Same Place. Changing times.

As I entered the UN building today, I couldn’t help but stop and salute my flag and swell with pride post India’s grand win at the cricket world cup final last night. India recreated history after more than 20 years

Setting Stage for Durban

It was not long ago that I was in the same very building trying to get my hands on what to blog and how and trouble negotiators, running behind them. Bangkok 2009 was critical landmark for the Copenhagen conference and so is Bangkok 2011, for setting the stage for Durban.

Workshops are Key

Currently am sitting in plenary tweeting away presentations from countries on past developed country mitigation efforts have and their plans for contributing in the future.

Governments have struggled time and time again with the assumptions and conditions of mitigation efforts of developed countries, especially when current pledges if enacted lead us to 3.2 degrees global temperature rise which is above the 2 degree mark taken as a threshold for catastrophic climate-induced changes. In particular there is large incoherence amongst the scientific data and base years used.

In my opinion, the crux comes down to giving structure to the following:

1. Metrics of Emission Reductions
This would require every country to agree to have comparable emission targets on basis of common indicators and common base years. US and Europe still stand by 2005 as a base year for working to reduce carbon emissions and don’t plan to compromise anytime soon. There is also a wide disparity amongst countries regarding indicators

2. Effort Sharing Principles
Governments would look to address key questions regarding what equity is. In presentations and amongst questions and answers there was discussion on what criteria make effort sharing equitable.

Workshops provide an opportunity for parties to build trust and structure mitigation issues currently on the floor. Also this would provide clarity on comparability and compliance and on the consequences of non compliance of mitigation targets.

Setting the tone

Not long ago there was talk of having a “common space” among the two different tracks of negotiations currently running at the climate talks, ie the one with the United States and non Kyoto governments and the Kyoto track. I guess this sets the tone and gives that certain “space” in a non- negotiating atmosphere in the form of technical workshops. There is no longer an excuse for missing important details, “real” emission reductions and the performance of mitigation targets to date considering that countries today will be able to QUESTION other parties directly after a session of presentations.
Session 1 – European Union , G77 and China, Norway, Australia, France
Session 2- USA, Switzerland, AOSIS, New Zealand, Germany
Session 3- Russia, India, Sweden,Japan, Poland
Session 4- Bolivia, UK, Iceland

This will be the session deciding -where we are currently standing and where we need to go from here.

The mood is constructive following the partial success at Cancun, lets hope to see substantial progress in the coming week.