(Online Course) Essay Writing Skills Improvement Programme: Essays on Science - Durban Climate Meet

Durban Climate Meet : Bye Bye Kyoto

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, was held from 28 November- 11 December 2011. The conference involved a series of events, including the seventeenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the seventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 7). In support of these two main bodies, four other bodies convened: the resumed 14th session of the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWGLCA); the resumed 16th session of the Ad hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP); and the 35th sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA). The Conference drew over 12,480 participants, including over 5400 government officials, 5800 representatives of UN bodies and agencies, intergovernmental organizations and civil society organizations, and more than 1200 members of the media. The meetings resulted in the adoption of 19 COP decisions and 17 CMP decisions and the approval of a number of conclusions by the subsidiary bodies. These outcomes cover a wide range of topics, notably the establishment of a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, a decision on long-term cooperative action under the Convention, the launch of a new process towards an agreed outcome with legal force applicable to all parties to the Convention, and the operationalization of the Green Climate Fund.

The negotiations were driven by a series of interdependent linkages some constructed to drive the negotiations forward, some integral to the field of climate change politics, and some based decisively on an understanding that 21st century global challenges need global solutions. This brief analysis examines some of the defining interdependencies that help tell the story of the Durban Climate Change Conference and the launch of a new phase  of climate change negotiations. At the outset, expectations were modest with many countries feeling that “operationalizing” the Cancun agreements was all that could be achieved. Others wanted a balanced and interdependent package within a year that resolved the Kyoto Protocol question, moved to a new legallybinding treaty and operationalized the Green Climate Fund. In Durban early informal consultations helped to clarify the technicalities of the second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, especially the two-stage approach that defers the definition of quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives (QELROs) and their  adoption as amendments to Annex B to the eighth session of the Kyoto Protocol Meeting of the Parties, proved very useful in keeping prospective participants on board.This core demand drew legitimacy from Bali and
helped frame the Durban negotiations. Indeed it is arguable that the EU drafted the script for the central plot in Durban by setting out their stall early in the process and offering to do the heavy lifting to save the Kyoto Protocol within the context of a roadmap that put up a challenge to other parties developed and developing.

The package agreed comprises four main elements: a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, the design of a Green Climate Fund and a mandate to get all countries in 2015 to sign a deal that would force them to cut emissions no later than 2020, as well as a workplan for 2012. Progress on each element of the Durban Platform unlocked other elements. For example early in the second week, delegates made headway on the Green Climate Fund (GCF) as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention; a fund expected to mobilize US$100 billion a year by 2020. Reports of early progress on the GCF a priority deliverable for the South African hosts and the region, proved to be a major contributor in raising the stakes. A fragile sense of possibility emerged as Ministers arrived, although there were increasing concerns about the diplomatic management of the process by the South African Presidency.

India and China: Role redefined

The intensity of the negotiations was highlighted by an impassioned speech by India's Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan that capped the finale of the UN climate summit which concluded with a Durban Package, after she warned that India "will never be intimidated by any threat or pressure". "Natarajan's speech ensured that India's main concern – the inclusion of the concept of equity in the fight against climate change became part of the package,". The COP17 plenary session came to a halt following row between Natarajan and European Union (EU) Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard after objection over agreements reached behind closed doors. India had wanted a "legal outcome" as the third option, but Hedegaard said this would put countries' sincerity in doubt. That set off Natarajan, who roared: "We have shown more flexibility than virtually any other country. But equity is the centrepiece, it cannot be shifted. This is not about India. Xie Zhenhua, the vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, who headed the Chinese delegation, pointed out that the developing countries like India and China were "already doing much more than developed countries" against global warming. "U.S. and Chinese chief negotiators joined the huddle too. More frenzied applause indicated an agreement had finally been reached. When the session reconvened, Natarajan announced that India had agreed to a change of wording in the third option 'in a spirit of flexibility and accommodation'. Hedegaard thanked  India." Commenting, the Chinese delegation said the conference had produced "progressive and balanced outcome." Xie Zhenhua, head of the Chinese delegation, told Xinhua that the outcome is fully in accordance with the mandate of the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the Bali Roadmap.

