[Debate] (Fwd) IBON v COP17

[Patrick Bond]

(This comes from a radical institute in Manila.)

*The Durban Package: escape hatches, empty shells, and a death notice to 
equity*

*IBON assessment of the Durban climate change summit*

The next ten years could decide whether the world's fight against 
climate change is lost or won. The Durban Package -- the set of 
decisions agreed to in the summit -- amounts to more heavy lifting for 
the South, less obligations for the North, and little help for the poor. 
Worse still, it means that the present decade will be a decade of zero 
progress in curbing global emissions, and one where equity as the basis 
of the global climate effort will have been abandoned.

*Escape hatch: the Kyoto's second commitment period. *Durban agreed that 
the Kyoto Protocol -- the only treaty regulating the industrialized 
world's emissions -- will get a second commitment period beginning 2013 
through to 2017 or 2020. Annex I countries are expected to convert their 
emissions pledges into binding targets for adoption in CMP-8 in Qatar. 
Kyoto avoided death in Durban. But devoid of any integrity and 
substance, Kyoto is essentially a corpse surviving on life support.

§With Japan, Russia, and Canada joining the US out of KP, Kyoto's second 
round will cover just a little over one-third of total Annex I emissions 
and 15% of global emissions. Australia and New Zealand may also pull 
out. That would leave Kyoto's second round entirely to Europe.

§The second round of emissions cuts will not be derived from a 
collective aggregate target, much less one that is based on science. It 
comes down to what the second round's remaining participants would 
unilaterally pledge next year.

§With no time to put up the needed Kyoto amendments for a lengthy 
ratification process to give full legal mandate to a commencement of the 
second round in 2013, the new round will likely be allowed to muddle 
through -- possibly under a creative cover such as a provisional 
implementation period -- to put on the appearance of a seamless transition.

§Emissions trading and offsetting (Joint Implementation and Clean 
Development Mechanism) will continue in the second round; rules for 
carbon capture and storage as CDM projects have been approved, after 
being granted eligibility in Cancun; and surplus allowances and land-use 
accounting loopholes have not been closed.

In exchange for agreeing to keep a mangled Kyoto Protocol alive, the EU 
secured agreement from developing countries to start a new negotiation 
process leading to a new legal regime by decade's end. The understanding 
is that the regime resulting from these talks will succeed Kyoto -- 
which means that Kyoto's second round is likely going to be its last. In 
short, the North have arranged for themselves an escape hatch to a 
Kyoto-less world via a second commitment period.

*A death notice to equity: the Durban Platform. *The new round of 
negotiations will be done in the Ad-hoc Working Group on the Durban 
Platform for Enhanced Action, which will begin work in 2012, and 
conclude with an outcome for adoption in 2015 and entry into force in 
2020. The outcome will take the form of "a protocol, another legal 
instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force," and will be 
"applicable to all Parties" of the UNFCCC. The Durban text indicates 
that the new round will pick up work from the Bali round on areas of 
interest to developing countries, such as adaptation, finance, 
technology transfer, and capacity-building.  But its main content is 
work on a new global mitigation regime. The Durban Platform means less 
equity for developing countries and more delay in curbing global emissions.

§The Durban Platform decision nicely sets up the negotiations to an 
outcome the North favors: a single global treaty in which all countries 
take on more or less the same mitigation commitments irrespective of 
level of development. First, it ends the two-track Bali Roadmap process 
that would have led to a two-tiered system where the difference between 
developed and developing country mitigation actions was kept.Second, the 
text makes no reference to the principles of equity, historical 
responsibility, or common but differentiated responsibility. The final 
arrangement could be one in which poorer countries elevate their 
obligations at par with rich countries in a strong rules-based regime, 
or where rich countries dial back theirs in loose and 
domestically-driven do-nothing regime. In any case, Durban could mark 
the point where equity, fairness, and the notion of Northern 
responsibility and leadership as guiding ideas of the international 
climate effort all received their death notice.

§The Durban Platform decision recognizes that existing pledges fall 
short of the necessary cuts to limit global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C, and 
will initiate work to raise ambition to close this gap. But the 
ambition-raising treaty will only kick in from 2020, a concession to big 
developing countries for agreeing to the Durban Platform. Until then, 
all the world will have by way of mitigation actions are the actions 
countries pledged in 2010. Analyses of these pledges conclude that they 
put the planet on course to temperature increases of as much as 4-5°C. 
This decade is crucial in terms of peaking global emissions and 
transitioning to renewable energy systems. Scientists agree that global 
emissions must peak no later than 2015 and decline rapidly thereafter. 
Fossil-based infrastructure and technology built over this decade will 
last decades more into the future, locking us deeper into 
fossil-dependency. Losing this decade may well cost the world its fight 
against climate change.

*Empty shells: GCF and finance. *Durban has launched the Green Climate 
Fund (GCF) with the approval of its governing instrument. Remaining 
disputes have been settled on the balance in favor of developing 
countries: the GCF will have legal personality and will have an interim 
secretariat within the UNFCCC secretariat. Direct private sector access 
to the Fund has been retained, possibly opening the door for subsidizing 
large multinationals at the expense of the poor, but a "no-objection 
procedure" will be devised to give national authorities at least some 
say on private sector funding and ensure policy alignment. Yet the GCF 
is still largely an empty shell, as is the North's promise to provide 
scaled up finance. The GCF will rely on voluntary instead of mandatory 
contributions. Furthermore, there is still no progress in making the 
North's pledge of mobilizing $100 billion binding; in charting a path to 
ramp up climate finance towards the 2020 goal; and in identifying and 
operationalizing public sources of finance.

*A foot in the door for soil carbon markets. *Durban saw the first time 
agriculture was included in an LCA outcome -- but not for the better. 
There had been loud voices for "climate smart agriculture" from the 
World Bank and agribusiness in the sidelines of Durban. Transitioning to 
sustainable agriculture is important in mitigating emissions, adapting 
to climate impacts, and ensuring future food security.  But the push to 
include agriculture in the agenda is based on the interest to groom the 
sector for soil carbon offsetting, and promote corporate industrial 
agriculture especially in Africa.

**

*****

Durban showed again how deeply paralyzed the UNFCCC process is from 
delivering fair and solid action that the poor and the planet need. It 
is paralyzed by the North in consistently refusing to face up to their 
responsibilities to cut emissions and shifting them to poorer countries. 
By delaying action, Durban's winners are big corporate polluters and 
global elites who can continue their overconsuming and unsustainable ways.

Time is running out for the world to accomplish a just and sustainable 
transition and the planet cannot wait for the foundering international 
negotiations to work. We need a solution grounded on a commitment by 
governments to steer the world in a new direction -- towards a model 
centered on ending poverty, improving the quality of life, and ensuring 
basic material and social needs for all, rather than on endless growth, 
corporate accumulation, and overconsumption of the few. Peoples, 
communities, and social movements in the North and the South must 
mobilize to resist big business, push governments, and build alternative 
systems to set the world on the path to sustainability and equity from 
the ground up.

/For inquiries:/

//

/Tetet Nera-Lauron/

/IBON Climate Justice Programme/

/tlauron at iboninternational.org <mailto:tlauron at iboninternational.org>/

Maria Theresa Nera-Lauron

Peoples Movement on Climate Change (PMCC)

IBON Foundation, Inc.

3F IBON Center, 114 Timog Avenue,

Quezon City, Philippines

Tel. No. +632 9277060-62 loc. 202

Skype ID: tetet.lauron

www.iboninternational.org

www.peoplesclimatemovement.net

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.fahamu.org/pipermail/debate-list/attachments/20111221/6710f7f9/attachment-0001.htm