Dark cloud over climate talks

Martin Khor

The dialogue ended badly as trust evaporated after rich countries abandoned the Kyoto Protocol, with developing nations crying “foul” and warning about jeopardising the Copenhagen meeting.

In an astonishing and unfortunate turn of events, the Bangkok climate talks ended on 9 October by taking steps backwards from progress towards this December’s Copenhagen conference.

By now, the developed countries should have come up with numbers on how much they will commit to cut their Greenhouse Gas emissions after 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) ends, so that a second period can begin in 2013. But, in Bangkok, the developed countries signalled they are quite unwilling to do a second period under the KP and, worse, that they are likely to abandon the protocol altogether.

This has sent shock waves around the world, and raised the prospect of utter failure in Copenhagen.

Success in jeopardy

Not only is Copenhagen’s success in jeopardy, but the international climate regime itself, a turn of events that was hardly imagined before Bangkok.

The Group of 77 and China has reacted furiously to the apparent ditching of the protocol. “We call on the developed countries that are members of the Kyoto Protocol to stand firmly in the KP and to engage seriously in negotiations for a second commitment period,” it said in a statement on Oct 9.

“We will also consider the Copenhagen meeting to be a disastrous failure if there is no outcome for the commitments of developed countries for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.”

Europe, Japan and America must quickly find a solution that combines their deep emissions cut with fairness towards developing countries, to avert a disaster in Copenhagen, said Ambassador Lumumba D’Aping of Sudan, who chairs the G77.

A special case

The KP had firmly bound the developed countries internationally to commitments to cut their emissions. It was agreed their emissions would be cut by 5% collectively by 2012 (compared with 1990) in the first period.

The new cut after 2012 was expected to bring the emissions level down by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020 (compared with 1990). And the talks on this have gone on for three years.One problem is that the US pulled out of the KP some years ago.

The Bali climate meeting in December 2007 envisaged that if the US did not return to the KP, it could be dealt with as a special case by binding its commitment inside the Climate Convention, of which it is a member. Instead of working out this plan, it appears that the other developed countries now want to jump ship from the Kyoto Protocol to join the US in a new agreement.

Unfortunately, this new agreement (with the US seen as the main architect) looks inferior to Kyoto. Countries would inscribe their national climate plans in an appendix to the agreement.

‘Pledge and review’

They would later report on progress made, which would then be reviewed by other countries.

This is a kind of “pledge and review” approach, and much more lenient than the KP model with an internationally-set overall target for developed countries, with specific and binding targets for each country, and a compliance system.

Commitments

The developing countries see this as a lowering of the nature of the developed nations’ commitments, from internationally binding to nationally determined.

“This is an attempt for a great escape,” remarked China’s Ambassador Yu Qingtai caustically at the end of the Kyoto Protocol meeting.

The G77’s, and China’s, demand is for the developed countries which are KP members to commit to their cuts inside the KP, while the US makes its commitment for a comparable emission cut in a special decision inside the Convention. This was after all envisaged in Bali.

- Third World Network Features

(The writer is the Executive Director of the South Center in Switzerland).