The outcome, he added, is also in line with the two-track negotiation process and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. "The conference made decisions on the arrangement of the second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, which is the most concerned issue of developing countries," Xie noted. "Also, there is an important progress on the finance issue, the establishment of the Green Climate Fund," he added.  However, Xie said, the Durban conference did not accomplish the completion of negotiations under the Bali Roadmap. "The implementation of the Cancun Agreements and the Durban Outcome will not be achieved in a short run," Xie said. "A heavy load of work ahead on the post-2020 arrangement needs to be done in order to enhance the implementation of the Convention." Xie also cautioned that some developed countries are reluctant to reduce emissions and support developing countries with financial and technical aid. "The lack of political will is a main element that hinders cooperation on addressing climate change in the international community," he said. "We expect political sincerity from developed countries next year in Qatar." Xie stressed that China will make further contributions to the global cause of tackling climate change by taking stronger domestic actions and continuing to play an active role in relevant international talks. Critically, in a deeply complex mix of issues, with essential and constructed linkages across the package there was an onus on the Presidency to draw on all available talent and experience to line up the interdependent chain of deliverables with clarity and dexterity. Even as late as Thursday evening, anxiety was rising and, in the wee hours of Friday morning, a relatively closed highlevel Indaba of 26 parties representing the major negotiating groups began to hammer out the final terms of a deal. This was also helped by a parallel set of ministerial-led facilitations and bilateral meetings to seek common ground. It was deemed essential that the EU assure China and India that they would simply be expected to turn their Cancun pledges into new legal arrangements.

As one observer noted, the 2020 timeframe for any future instrument under the Convention was a source of some reassurance to BASIC countries that their Cancun pledges and their timeframes would be acceptable. The Presidency and the EU were able to lock in the relatively constructive role of countries such as Brazil. While China seemed content to allow India to do BASIC’s heavy lifting and profile the “equity” issue, an issue alongside common but differentiated responsibilities that has helped define the contest over contemporary rights to development and the debate over mitigation commitments. Equity will come to the fore in the negotiation of a new instrument as the distribution and pace of mitigation responsibilities increasingly mirrors a debate on access to ecological space, driven by an ethical demand from the least developed and most vulnerable that the world must overcome a form of “atmospheric apartheid” wherein the glittering prizes of development have— to date—been heavily concentrated in the hands of the few. It’s a demand that also finds an echo in popular protests in response to the crisis-prone global financial system. An intriguing decision recognizing loss and damage also points to the future prominence of the equity debate. Although there was enough political ground to secure a deal, it was not until the final moments on the floor of the plenary that the ultimate deal fell into place. Described as a “defining moment,” a last-minute “huddle” on the plenary floor—perhaps the most authentic of all the Indabas—in the early hours of Sunday morning enabled the EU to reach a compromise with India on an option to describe the new UNFCCC instrument in acceptable legal terms. At the eleventh hour, they agreed to launch a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an “agreed outcome with legal force” under the Convention applicable to all Parties. It is an issue that could come back to haunt the Europeans who might well discover with the passage of time just how big a compromise they made to India, if other countries choose to construct an “escape hatch” around the legal terminology that falls short of a new protocol.

Bye Bye Kyoto

It would be easy to look at the greenhouse gas-constraining Kyoto Protocol as a failure, particularly after all the desultory wrangling that oversaw its demise in all but name in Durban on the weekend. But that might be to see Kyoto through too much of a Canadian orchestrated prism. In 1997, the industrialized world — save for Bill Clinton's America — promised to roll back climate-changing, GHG emissions to pre-1990 levels by 2012, and these countries have pretty much met that goal. Indeed, according to detailed study in September by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, the 37 main Kyoto nations plus the U.S. (which has still never ratified the treaty) have emitted 7.5 per cent less CO2 into the atmosphere in 2010 than in 1990. What's more, as a group, they are poised to meet the collective Kyoto target of 5.2 per cent less than 1990 by 2012, when the agreement was to kick over to a more stringent second stage, which is what the Durban conference was supposed to be about. Today that second stage is something of a mirage. Kyoto now looks like it will live on essentially as a reporting mechanism to keep the statistics flowing and the 195 or so countries under the UN umbrella still talking. The goal now is to try to come up with some sort of replacement "framework" that may or may not bind all GHGemitting countries to the same degree by somewhere around 2020. A handful of Kyoto signatories — Japan, Russia and, notably, Canada — stated pretty explicitly at Durban that they won't be bound by any second-stage Kyoto commitments. (Not that the pre-2012 version carried any real penalties for non-compliance). And they are already setting their
markers down for whatever will come next. Essentially what Durban did was change the discussion from talking about specific commitments to talking about timetables and, probably, categories of polluters. As climate change negotiators in Durban marked the 14th birthday of the Kyoto Protocol, the air in the conference rooms was thick with a sense of both the troubled history of climate politics and a historic opportunity for intergenerational change and redefined responsibilities. Veteran negotiators who invoked personal memories of their formative days negotiating the original Convention and/or Protocol knew that their audience reached far outside the room to a virtual global society wanting meaningful and immediate action.

