It\’s Getting Hot In Here

Monday 30th March:  The state of negotiations in Bonn.

This is a blog-post for the policy addicts who sadly can’t be in Bonn. If you’re not a policy-wonk, be warned – this post contains too many acronyms to be healthy.

The update here has been provided by the wonderful Thomas Spencer, a 22 year-old Australian expat living in Germany – a specialist in REDD issues and Russia.

Read on in this post for what happened today on:

• Reduction targets for Annex 1 (ie, the rich countries)
  
• Cash – SIDS (Small Island Developing States), LDCs, and India called for specific adapatation funding commitments
• REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in developing countries) – and Australia’s backwards stance
• SIDS and LDCs – crying out for progressive mitigation targets

And while all this was going on, Saudi Arabia took every opportunity to whining about the need to have a ‘low emissions’ future not a ‘low carbon’ one, and the need for them to be paid ‘adapatation’ funding so they can ‘adapt’ their fossil-fuel industries into something else. No specific mention of what they’d be transitioning to…

From Thomas Spencer:

Numbers, numbers, numbers.

“It seems that these talks will be much more focused on getting the concrete numbers that we need from Annex 1 Parties than has been the case at previous meetings since Bali – both concerning Annex 1 mitigation targets and the scale of their financial support for mitigation, adaptation and REDD in developing countries.”

Reduction targets for Annex 1

“An interesting development saw a little spat in the AWG-KP (one of the two big ‘negotiating tracks’ in the UNFCCC process), with certain parties from Annex 1 looking to focus discussion on the accounting rules for LULUCF (‘Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry’, aka ‘Forests and farms in rich countries’) and on the Flexible Mechanisms too. The chair resisted this and tried to focus talk on the scale of reductions required from Annex 1 countries. In the end a compromise was reached, with two contact groups (smaller negotiating groups) being formed on LULUCF and Flexible Mechanisms, which were explicitly asked to finish their work in a timely manner so that the AWG-KP can move on to consider other matters – i.e. scale of reductions for Annex 1 countries.

“There are also rumors doing the rounds that the G77 and China is considering coming up with the a specific number for Annex 1 reductions, e.g. -40%, a move which should be supported by all of us. America remains the wild card, with question of assigning it a feasible “comparable effort” one of the absolute key stones of the negotiations. In the light of the USA’s comments concerning “unrealistic” demands for financing (see below), a “reduction + additional financing” kind of target approach for the US seems difficult to get. Todd Stern called for “more than -15% by 2020”-  previous position was -14%- which is 1) not enough, and considering that as a result of the financial crisis emissions in the USA have already fallen about 2%. So this is 2) not really an improvement on the old position.  US youth: keep doing all you can – the scale of reductions from Annex 1 parties as a whole will never be decided until America makes a target choice.”

Show me the cash

“There was a big move from the SIDS and LDCs, as well as India, for explicit commitments from Annex 1 countries to pay the agreed incremental costs of adaptation, as well as for fulfillment of the Bali Action Plan to finance adaptation plans beginning before 2012. There was some disorganization in the contact group on financing, with China and others calling for more focus on technology transfer, LDCs and SIDS wanting to consider adaptation financing. The topic, which they were actually there to discuss- the specific proposals on financing which are on the table e.g. auctioning of AAUs, criteria-based contributions from Annex 1 countries – were left out adrift the conflicts of interest among the G77 and China.

“General message: we need to start talking specifically about the source, scale and institutional structure of financial and technological support from Annex 1 countries. Push from the chair to start examinations of specific proposals was mainly unsuccessful, although there was an expression of interest from Brazil to hear more about the Norwegian proposal for the sale of AAUs.”

“The USA called many estimations of the scale of financing needed “unrealistic”.” [Ed - not particularly generous or fair on  their part - especially considering that they have been the largest historical emitter.]

REDD

“There was a push from PNG to have a specific contact group on REDD established under the LCA; this received very explicit support from Australia. Previous calls from Parties for more time on REDD had been tactfully ignored by the Chair, which gives me the feeling that he would like to concentrate on critical topics like financing mechanisms in the LCA and scale of reductions in the KP, which need to be in place before we can start really talking about the role REDD can play. Australia is to be commended for taking a miniscule target for themselves, and doing every thing they can to be able to swap pollution at home for trees in PNG. People in Australia, bash them please. You can’t reach any long-term target if you lock your country into a high emissions infrastructure, setting future emissions in cement while protecting forests which future unmitigated climate change will destroy anyway.”

SIDS and LDCs:

“There was big support from them for 1.5 degrees and 350 ppm, but in my opinion poor negotiating strategy. It would be nice to have more contact with them.”

“Ok, that’s all from me, hope you stay tuned, and use this in your own wonderful work back home. The change we need won’t come from Bonn alone, but from every city, state and street were you guys do your thing.”

Over and out.

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For more Bonn coverage on IGHIH (and not all policy!), click these links :

1. The pre-sessionals (Friday 27th)

2. AOSIS rocks it on mitigation targets (Saturday 28th)

3. USA is back – but still not good enough (Sunday 29th)

4. Today’s policy download (Monday 30th)