Talks between the G77, China and a number of major developing countries were moving toward forcing countries to be transparent about their use of the loophole. And just yesterday, countries that form the Central Africa Forest Commission (COMIFAC) spoke out powerfully calling on the loopholes to be closed.

Check out the overview on the issue below:

The game, dealing with climate change:

If dealing with climate change was a game, to win we would have to reduce our emissions (like CO2) and protect the carbon sinks that keep greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere (like forests). Unfortunately, dealing with climate change is a game that we all win, or we all lose. Cheaters in this game mean we all lose.

The rules, LULU-what?

LULUCF (Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry — another terrible UN acronym) gives developed countries the ability to factor forest management and land use into their accounting for how much they’re contributing to climate change and whether they’re on track with promised pollution cuts.

Forest management and land use are the biggest areas of potential for mitigating climate change. So it’s no surprise that accounting for and encourage the protection of forests is a big deal in climate negotiations.

For developed countries that are part of this framework, UN climate talks have helped us come a long way toward protecting forests and other carbon sinks.

The cheat & the cheaters:

LULUCF contains loopholes that pose a serious threat to effective climate change mitigation. The loopholes in forest management accounting would allow developed countries to increase their annual emissions by approximately 400 Mt CO2 annually and not account for it. That’s a loophole big enough to hide all of the emissions from Spain in one year.

Countries exploiting this most are: Germany, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

The emissions loophole works by allowing countries to forecast an increase in emissions and use this higher level as a ‘projected reference level’ or baseline against which to measure their emission reductions.  The loophole is also being used to hide emissions from bio-energy.

What it means for the rest of us?

We all lose.  UN Climate Talks have come a long way to develop these rules; a 400 MT greenhouse gas pollution loophole is massive and completely inappropriate.  Without effective tools to protect our forests, dealing with climate change becomes near impossible.

How do we fix it?

The loopholes must be closed.  All developed countries must agree to two new guiding principles which are:

1. The rules being negotiated should result in an absolute reduction in net emissions;
2. Carbon reservoirs (forests etc.) in natural ecosystems should be protected.

For our part, follow progress on LULUCF by tracking our posts with this tag: LULUCF. We’re also watching the great reporting by Canadian Forests & Climate campaigner, Chris Henschel. Check out his daily updates here: Forests and Climate Change

We had been sat in plenary for what seemed like hours (in fact I believe Andread HAD been sat on the same seat for 10 hours!). When eventually, someone came in with a new copy of the text and they all got down to business. What followed was one of the most interesting and compelling negotiating sessions I have ever sat in on.

Now don’t get too enthusiastic because, as per the other day, what they were actually negotiating on was a one and a half page document which lays out how they will work for the next year, not how to solve climate change. However this did mean they really HAD to agree on it by the end of the session.

But I think for the first time I really realised both the art of what was going on, and also the fact that everyone sat in the room is still a human.

As the negotiations went on we had comedy comments from Australia about threesomes and cocktails, toing and froing between USA and Sudan over UN principles, (which led to Sudan responding to USA’s challenge to whether they actually knew what the principles were by getting a copy of them out and reading them!). We had Russia getting very upset and we had Saudi being the unlikely joker, who in the end got many laughs and a round of applause by suggesting we just delete paragraph 5. Which we then did!

One of my favourite moments was when literally everyone in the room negotiators and civil society alike went noooooooo to Papa New Guinea’s suggestion that “we just put it in brackets for the time being”.

Oh and the Nigerian negotiator was wearing a cowboy hat which kept the trackers at least, entertained for quite some time!

The negotiations went on till well past midnight and at one point seemed to be yet another example of the UNFCCC following the principle of, last one in the room left awake and alert gets their way! But in the end they did agree on a text.

So we come away from this weekend knowing how they are going to talk about our future this year…

As the session was closing though something happened which made me smile more than anything else I heard all night.

Granada on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States made their closing statement in the form of a poem!