Combined with the South African Presidency’s commitment to the Indaba format— designed to encourage a true participatory and open process of deliberation, the transparency of Durban had a number of unexpected consequences. Not least was the effect of depriving some ALBA negotiators of an opportunity to repeat—with credibility—complaints about exclusion. In contrast, Ministers, negotiators and youth delegates found themselves sometimes competing for the same seat in the Indaba room. South Africa certainly understood the virtual social media huddle could render swift judgments to the champions of ambition and ridicule for those who did not measure up to the ambitions of the global environmental community. At one point the President convened a meeting at a critical endpoint in the negotiations with, apparently, little other purpose than to ensure that global civil society’s expectations were raised and primed to maintain pressure on Ministers and their negotiators. Dozens of traditional and new media practitioners were on hand to produce an iconic image of the Greenpeace activist as he co-opted the trappings of the UN for a well-executed piece of agitprop and was led away by UN guards to be expelled from the ICC. This was a supreme example of the way in which climate politics have been transformed by the professional politics of media spectacle—on this occasion drawing on a deep tradition of South African activism twinned now with a new technological capacity that brings climate politics to every screen.

A New ERA IN CLIMATE NEGOTIATIONS

While 21st century global challenges certainly need global solutions, it is important not to forget that climate change has very local impacts. One such story loomed over the Conference. UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon recalled a tragic encounter with a child in Kiribati who could not sleep soundly for fear that he would be stolen away in the night by a rising ocean. This story captures the urgency of the dilemma confronting negotiators—the call to respond to the most vulnerable states and their peoples facing the impacts of climate change. The story also speaks of an impatient generation of young people who care passionately about the issue because they will “live their lives in the future.” This is a future of networked interdependence that stands in stark contrast with the geopolitics of dependency that marked most of the 20th century and the era that gave rise  to the Berlin Mandate and Kyoto Protocol. These are the voices calling across generations for urgency and increased ambition on targets to ensure that temperatures will not rise more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius. And these are the voices that recognize that the only bridge that will span the current gap in ambition is a global ethic of inclusion and fairness built on foundations of transparency and accountability. These are the voices bearing witness in the corridors, engaging with delegations, disseminating every twist and turn in the negotiations in the unforgiving virtual public commons of the internet where negotiators are held to account in real time. These are the voices that have judged the Durban Platform harshly. Negotiators, however, who embody the incremental expectations of the institutions they serve, judge themselves with more modest benchmarks. From their point of view, after the trauma of Copenhagen and the struggle to rescue the multilateral climate regime in Cancun, negotiators in Durban turned a corner and not only resuscitated the Kyoto Protocol but, in doing so, leaped to a decision that will see negotiations on a more inclusive 21st century climate regime with something approaching symmetrical reporting systems for country efforts on mitigation. The variable but symmetrical architecture of any new instrument will be important for countries such as the United States in convincing skeptical domestic publics that a truly universal effort is now in prospect.

To paraphrase one US negotiator commenting at the conclusion of negotiations, the sales job just went from impossible to very hard. There was a strong sense that elements of the Cancun-Durban packages, guided by a need to fulfill long overdue commitments from Bali, restored sufficient momentum for new negotiations that will need to be shaped by moving beyond the traditional lines dividing the developed and developing world. This transcendence was first signaled in Bali but only came into full view after Copenhagen. A fluid new set of coalitions is now taking shape, defined by shifting interests. However, those who look first to science to measure success were the least enthusiastic about the Durban Platform, for they know that—once again—the endemic incrementalism that has haunted climate negotiations since 1992 continues to force compromise on sufficient
commitments on mitigation. The prospects for something different this time remain to be seen. After the frustrations at the Copenhagen conference and the struggle to rescue the multilateral climate regime in Cancun, negotiators in Durban turned a corner and not only resuscitated the Kyoto Protocol but, in doing so, adopted a decision that will lead to negotiations on a more inclusive 21st century climate regime. There was a strong sense that elements of the Durban package, guided by a need to fulfill long overdue commitments that go back to the Bali Roadmap, restored sufficient momentum for a new negotiation process, one that will continue to witness a series of differentiated interests across and within the traditional lines of division between developed and developing countries. Many welcomed the adoption decisions including on the Green Climate Fund, and the Durban Platform, as well as the process to launch an agreement with legal force, while others continued to insist on the urgent need to significantly scale up the level of ambition to address the gap between existing mitigation pledges and the needed emission reductions recommended by science.

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