Time Check: Getting the sequencing right

Building up on the first general thoughts shared yesterday on the Bangkok climate negotiations, this post attempts to highlight a few of the main issues that need to be address during this negotiating session.

But before getting into more details of what is now being discussed in Bangkok, let us take a few step backs in the rocky history of UN climate negotiations. The UNFCCC negotiations involve two types of forums, the permanent bodies that are at the core of the implementation of the convention (COP, CMP, SBI, SBSTA) and temporary negotiating groups that are set-up for a particular purpose and which are then closed once their purpose is accomplished/once a deadlock is reached.

In 2005, governments finally realized that it became urgent to discuss the future of the Kyoto Protocol and set up an ad-hoc working group to address this issue (the AWG-KP). Then two years later, the negotiators became aware of the need to discuss additional issues: mainly adaptation and mitigation in the US and large emerging economies. Thus the “AWG-LCA” was then created with the objective to conclude its work within 2 years. Finally, the same delegates decided last December that perhaps we needed a new approach to look much further into the future and build a new climate regime that would be established in 2015 (so they created the “ADP”). Surely creating new bodies with a particular task and define timeframe makes a lot of sense. However, to complicate the matter a little bit, the climate negotiators have been excelling at procrastinating and thus haven’t yet managed to conclude the work of any of those three bodies…

Hence the situation we have this year: in addition to the meetings of the permanent bodies, three Working Groups are now meeting in parallel, each with their own agendas, programs and timeframe. And as “all is related” (a very popular sentence among the UNFCCC community), the negotiations have become a little more complex than needed perhaps with many issues discussed in various forums despite being extremely interlinked. Last December, negotiators left Durban on the assumption that this all discussion-spaghetti will be simplified in Doha with the closing of both AWG-KP and AWG-LCA. This thus gives negotiators just a few more negotiating days in Bangkok and Doha (as well as a few months back home) to get on their forks and untangle the result of their work…

Let’s now dive into a quick overview on three key issues for which timing/scheduling is crucial.

No break for climate finance
First of all, developed countries have created a very unhelpful uncertainty about the amount and sources of funding provided to support developing countries’ action on climate change. Three years ago, the Copenhagen conference concluded with the pledge by the Global North to provide originally 30 billions US dollars of climate finance between 2010 and 2012 (thus about 10 billions a year), a sum that would later be scaled up to reach 100 billions annually in 2020. Unfortunately, there is a no indication of how this scaling up will take place and, even worse, no money has been put on the table for 2013. So it is time for a wake up call in the governments of the richest nations to realize that the need for support from less wealthy countries facing climate change wont magically vanish at the end of this year.

Ambition first, then architecture
Another timing question relate to the priority to be given to the two negotiating tracks of the new Durban Platform negotiations (“ADP”). In May, delegates agreed after many days of discussions to build upon the Durban Agreement with two main stream of negotiations addressing (1) the increase of ambition (remember, countries’ mitigation policies are currently nowhere closed to prevent dramatic climate impacts) and (2) the architecture of the new climate agreement to be adopted in 2015. While many countries (particularly in the North) are interested in moving both tracks in parallel, the Alliance of Small Islands States is convincingly pushing for the first track to be given priority. You can’t choose the materials to build a house unless you already know the number of floors to be built, their argument goes. Also, since the 2015 agreement will become operational only after 2020, there is a clear need for negotiations to deliver solutions to ensure that we have not already completed spoiled the atmosphere by this time.

Time’s up!
The third main timing issue on the table relate to the legacy of the Bali Road Map and the unfinished negotiations ongoing since 2007. Last December, governments agreed to establish a new negotiating forum (the ADP to which I already referred) and to conclude in 2012 the work on the two other discussions forum (“AWG-KP” and “AWG-LCA”). Since these two discussions have been ongoing now for respectively seven and five years, a valid argument can be made that there is little additional results to expect from the indefinite continuation of their proceedings.

But here is the rub: some delegates from the developed countries have come to the conclusion that this would allow them to continue to delay progress until the end of the year in the discussions related to the emissions reductions expected from their countries, and then simply turn the page and declare this discussion closed, with all the focus turning to action by all countries. Sneaky… If action by all countries is irrefutably necessary to address climate change, attempting to escape the higher responsibility of developed countries (UNFCCC code name: 1b(i)) is a really poor trick. Surely, procrastinating in the classroom has never exempted anyone from the related homework.

On the road to Doha
With so many issues on the table and so little (negotiating) time left before the conclusion of this year’s climate negotiations in Doha, let’s hope that negotiators will get their acts together before some anyone looses completely patience.