This year the annual United Nations climate change talks will be held in Durban, South Africa, from 28 November to 9 December. Well before they start, there is skepticism about how much they can actually accomplish.
After the last round of the Conference of the Parties (COP) in Cancun in December 2010, Greenpeace said “Cancun has delivered the momentum – but we haven’t arrived there yet. In Durban we need a global deal that helps countries build a green economy and that holds polluters accountable”.
However, after meetings and discussions around the globe in 2011, the likelihood of a deal seems quite low.
Key issues
Key issues for COP17 in Durban include what to do after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, how to handle emission pledges outside the Protocol and how developed countries will fund their financial commitments to assist developing countries with reducing emissions.
Earlier this year, UN climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard told The Guardian that “the good news is that there is a general recognition of the necessity of a legally binding agreement. The bad news is that no legally binding agreement deal will be done in Durban".
While Durban COP17 chair and South Africa Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said that success at Durban would be “finding a resolution to the issue of the 2nd Commitment Period under the Kyoto Protocol and agreeing on the legal nature of a future climate change system” - events so far have only served to confirm Hedegaard’s views.
The Kyoto Protocol
One key challenge is the differing views on what to do about the Kyoto Protocol.
After discussions by environment ministers in Panama in October, the International Institute for Sustainable Development reported that “agreement on a second commitment period appears to be more elusive than ever”.
It said Japan, Canada and Russia “will not be on board for a second commitment period,” the European Commission (EU) will agree to a second commitment period only if “delegates in Durban agree to a mandate for a path forward for a legally-binding instrument” and the United States does not believe “the conditions were ripe for such a mandate”.
With such different views, gaining consensus seems unlikely.
Consensus on financial commitments seems equally difficult. The Guardian correspondent Fiona Harvey wrote that this year's talks are affected by disagreements over finance flows from developed nations to developing ones "to help the latter cut emissions and cope with the effects of global warming”.
While developed countries have promised tens of billions to help developing countries, she wrote, “the US faces domestic difficulties in committing finance while the economy stalls, and the eurozone crisis has pushed the issue well down the EU agenda”.
Executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, concurred, saying “this is not the best time to be talking about finance, because all developed countries are in a financial crisis”.
Here in Singapore, Minister for Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan also agreed that the Durban summit may not have any postive conclusions, and he added, “the biggest emitters in the world are too busy with their own problems, too worried about dealing with competition from each other in order to arrive at a collective position and make common sacrifices in order for us to act properly".
What's next
lf the conference in Durban doesn’t result in an agreement, then a key question is what happens next.
In August, UN Kyoto Protocol negotiations chair, Adrian Macey, told Reuters that “whatever happens, I don't see all 191 parties under the U.N. abandoning efforts to develop a comprehensive effort in the longer term for climate change action”.
While there could be a gap after the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012, Macey said "what we might be looking at in Durban is a transition to a more viable long-term architecture".
An alternative is that countries may focus more on domestic legislation than international agreements.
Third World Network legal expert Lim Li Lin wrote on allAfrica.com that “the discussion has shifted. Countries like Russia and Japan are using the US as an excuse and have said, 'We don't want to commit to the Kyoto Protocol, so maybe now we will just have a coalition of the willing, those who want to do it can get together and we will all do domestic things and put it in our domestic law’”.
The carbon tax proposals in Australia and California are examples of that domestic legislation.
Greenpeace also said that the EU has outlined a roadmap for achieving “at least 80 percent domestic greenhouse gas emission cuts in the European Union by 2050” and “China has adopted a Five-Year Plan which includes actions for reducing its emissions”.
While many experts do not expect discussions in Durban to accomplish much, action on climate change is still needed. Whether that action is unexpected success in Durban, a new architecture, domestic legislation or something else, discussions looks likely simply to continue on an urgent issue that affects all of us.
Richard Hartung | 17 November 2011
