Tag: COP 18

Qatar must be really courageous to host the COP this year! There are seven negotiating tracks taking place during COP18, including having to adopt an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, trying to finalizing the mandate of the LCA, and agreeing on a workplan and milestones under the ADP for short-term ambition and the global deal. The job that Qatar has to do seems impossible. And those are just the highlights of elements that are lined up for development and agreement by COP18. To make things worse, Qatar had less than a year to prepare, since it took one extra year to resolve who would be the COP18 host.

On Wednesday, negotiators from various groupings told Qatar that they are willing to work with them to ensure success at COP18. Nevertheless, the upcoming COP President usually plays a leading political role to bring about an agreement. The Mexican and South African Presidencies in the past two COPs had to muster all their political skills and spend real political capital for a year in order to successfully reach agreements.

The strength of the political outcomes will only be ensured by strong political leadership from Qatar. The presidency will need to invest high-level diplomacy in bringing together the interests of all negotiating groups along all of the LCA, KP and ADP tracks through consensus. They will need to employ their history of conflict resolution and mediation skills in the Arab region. They should involve heads of state and reach out to royals from around the globe to provide more flexible mandates to their negotiators. Compromises and bottom lines of countries and regions should be determined, tested and challenged well before the COP. One idea to achieve this is to hold a Heads of State meeting in Doha after Ramadan. Another is to form a friends of the Presidency group that includes individuals at the ministerial level from the different negotiating groups, which meet several times between now and Doha, aiming at providing guidance to negotiators.

Failure in Doha, will mean failure for the whole Arab region. Therefore, all Arab countries need to support Qatar, and should also show leadership. This could be achieved by having all Arab countries submit NAMA pledges to the UNFCCC by COP18. This is the region's opportunity to show they are serious about tackling climate change and its impacts on future generations – including their own future descendants.

ECO wonders if delegates usually idle away their waiting time in airports by brushing up on their diplomat lingo for use at international negotiations. From a glossary of terms, ECO derives that the wording “noting with deep concern” can be interpreted as one of the strongest possible expression for outrage, in this case for lack of progress and substance in closing the ambition gap.

ECO, never giving up on any Party, just has to assume that this “deep concern”, and its translation, is also shared, somewhere deep inside, by those Parties whose current pledges are possibly among the reasons why there is such concern. It is against this backdrop that ECO was pleased by some helpful interventions at yesterday’s first ADP plenary where several country groupings made clear that the work plan for urgently increasing ambition is something to work in parallel to the grand task of crafting the 2015 protocol. This ‘urgency’ agenda item is needed to agree on concrete steps to close the gap between current pledges and where emissions need to be in 2020 to be consistent with a realistic 2°C emissions pathway, and to keep 1.5°C within reach.

In particular, ECO liked the notion that the ambition work plan should focus on the immediate ambition gap and be seen as an iterative process of analysing the gap, identifying further options to narrow the gap, adopting them and repeating those steps until the gap is closed. And do that preferably on an annual basis, leading to concrete steps at every COP as long as necessary.

Surely not difficult for all those sharing the “deep concern”. ECO notes that this would require, here in Bonn, substantive work on the available options, as well as agreeing what to work on over 2012 and beyond, with further workshops, submissions and technical papers, and even, as suggested at the plenary, a high-level ministerial gathering ¨C leading to first tangible results for a COP decision in Qatar. A dedicated contact group, as suggested at yesterday’s plenary, is the thing to start with here in Bonn.

ECO wonders, however, if developed country Parties sharing the “deep concern” have understood that this would require, as a first step, moving to the top end of their pledges, especially in those cases (down under) where internal government documents show that conditions to move up from the low end of the pledged range have already been met; or where studies show that moving to the top end would be beneficial for the region’s economy (a region a little north of Africa). Or in those otherworldy cases where current

pledges are even below CP1 targets. ECO also wonders if those developing countries that have not yet identified NAMAs and the support needed to implement (some of) them are part of the game too ¨C ECO would be excited to hear from, and report on, any such developments.

As Parties retreat over the weekend to prepare their presentations for Monday’s workshop on options to increase ambition, ECO would like to echo what one group of highly vulnerable countries noted in the plenary: raising ambition immediately was always part of the Durban package. If the Qatari COP fails us all on that, then Durban may be remembered as the summit where we saved the climate negotiations but not the climate. On Monday, ECO wants to hear options for the latter.

The uninitiated ECO reader may think a driver is a less ostentatious term for a chauffeur, but in REDD+ a driver is an underlying cause of deforestation or forest degradation.

This week in Bonn, SBSTA has this on their agenda. ECO thinks it’s vital that all parties explore ways to identify, assess and address drivers. Otherwise we risk wasting REDD+ financing and failing to achieve our goal. Ultimately it is global demand that drives most deforestation and forest degradation. All parties therefore have a responsibility to act on this, as spelt out in the Cancún decision on REDD+.

What does this mean? Drivers should be dealt with at the level they occur, be it local, provincial, regional, national or global. In the forest country itself, issues of governance become significant, as does the need to satisfy the demand of local populations for things like cooking fuel. Marginalised, forest dependent communities should not bear the brunt of blame and retribution for their impact on forest areas when the impact from outsiders is much larger.

You can’t solve problems in a forest for long simply by taking the chainsaw from a logger. You also need to address demand for paper products or luxury furniture that is motivating the logging company. The same issues of deforestation apply to our consumption of products from oil palm, beef or soy production, which are produced mainly for international consumption.

This year, a decision is needed on the root causes of deforestation and forest degradation. One that recognises REDD+ host countries require financial assistance to do this, and identifies the need for all parties, north and south, to take responsibility for their role.