Posts by: Farrukh Zaman
In continuation of its long tradition, COP18 has officially entered the second day of its last day. It has been over 10 hours of additional negotiations on issues that have remained pending from the start. Luckily, we now have draft texts on all the negotiation tracks that have been forwarded to the COP for ministers to decide and make final decisions. Unfortunately these should have been made available earlier this week when the ministerial session officially started and not left for until now. In fact, only few hours ago we managed to get a final draft text on ADP (ad-hoc working group on Durban Platform). Earlier, on Friday, we received three draft texts in the morning on LCA, ADP and Finance. Most of the meeting between parties happened behind closed doors where they tried to remove as many brackets and options they could.
The initial LCA text we got on Friday morning was really weak and missed the section on finance. There was no decision of the Technology mechanism (TEC), low mitigation decision, weak sectoral approaches section, and unclear shared vision elements with no specifics about numbers and global peak year for emission reduction. Most of these issues are still pending and are being deliberated upon by the ministers. In the early hours of Friday night, the LCA plenary took place where the parties expressed their reservations on the draft text forwarded by the chair. According to veterans, the final draft text did not include anything new but just deletion of brackets, options and everything else that parties did not seem to agree on. In the plenary, China compared the text with the bad food of QNCC (the conference venue) – “not great, but something to eat”. Most countries rejected the text and chances could be that they would reopen the text in ministerial consultations. After hearing the criticism, the chair of the LCA, Ayysar Tayyeb forwarded the draft text to the COP, where decisions would be taken under the COP presidency by the ministers. This marked the end to the LCA track which was established in 2007 as per the Bali Action Plan.
Progress on the KP track is not anything less than disappointing. The draft text that was forwarded to the COP for final consultations has existing loopholes such as the issue of AAU surplus carryovers and low ambition. Developed countries seemed interested in keeping the market mechanisms intact and strengthened, but developing countries expressed concerns over this. Also, the second commitment period length was also highly debated. Rumors are we will see some last minute bargains in the Kyoto Protocol, which may not be good news for the world.
After several postpones, the ADP plenary finally happened in the late hours of Friday night. The co-chairs managed to forward an agreed draft text to the COP after much arm twisting from parties, particularly China and the US. The fights were mainly over the wording of the text with the US not wanting to add ‘commitments’ or ‘actions’ in the draft conclusions. China and other countries remained adamant that they wanted ‘commitments’ in the text otherwise they would not accept it. Finally, with Egypt’s linguistic help, parties managed to agree with having “enhanced action” in its place.
Decisions relating loss and damage and MRV standards are also outstanding. Several groups are bilaterally working to resolve differences and come up with an agreed outcome. The COP president will also hold a ministerial consultation session or “Majlis” (a meeting in Arabic culture where political decisions are made) to provide space to ministers to come to convergence.
We are over 12 hours of additional negotiations and have been informed that the plenary that is scheduled for 3 am, will now take place at 7:30 am (if odds are with us). Rumor mill has it that the COP president is gone off to bed (he lives only 10 minutes away from QNCC). Guess we all should get some sleep too. It will be a long day ahead of us, yet again.
A run down of the extra few hours of the last day at COP18.
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Climate negotiations have always been very ‘polarized’. It is not just a simple case of developed and developing countries, but rather, the divisions among parties are more strategic and interests driven.
In a recent unfolding of things, a new alliance of 5 middle-income economies has emerged at the Doha climate talks. Collectively known as the Alianza Independiente de Latinoamerica y el Caribe (AILAC), the group includes Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Chile and Guatemala. The alliance is formed to counter the growing influence of BASIC and ALBA groups of countries, which does not reflect the economic realities of all the countries. The group has garnered support from some major parties such as Mexico and the civil society, who see it as a constructive way forward – “moving from the politics of blame to the politics of responsibility”.
According to Costa Rican negotiator, Monica Araya, AILAC is a partnership of countries that want obligations for all but keeping the changing realities of the world in mind. The idea is for these countries to pursue economic development, without repeating the same mistakes of the developed countries that has caused the problem of global climate change.
The alliance is seen as a balanced negotiation group trying to create a middle ground between countries. It aims to bring a Latin American perspective to the talks, but one that promotes cooperation between rich and poor countries.
