Tag: unfccc climate change

The irony is rich: interventions by two nongovernmental were mysteriously overlooked in the SBI yesterday.  The topic?  Public participation in the climate negotiations. Civil society participation plays a critical role in this process.  We can't say it better than the Secretariat itself in its guidelines.  Vibrant public participation "allows vital experience, expertise, information and perspectives from civil society to be brought into the process to generate new insights and approaches [and] promotes transparency."  Importantly, effective public participation also helps ensure the legitimacy and public acceptance of negotiation outcomes. To be sure, the experience in Copenhagen – where the public was more engaged than ever before – has caused some Parties to forget that they agreed in the Convention to "encourage the widest participation in this process, including that of non-governmental organizations." Instead, civil society is being pushed to the margins, with opportunities to contribute increasingly limited to chance hallway encounters and loading up the tables near side events with food and drinks to entice elusive negotiators. Civil society is happy to promote conviviality and informal contact, but the negotiations require substantive and formal involvement as well. ECO suggests the UNFCCC and its parties embrace the growing popularity of the process and seek to use that as an opportunity to improve performance rather than shy away.  And now is the time to start.  A contact group is meeting today to discuss process issues related to intergovernmental meetings. This group must take up the question of public participation ensure meaningful participation throughout these processes.  It should start by permitting designated NGO representatives to actively engage on the issue of participation in today's contact group, as well as in future formal and informal sessions on this issue. As the SBI and the Secretariat consider these issues, ECO urges them to ensure a few basic principles.  Measures should always be aimed at ensuring the broadest participation possible in the given circumstance. At a minimum, this means preserving and enhancing opportunities for routine civil society input through official interventions, submissions and consultations.  Relevant rules must be transparent and provide for independent review of particular decisions limiting participation. Access to information is the lifeblood of meaningful participation; all key documents should be posted on the Secretariat's website as soon as they are finalized. Indeed, the Secretariat should take the lead in ensuring meaningful public participation and so must have sufficient and increased resources to be able to do so effectively.  Additionally, each host country government bears great responsibility as well.  Host country agreements should be made public and incorporate an obligation to facilitate participation. As host of COP-16, Mexico must take proactive steps to guarantee effective civil society participation in Cancún.  Ambassador de Alba's proven record as a strong defender of human rights gives ECO hope in this regard.  Unfortunately, Cancún's geography creates a cause for concern. Direct access to negotiators is essential.  Civil society should have broad access to the venues where formal negotiations are taking place except in extreme conditions.  In addition, Mexico must guarantee that space for side events and other civil society activities is easily and quickly accessible to all participants. Civil society also serves as an extremely valuable technical and political resource for Parties, especially in developing countries. Parties should always be enabled and encouraged to take advantage of these resources however they choose, including by inviting them onto their delegations where appropriate. Finally, the SBI and the Secretariat should take advantage of an expert resource: the Secretariat of the Aarhus Convention has offered its assistance in resolving UNFCCC public participation concerns.  Aarhus input would be valuable. Civil society is not here just to vent our frustration or make the negotiations more difficult.  We have a right to participate and much to contribute.  It is time for the Parties and the Secretariat to take heed, and then take action.

The US proposal on financial architecture has received considerable interest over the last few days, and with good reason. It is an interesting mix of new and old, good and bad, promising and perverse.

ECO can see movement in two respects.

First, after consistently resisting calls for a new institution, the US has now endorsed the creation of a new fund.

Second, as Article 11 requires, the US has agreed that the fund should be under the guidance of and accountable to the COP; that the COP should determine its policies and priorities; and that it should have balanced and equitable representation of all Parties.

The more cynical among ECO readers may wonder whether restating the provisions of the Convention really counts as progress. But we will take movement wherever we can find it. After all, in the quest for a useful negotiating text, we could do a lot worse than the Convention itself.

It now appears that we have a broader basis for agreement on parts of some critical issues of financial architecture and
governance (we are assuming, of course, that the silence of some other umbrella Parties and the EU can be taken as assent). And it would appear that the US has heard the concerns of developing countries regarding simpler administrative procedures and, perhaps, on direct access to financing.

The proposal may also provide a basis for a deal on another contentious issue – the use of existing institutions. Many Parties have expressed their bitter experience and deep frustration with the procedures and governance of multilateral development banks. And while ECO is not a Party, we cannot see giving a policy-making role to an institution like the World Bank. Its own senior sustainable development economist recently called the Bank’s continued support for coal a moral imperative. Another contentious issue is a reaffirmation and expansion of the role of the GEF, which may provide additional fodder for developing countries to resist this proposal.

But we understand that the US may wish to use existing institutions only for fiduciary oversight and auditing functions, leaving the substantive work to the new mechanism and its technical panels. If this is indeed the US position, they should say so clearly. Nobody wants to see this money squandered, so the need for strong fiduciary oversight should attract broad support.

