New steps in Bonn!
Posted on 02. Aug, 2010 by Florent Baarsch in France
New steps in Bonn
It is just 2 months since the June session of the unfccc, after two weeks of negotiations, the delegates left Germany with much disagreement over the new text. For the developing countries, the text written by the Chair of LCA was not balanced enough, and for some developed countries especially for the USA, the text did not reflect enough the Copenhagen Accord.
At the end of the june meeting, the Chair, Margaret, had to write a new text. This new text was issued in July, and is going to be discussed during this new session, this one-week session.
The one-week sessions are definitely not my favourite ones. These sessions have always been disappointing since I began following the negotiations. Last year, in August, in Bonn, the negotiations were just on procedures and were blocked for a week. In November, in Barcelona, African countries walked out and the talks were blocked for one day! These one-week sessions are really scary!
However the agenda of this week is really heavy. Considering the negotiations of the next commitment period, the parties will have to discuss numbers and LULUCF. Numbers mean by how much and how the Annex I countries are going to reduce their domestic emissions. LULUCF is the mechanism that takes into account the emissions and the capture of CO2 due to carbon sinks of the Annex I countries, such as forests or wetlands. One of the big points that will be also discussed here concerns this document /10 dealing with the solutions to avoid a gap between the first and the subsequent commitment period. Really legal and sometimes boring things, but the future of the Protocol and of the commitments that the Annex I countries endorsed in 1997 are at stake!
The LCA plenary has just started and then we will know quite soon what the agenda of this week will be. But unfortunately and until tomorrow afternoon, I am the only one tracker in Bonn. Anna from the UK is only arriving tomorrow, after her arrival, it will be easier to follow everything and to tweet-blog-report on the plenary and on the talks.
So let’s hope that these new steps in Bonn will the steps forward we need in the negotiations!
Thanks to Anna for correcting this blog.