Madame chair
Among our serious work here comes some levity
Aosis thanks all for having shown flexibility
Particularly revealing compromise and sensibility
For without flexibility what is the real possibility
That there would have been the necessary credibility
Among 192 in this perennially deliberating assembly
In pursuit of climate equitability viability and sustainability
So we bid you all safety with your chosen method of transportability
As you return to families and national diversity
Only to again be released for 2010 climate change conferring productivity
I said levity
But I am not showing creativity
mainly because I am not pursuing mental agility
or fruitility
But I am just avoiding none creative destructability
Thank You

It was refreshing and exciting to see some humanity in this process and much appreciated by all after such an intense session.

We should all make art not policy, and if we can’t do that lets at least make policy as art!

After the long night we left and on Monday all travelled home, another UNFCCC session over.

There are still so many things to be decided, but one thing we know is sure. The UNFCCC will all be back here, still negotiating over our future, come June. Consensus does not come easily!

We can only hope for some more creative constructability next time we meet.

But as I sat on the train home I had some time to reflect. Over and over I wonder what brings me back to the UN, to this place which causes me to go through such an emotional roller coaster.

It wasn’t just Grenada who got poetic this weekend!

Sitting, listening, to grown men squabble
Over life, love and laughter of the highest kind
My soul hurts thinking
About why we’re really here
Listening to indigenous people, cry foul in fear

Dead, dull, strained and stagnant
Is this where my future is being decided?
Is this where we will heal?
Where we will find the way to live?
I don’t know how much more I have left to give

Take, take me dancing, music rings in my ears
To dance to a beat, love the moment, feel alive
This is what my soul
Cries out to do! so why
am I here? Am I living a lie?

Take, Take me dancing, Let me find the space
to know myself, Remind myself
of why
why we’re really here
Why we too cry out in fear

But this weekend I finally realised I come back here because it matters, because this process can and must get somewhere, because it is an important part of building our amazing and beautiful future.

As I have said in the past, this process is not about politics and money it’s about our amazing world and the people who live here.

But many of these people are not all allowed to be here.

So as the UNFCCC goes on, those of us who are must too.

We must go on for those, like the indigenous people, who have the most to loose if the UNFCCC does not deliver.

But we must go on it in the way we know how. We must not loose the emotions, because they ultimately are what make us feel alive.

And that’s what this process is about!

I’m glad this weekend I saw some of the negotiators express that too.

And I’m glad I finally saw the art of negotiations.

MY TAKE

Chair of the Ad hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action on Sunday night. photo: ENB

From my perspective, the last day of talks began r-e-a-l-l-y slowly. If day one and two were about country’s delegations airing their views on Copenhagen and how to move forward over the course of this year, Sunday was about bringing it all together into clear mandates to plan and act upon.

I woke up early, made my way to the conference center, grabbed the daily program and started to wait.

Morning was filled with closed meetings of various negotiating blocks, each working to align positions internally in order to give them more clout the formal sessions. This UNFCCC process creeps forward by consensus only, and all 175 countries who came to Bonn had to agree on some key procedural decisions before the end of the day. With so many different cultures, different states of development and different political and economic interests – consensus can be really hard.

Well apparently, that consensus was escaping this group, so the big formal deciding meeting was postponed. Then it was postponed again.

Finally, at 5PM – same time the Bonn Climate Change Talks were scheduled to end – we gathered in the large plenary hall and began. The Secretariat staff handed out a 2-page text for a basis to talk through and negotiate the procedural points in question. Countries then proceeded to argued about obscure differences in wording for the next 6+ hours.

I won’t say it wasn’t interesting or even entertaining at times – it was, but I’ll spare you the play to play. Catch the re-run here if you’re as big a dork as I am. Instead, I want to share just a few highlights:

Papua New Guinea seemed to own the mic. Led by a striking and articulate woman with an Italian accent and red pants (fashionably breaking from the rest of the group, I might be a bit smitten), she gave a valiant effort and made some progress in her push for PNG’s positions. Louis Hand, the Aussie’s lead lady (also known for her occasional fashionable breaks), drew analogies to a threesome and cocktails in an effort to draw interest for one of her proposals …Saudi’s shut her down on the basis that their culture frowns on both. The Saudi’s, often suspected of trying to slow the talks from progress generally, offered to help the chair move things along. The whole room laughed, they’re negotiator said “No, I’m serious”, and proceeded to give the breakthrough suggestion. Also notable, the Chair of the session accidentally and repeatedly insulted Russia, who perhaps offered some of the most hopeful suggestions for compromise throughout the night – needless to say, they weren’t pleased.

