COP 15 Daily Summary

Though it was the weekend, negotiations and side events have not stopped. On Saturday negotiations continued more or less as usual and, on Sunday, 48 environment ministers met and went over a draft deal. During the Saturday negotiations the chair of the Convention negotiations track said his aim was to have an agreed text ready by Tuesday, which would be in the form of decisions covering the five core issues of the Bali Action Plan (shared vision; emission cuts, adaption, technology & financing). The Chair also noted that the issues of mitigation, shared vision, and the legal form of the agreement were the areas requiring most work.

Sunday was also ‘Forest Day 3′ (see the REDD+ section).

TOP NEWS ITEM

Though not part of the negotiations, by far the biggest event of the weekend was an estimated 100,000 strong rally and march from Parliament square to the Bella Centre (though rumours of violent demonstrators are what mainly made the headlines in mainstream media, those were negligible in number compared to the peaceful marchers from all over the world). When arriving at the centre, the march turned into a big candlelit vigil, while a smaller one – containing a few dozen people – was held within the Bella Centre’s compound. Standing outside Greenpeace’s Climate Rescue Station, the small crowd heard from Mary Robinson, Bill McKibben and Rev. Desmond Tutu (see video bellow).

ADAPTATION

Over the last two days, negotiators focused heavily on the two draft agreements by the AWG-LCA and AWG-KP. There are several hot topics that are raising disagreement among the countries including the subject of adaptation.

The draft agreement by the AWG-LCA recognizes the long-term commitment of the developed countries to “provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology and capacity-building to support the implementation of adaptation actions in developing countries.” However, it mentions no amount. This has several countries and NGOs questioning on the level of commitment to combat climate change.

Short-term financing has been a subject of contention among the countries. While there seems to be an agreement on the commitment to a short-term climate change fund that would provide financial resources to the least developed countries for adaptation, there is increasing tension between the developed countries and China.

The US chief negotiator Todd Stern strongly opposed that the major developing countries, especially China, receive financial assistance from the short-term fund. This position has been supported by both EU and UK. China is robustly criticizing this position, with its Vice-Foreign Minister He, calling it “lack of commonsense”. Additionally, the major issue pointed out by all the developing countries and several NGOs, is that the proposed amounts for short-term financing are too low. The African group commented, if the developed countries found USD 1.4 trillion to combat the financial crisis, why are they only offering USD 10 billion to save the world.

REDD+

Sunday saw some setbacks to the negotiations over REDD as language calling for reducing deforestation 50 percent by 2020 was struck from the discussed text. Another backward step is the fact that the text doesn’t provide any details on finance – neither how much money rich nations pay developing ones, nor how it will be allocated between the more than 40 developing nations from different regions of the world.

‘Forest Day 3′ – An annual ‘Forest Day’ has taken place since 2007. This year it was hosted by the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) and the Danish government. The UN-REDD Program contributed five events to the day. Additionally, together with the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) it presented the learning event: “Scope of the Global Climate Agreement: Emerging Lessons from Current REDD Activities.” This program highlighted results in the nine pilot UN-REDD countries to date (Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Zambia; Asia and the Pacific: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Viet Nam; Latin America and the Caribbean: Bolivia, Panama and Paraguay). The REDD pilot programs are generally seen as a successful collaborative initiative between three UN agencies: FAO, UNDP, UNEP.

Other side events on “Forest Day 3″ included discussions on: forest biodiversity and climate change, rural livelihoods, REDD+ financing, and measuring and monitoring processes.

Overall the UN-REDD program to date was discussed as empowering countries to actively manage their forests. There is recognition that country solutions must reflect specific drivers of deforestation in that area of the world. Yet, there was discussion of mainstreaming methods for measuring and monitoring GHG emissions.

The pilot programs under discussion place priority on developing sustainable national multi-sectoral approaches with broad stakeholder engagement. There is still no definitive plan towards how REDD+ will be financed, though private financing is becoming more realistic as time goes on and developed countries continue to be hesitate about high levels of finance.

For more on Forest Day 3, click here.

JI/CDM

Stakeholders continue to advocate for CDM reforms. Irma Lubrecht of the Dutch consultancy form IR-ON, who advises about the feasibility of CDM projects said on Saturday that “the way it is going now, CDM cannot continue…it is too small, it costs too much money and involves too many people…and the bureaucratic mechanism behind it produces too many delays”. Lubrecht favours national emissions targets and emissions trading schemes which would become stricter each year.

Also on Saturday, SNV (Netherlands Development Organization) and Practical Action, an NGO that aims to fight poverty through technology, held a side event called “Ensuring Clean Energy for Poor Households with CDM Voluntary Markets and a Post-2012 Framework”. The organizations stressed that the Mechanism has been unsuccessful in reducing LDC households’ dependence on traditional biomass energy sources.

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Over the weekend Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, representing the African Union, said that though much progress has been made on emission targets, funding still remains a worry. Before arriving in Copenhagen to join the over 110 heads of state expected towards the end of the second week, Zenawi told reporters that if Africa’s demands for compensation are not met in the final agreement, they will try to scuttle it, saying that he has China’s assurance that it will support such a move.

Other Daily Updates

• Day 1: 7 Dec 2009
• Day 2: 8 Dec 2009
• Day 3: 9 Dec 2009
• Day 4: 10 Dec 2009
• Day 5: 11 Dec 2009
• Day 8: 14 Dec 2009
• Day 9: 15 Dec 2009
• Day 10: 16 Dec 2009
• Day 11: 17 Dec 2009

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