finance, private finance.

We do think there is merit in getting finance ministries involved in this. I think there is always a risk if we leave too much detail to the end on a whole range of issues in Copenhagen and really it’s too big an agreement to try and resolve in the early hours of the morning. So we should get to work on options… work on finance options is going to be important.”

Let’s hope we see significant work on climate finance at the G20 later this week. Without it we’re simply not going to get the global climate deal our planet needs.