The US wasn’t particularly notable in our interventions. Jonathan Pershing showed his frustration only once, angered by agreements apparently made informally that fell apart on the floor. Our delegation shared potato chips with the Brits… possibly feeding Venezuela’s neo-colonial suspicions. Generally, Pershing was eloquent and efficient, steering clear of the more creative forms of delivery and the drama occasionally introduced by other negotiators over the course of the night.

The lack of creativity and drama seems almost un-American compared to the culture I know and love; but as we continue to wait for serious solutions to climate change and as the talks stalled into their 6th and 7th hours, (or 16th year, for that matter), I have no complaint. That said, Grenada was the highlight of the night when they reminded all of us that what we’re trying to save in this process – our environment, our security, our hope of living & maybe even thriving together on this planet, our humanity – is indeed something beautiful. Thanking the Chair for her efforts and wishing well everyone present, she closed with a poem on behalf of the small island states most vulnerable to climate change.

Next time Dr. Pershing, perhaps you too could close with a poem.

=======================
GRENADA’S CLOSING STATEMENT

Madame chair
Among our serious work here comes some levity
Aosis thanks all for having shown flexibility
Particularly revealing compromise and sensibility
For without flexibility what is the real possibility
That there would have been the necessary credibility
Among 192 in this perennially deliberating assembly
In pursuit of climate equitability viability and sustainability
So we bid you all safety with your chosen method of transportability
As you return to families and national diversity
Only to again be released for 2010 climate change conferring productivity
I said levity
But I am not showing creativity
mainly because I am not pursuing mental agility
or fruitility
But I am just avoiding none creative destructability
Thank You

=======================
THE OFFICIAL UNFCCC TAKE / PRESS RELEASE ON OUTCOMES OF THE WEEKEND (PDF):

Climate change negotiators agree on intensified UNFCCC negotiating schedule for 2010

(Bonn, 11 April 2010) The first round of UN climate change talks since the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 concluded Sunday in Bonn with agreement to intensify the negotiating schedule in order to achieve a strong outcome in Mexico at the end of the year.

In addition to the negotiating sessions already scheduled for 2010, governments decided at the Bonn April meeting to hold two additional sessions of at least one week each.

The additional sessions will take place between the 32nd session of the UNFCCC Convention subsidiary bodies from 31 May to 11 June 2010 and the UN Climate Change Conference in Mexico from 29 November to 10 December 2010.

The Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) invited its Chair to prepare, under her own responsibility, a text to facilitate negotiations among Parties, in time for the May/June sessions in Bonn.

“At this meeting in Bonn, I have generally seen a strong desire to make progress,” said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer. “However, whilst more meeting time is important, it is itself not a recipe for success,” he cautioned.

The UN’s top climate change official called on governments to overcome differences, and work for greater clarity on what can be decided in the course of 2010 in the UN Climate Change negotiations.

“We need to decide what can be agreed at the end of this year in Cancún and what can be put off until later,” he said.

According to Mr. de Boer, negotiators must tackle three categories of issues in the course of this year: issues which were close to completion in Copenhagen and can be finalized at the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún at the end of the year; issues where there are still considerable differences, but on which the Copenhagen Accord can provide important political guidance; and issues where governments are still far from agreement.

“The UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún must do what Copenhagen did not achieve: It must finalize a functioning architecture for implementation that launches global climate action, across the board, especially in developing nations,” said Yvo de Boer.

“Specifically, negotiations this year need to conclude on mitigation targets and action, a package on adaptation, a new technology mechanism, financial arrangements, ways to deal with deforestation, and a capacity-building framework,” he said.

Yvo de Boer also referred to the necessity for high level political guidance at the appropriate time: “We must seek political guidance where and when needed,” he said.

The first round of UN Climate Change Talks in Bonn in 2010 (9-11 April) was attended by more than 1700 delegates from 175 countries

First, we’re going to start you off with a little piece of music sent to Ole on his way here. The talented Rob Longstaff submitted this bit of theme music to keep us going through the COP (and beyond). We seriously dig. Enjoy:

Check out more of Rob Longstaff’s stuff | Download this song and get the lyrics (thanks Rob)