Unfortunately, the US proposal brings us no closer to agreement on a number of other key issues. All countries except LDCs will be expected to contribute, and there are no guarantees that the funds that are made available will be new and additional to existing ODA.  And assessed contributions are off the table. Instead, the fund is to be replenished on a voluntary basis. Periodic pledge parties, rather than a common understanding of historic responsibility and capacity, will determine contributions. This ECO is told will maximise contributions and provide predictability.

Other issues remain to be resolved. Key among these are the specific makeup of the board, how it will be appointed, and whether there will be separate thematic windows.  But for the US, these issues can be negotiated. The key point is that it provides sufficient fiduciary assurances that donors will put money into it.

Of course, fiduciary oversight is only an issue if there is actually money to safeguard. Now let us see some movement on scale. ECO has previously stated that US$150 billion of public financing is required to deal with climate change in developing countries.

As Parties took stock of the snail paced progress achieved during the first week at the Conference Centre, residents of Metro Manila were taking stock of lost lives, dwellings and personal belongings that came about due to tropical storm Ondoy.  An unprecedented flood, drenching the region with a month's worth of rain in 6 hours, seems clearly linked to climate change.

Following the dual plenaries on Friday afternoon, stretching into the evening, ECO wondered how many people would have to die and how much property would be destroyed before governments around the world take stock of their serious lack of ambition and wake up to the urgency of the moment.

As the representative from Mauritius pointed out, “This is not the wake up call, this is the final call.”

The KP and LCA plenaries seemed a flat ending to a fitfully productive week.  Was it the late hour, the profusion of repetitious rhetoric, or the inability of delegates to find new and transformational elements in the long discussions?

To be fair, negotiations have moved forward at a slow but measureable pace on adaptation, technology transfer and capacity building. But the keystone, emission reduction targets by developed countries, was sadly still cast in cotton. This is not at all good news.  Perhaps, as New Zealand said, enhancing the scale of actual aggregate and country by country proposals for emissions reductions is out of the hands of this process and must be taken up at the political level.

So that leaves the other essential task to be completed by next Friday in Bangkok: very substantial progress toward clean, non repetitive, negotiating text.  Parties should be in a position to step on the accelerator starting immediately.  This was the clear message from vulnerable country parties in the plenary.

The week-long discussions in the AWG-KP did not deliver the paradigm shift that would help keep global warming well below 2oC. Developing country parties raised the issue repeatedly in their interventions, pointing out among other things that for them this is a question of survival.

But a different and rather unfortunate emerging theme is the clear realization that the Kyoto Protocol is at risk of unraveling; indeed, as Mauritius said, a feeling that a deliberate attempt was being made to do so.  This is hardly the kind of  news the world is looking for while watching the evidence of our vulernability to natural disasters (whether or not climate related) in Metro Manila, Sydney, Samoa and Sumatra.

The lack of sufficient aggregate targets put on the table by developed countries, and only reluctant discussion on on finance and legal architecture, are holding other key parts of the discussions hostage. The lack of clarity on the future form and regulatory aspects of market and non- market based mechanisms is muddying the waters further.

The deliberate insertion of response measures into the adaptation text by some developing country parties is unhelpful and is verging on blocking progress in the contact group.  And the inability of both developed and developing countries to get their act to together on bunkers (especially on the issue of International Air Passenger Levy for Adaptation) is a looming failure in an increasingly climate constrained world.

Over the week in various contact groups it seemed that parties were resorting to their favorite activity – reiterating long memorized positions across the spectrum of issues so they can play the blame game later.  But blame aside, it is readily evident that the slow pace of negotiations only plays into the hands of those parties who don’t want a real deal at Copenhagen.

Despite the predictable recycling of rhetoric this past week, ECO doesn't mind repeating itself on this key reality: global emissions must peak within the next 5-year commitment period, and be reduced thereafter on the order of at least 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, in order to ensure the survival of the poorest and most vulnerable countries and communities.   These reductions must be pursued in the spirit of equity and justice, especially when it comes to the needs of the poor and vulnerable in developing countries.

Delegates should note that what was true in New York last week on the immensity of the climate challenge remains true here this week and next. Bangkok cannot be another lost opportunity for the international community to deliver on its obligations to the the environment, future generations and particularly the most vulnerable communities and countries.  The disaster zones we saw on our TV screens and laptops this week were a mere hint of the losses to come if dangerous climate change is not averted.

So ECO returns to the theme that closed our first review of the week.

Delegates here in Bangkok must realize that the best rhetoric in the world won’t by itself build a single wind turbine, save a single acre of rainforest, or help a single village respond to the impacts of climate change.  Actions speak louder than words.

[Article published in Climate Action Network's Eco Newspaper, Oct. 3, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand UNFCCC negotiations - full PDF version here]