Will AILAC be successful in bringing parties to convergence in Doha? Would it be as strong a group in changing dynamics in Doha talks as was its counterpart the Cartagena Dialogue in Cancun? Or will it be just another bandwagon that misses its targets? Only time will tell.
A new alliance of 5 middle-income economies has emerged at the Doha climate talks.
Read post →Dohaha moment: the usual appearance of Lord Monckton at COP, only this time as a ‘Sheikh’.
Read post →48 hours remain before the eighteen session of the Conference of the Parties (COP18) ends, or at least scheduled to end, and things are not moving on. It has become almost a tradition for these COPs to linger on few extra days of negotiations than end on time. Negotiators are already looking tired and sleep deprivation will most likely to happen beginning from tonight. It is ironic that each year, negotiators put on the same show and give us the same reasons to believe that perhaps the next time the situation and outcome will be better.
A COP Presidency stocktaking plenary had just ended that resembled a lot like the Copenhagen version of 2009. With almost two days remaining, negotiations on all 7 tracks (AWG-LCA, AWG-KP, AWG-ADP, SBSTA, SBI, COP and CMP) are still going on without any prospects of successful closure. Several draft texts are still being introduced in the negotiations, which was pretty much the case in Copenhagen. Most of the decisions are left for the ministers to decide. Rumours are circulating in the corridors that several bilateral meetings are happening between different parties and not all parties are being consulted for an agreed outcome. As one negotiator puts it: “it’s not a party driven process, but a process driven party”.
Here are the updates so far on the negotiations:
SBSTA: Most work has been completed, but 2 outstanding political issues remain. One related to common tabular format related to MRV and the second on methodological issues related to Kyoto Protocol. Issues relating intellectual property rights (IPR) also remain.
SBI: Agreement has been reached on national adaptation plans. One issue relating Climate Technology Center (CTC) is unresolved. Loss and damage is still a problem, but parties have managed to remove 9 brackets from the text.
AWG-KP: Scheduled to close by midnight, but some options remain to be taken up by ministers.
AWG-LCA: Nothing substantial emerged out of the informal consultations. Most likely to continue discussions in a single informal group.
AWG-ADP: Three roundtable discussions happened on the two workstreams. Relatively progressed more than any other track. Scheduled to close by noon tomorrow.
COP and CMP: Work progressing smoothly with many issues finalized. Few outstanding issues related to finance remain.
Status of negotiations at COP18 so far.
Read post →The UK is currently making headlines on the Internet relating Kate Middleton’s pregnancy. But at COP18 in Doha, the UK is also being favoured as the first country to officially pledge substantial money for climate financing. Yesterday, UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Davey announced UK’s pledge of £1.8 billion to help poorer countries deal with climate change from 2012-2015. The announcement also include that 50% of the amount will be used for climate adaptation. While the news is certainly noteworthy and appreciable, it is important to inquire more closely if this pledge will be met through ‘new’ and ‘additional’ resources and is not just a “MAFA” (Mistaken Articulation for Action).
Developed countries have committed to mobilize sufficient funding for developing countries adaptation and mitigation efforts under several international negotiations, the recent being the promise to mobilize $100 billion annually by 2020. Yet, past experience from Fast Start Finance and Adaptation Fund tells us that most of the funding that came into these instruments was redirected from the ODA (Official Development Assistance) share of the developed countries. Further, there lacks consistent and comprehensive data to track the commitments and climate finance by developed nations.
The negotiations under the subsidiary body of the UNFCCC (SBSTA) aimed to adopt common tabular formats for reporting and verification by developed countries on climate finance (MRV on finance). The idea, proposed by developing countries, is to list individual, bilateral financed actions of each country in a detailed format rather than just mentioning aggregate figures. Clearly, this was blocked by the developed countries who see this process to be cumbersome. It is important to note that in the absence of such reporting system, it is easy for the developed countries to pledge money for climate finance by just changing numbers in their balance sheets than actually making concrete and real contributions.
So while we thank the UK government for being so generous in pledging money to climate finance, I think we will appreciate more if you and your friends (the developed countries) be more transparent in telling us from where and how your climate finance is flowing.
UK’s recent pledge of £1.8 billion in climate finance is certainly a big news at COP18. But due to lack of MRV systems in place, it is difficult to tell if the money is new and additional or just a “mistaken articulation for action”
Read post →About the author
Farrukh is a climate activist and researcher from Karachi, Pakistan, where he spearheaded a youth movement on climate change.
