Written by Kwes Obeng
Monday, 04 April 2011 17:02
Developed countries led by the United States have kicked against an international regime of top-down rules for setting emission reduction targets and penalties for non-compliance at the post-Cancun climate change negotiations currently underway in Bangkok, Thailand. At the start of a two-day pre-sessional workshop on the emission reduction targets by developed country parties (Annex 1 countries) the United States’ negotiator, Jonathan Pershing said the US made a pledge of 17 emission reductions by 2020 based on 2005 levels and would not be party to any international regime with possible consequences for not meeting set targets.
Rather than an internationally agreed regime with potential for sanctions for failing to meet set targets, Pershing suggested that Parties to the negotiations should take independent domestic emissions targets and make them legally binding regimes domestically. This Pershing claimed would represent an important step forward. The United States also rejected the idea of comparability, with Pershing insisting that Parties to the negotiations could never adopt a single metric for comparability. The lack of ambition on the part of developed countries especially the US, the European Union and Australia threatens current negotiations and possibly the UNFCCC climate change summit set to take place later this year in Durban, South Africa
Developed countries in particular seem to play around the rules to make their targets seem large. The various presentations also unveiled the huge gap between what is the discredited Cancun Agreement and what ought to be done to curb climate change. But the G-77 and China and Bolivia’s presentations differed sharply from earlier presentations made by the US, European Union, Australia, France, Netherlands, Norway and Britain.
Bolivia’s presentation explored current pledges, offsets and their consistency with 2ºC using the so-called Cancun and Copenhagen agreements. The conclusions are disturbing. For instance, Bolivia concludes that the gap in the abatement is 7.4 to 5.3 Gt. of CO2e (53 per cent to 38 per cent) and this can lead us to a 4°C–5°C increase in the global temperature. A 5°C rise in the global temperature will predispose Africa to warm 1.5 times the global mean temperatures.
Equally alarming, is that developing countries are going to do more emission reduction than developed countries, (54 per cent against 46 per cent in LEP and 57 per cent against vs. 45 per cent in HEP. With offsets, developing countries will put in much more effort than developed countries (65 per cent as against 35 per cent to tame climate change. Japan, Iceland, Switzerland, New Zealand, Germany, Russia, India, Poland and Sweden were the other countries that presented on the first day of the pre-sessional workshop.
The second day of the pre-sessional workshops to understand the diversity of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) submitted, underlying assumptions and any support needed for implementation of these actions. The presentations will also note the different national circumstances and respective capabilities of developing country Parties. Countries planned to make presentations on April 4 are Mexico, China, Ghana, India, Republic of Korea, Peru, AOSIS and Singapore. The rest are South Africa, Australia, Marshall Islands and Bangladesh.
Developed countries’ presentations focused on the assumptions and conditions related to the attainment of quantified economy-wide emission reduction targets by developed country Parties. Developing countries’ presentations however are focused. Developing countries which presented on the first day of the two-day pre-sessional workshops however focused their presentations on assumptions and conditions related to the attainment of quantified economy-wide emission reduction targets by developed country Parties, as requested by decision
Day two of the pre-sessional presentations will focus on nationally appropriate mitigation actions submitted by developing country Parties, underlying assumptions and any support needed for implementation of these actions
The workshops form part of the 14th session of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Co-operative Action (AWGLCA). The workshops were preceded by preparatory regional group meetings from 30 March to April 2nd. The 16th session of the AWG-KP (AWG-KP 16) and the 14th session of the AWG-LCA (AWG-LCA 14) are taking place from April 3rd – 8th in at the United Nations Conference Centre ([ http://www.unescap.org/uncc/ ]UNCC) of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, Thailand.
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