In Bali last year, the ICC and WBCSD, as representatives of global business at the climate talks, named their one-day side event “Tri Hita Karana”, a proverb taken from a Balinese philosophy which emphasizes that happiness can only be attained if the Creator, people and nature live in harmony with each other. This year, the organizers of the Poznan Business Day resisted the temptation to find an appropriate Polish proverb to characterize the spirit of … Read More…

Last week, from the midst of COP-14 in Poland, I reported that the major developed countries were engaged in something of a waiting game on emissions targets, each waiting to see what others would do before announcing their own.  

As you may remember, on Wednesday of last week Canada, Australia and Japan pulled the text on 2020 emissions targets from one of the conference texts.  The absence of the targets (25-40%) left states waiting to … Read More…

Talks at Poznan about a re-engineering of the Clean Development Mechanism, Kyoto Protocol’s righteous son, have been Bonn-ed. This does not come as a surprise for some observers, but disappointment is understandable. As a flagship of the Kyoto Protocol’s market-based approach to climate change, one could have hoped that delegates fixed at least the most visible holes perforating its surface.

What holes?

UNFCCC recently removed … Read More…

Realtime updates on the final COP/CMP session in Poznan, Poland.  The updates are being provided by Climatico analysts in the COP-14. Click here to refresh the page.  [Note: all times are GMT+1]

02.51: COP-14 is now over!  Conclusions and final decisions will be posted on the Poznan COP-14 page over the next 12 hours.

02.41: China is asking questions about when the elections of members to the CMP took place this evening.

Read More…

Brazilian Minister for the Environment Carlos Minc launched the country’s national strategy to address climate change, signed by President Lola on 1st December 2008. Whilst the developing country previously held a defensive position, the launch of this strategy represents a shift to a more leadership position, with which they hope to influence the G77 and developed countries to also lead. Brazil echo the sentiments in Simon’s previous blog, that COP 14 has become a waiting … Read More…

A meeting of environment ministers today in Poznan is not expected to reach an agreement on a long-term target for global emissions reductions. Despite a growing range of proposed targets - the EU’s 20 by 2020, the G8’s 50 by 2050 (now also endorsed by Mexico), and more recently, Brazil’s deforestation commitment - a consensus across developed and developing countries seemed unlikely. The ministerial meeting is the first of its kind since Bali, and they … Read More…

The Prime Minister of Tuvalu (source: apwf.org)

At the beginning of the negotiations at Poznan, it was suggested that the Adaptation Fund (AF) was one of the few areas on which significant progress would be made (see my previous post). In the end, negotiations even on this issue went right to the wire, after there was failure to reach an agreement by the theoretical deadline on Wednesday.

A key sticking point was the legal capacity of … Read More…

Following El’s blog a few minutes ago, I wanted to give some details and thoughts that are coming in from those around the EU delegation here in Poznan.

Despite predicted NGO criticisms of not going far enough, this package was not easy to achieve, as evidenced by concessions that have been made to industrial communities as well as the central European states that joined the Union in 2004 and 2007.  These concessions relax the proposed changes to … Read More…

Source: Benkamorvan @ Flikr

Nobel Prize winning Al Gore addressed a jam-packed plenary today, to reinforce the urgency of the global climate change crisis we face.

“The road to Copenhagen is clear…”

Gore stressed that the ‘optimism and hope’  we see today are great enough to help us to reach an agreement in Copenhagen, in spite of the obstacles and difficulties along the way.  Sending the audience into a frenzy of cheers, this statement raised the decibels in … Read More…

The UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Milliband, addressed  the UN Conference of Parties (COP) here in Poznan today, delivering the UK’s ministerial statement on climate change.

Ed Milliband, UK Sectretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, speaking in Poznan today

Echoing sentiments of Gordon Brown and other EU member states over the last week in Brussels, he stressed that the UK must overcome the challenge posed by the global finiancial … Read More…