Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 12 • Number 41 • 3rd December 2008

Amidst Low Expectations, UN Climate Talks Underway in Poznan

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The latest session of United Nations climate change negotiations got underway on 1 December in the Western Polish city of Poznan. But even before the meeting began, many delegates were already looking ahead towards late 2009, when governments are scheduled to meet in Copenhagen to try to hammer out a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.

Indeed, while the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), or COP-14, will offer negotiators a moment to reflect on the progress made over the past year, several factors are standing in the way of immediate progress.

Uncertainty about the global economy, political limbo in the United States as Americans await the swearing-in of their new president, and persistent differences between developed and developing countries mean that the Poznan meeting is unlikely to yield much more than a schedule for stepped-up negotiations in the coming year.

But Poznan is important nonetheless. More than any other stop on the road from last year’s climate conference in Bali to the crucial one Copenhagen, COP-14 will be a telling barometer as to the prospects for fruitful negotiations next year.

Commitment issues

The development and transfer of low carbon technology from developed countries to developing countries is an essential requirement for the international community if it wants to succeed in addressing climate change.

While ironing out the details of a functional technology transfer scheme will be a paramount issue for ministers, political will is the true obstacle. Given the significant cleavage still existing between developed and developing countries, significant short-term progress is unlikely.

A recent proposal by the Group of 77 (G77) developing countries and China that industrialised nations divert as much as one percent of their gross national product (GNP) to help achieve this goal met a lukewarm response, suggesting that finding the magic formula will be not be easy.

Moreover, many observers now say that even harder than agreeing on the numbers and the nature of a technology transfer package will be getting one of the two sides to commit first.

Developing countries say that the industrialised world - and the US in particular - must take the lead, committing to steep emissions cuts and pledges of technical and financial assistance, before poor nations can be expected to promise anything about their much lower per capita emissions.

Meanwhile, developed countries are looking to certain developing countries to make binding commitments to limit their rapidly growing emissions. Many in the developed world insist that negotiations will not move forward without ambitious commitments from emerging economies such as China.

Developing countries are uncomfortable with the suggestion that they be split into separate groups according to their differences - both in terms of emissions and their capacity to help mitigate them. The more industrialised among them resist the notion as it could increase their burden of responsibility under a future global climate plan.

Thus, negotiating a ‘shared vision’ for long-term cooperative action on climate change, including a long-term global goal for emission reductions by 2050, becomes all the more critical. Ministers will have to grapple with that, and build the political consensus needed amongst developed and developing countries on the nature and level of commitments in the long-run.

Negotiations and the financial crisis

But even with the widely expected stronger engagement on climate change by the US under Barack Obama’s administration, pessimism abounds about governments’ willingness to foot the bill for climate change mitigation and adaptation in the global economic downturn.

Nevertheless, UN climate chief Yvo de Boer insists that the financial crisis is an opportunity for combating climate change, rather than an obstacle. “Clean industry and investment have proven that they offer secure and long-term profits and returns,” de Boer said in a recent interview with Reuters.

Emissions trading

The prospect for implementing a functional emissions trading structure has led to some optimism over the past year. Creative initiatives such as the recently unveiled UN Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Programme (UN-REDD) - which aims to allow tropical forested developing countries to sell carbon credits for ‘avoided deforestation’, are being closely watched.

What’s more, some developed countries have shown that they are interested and willing to participate in carbon offsetting schemes. Norway has already committed US$ 35 million to the UN-REDD programme and has pledged to support the programme in the future if the initial stages prove to be promising.

The REDD initiative is not without its critics, however. Some environmental organisations are saying forest protection should be handled in a holistic way, outside of the climate regime. Critics also caution that the current carbon market structure is underfunded and in need of better access to financial resources.

The Obama Factor

Campaigning on a platform of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ has left the world looking to Barack Obama to deliver on just that. The new US administration is committed to introducing a cap-and-trade system to curb emissions at home, and appears set to engage actively in global climate change negotiations.

But those expecting massive new funding initiatives for climate change will likely be disappointed. Delegates have acknowledged that public funding from developed countries should be the main financial source of any future technology transfer mechanism, but US funding, despite the more sympathetic government, is not a given.

While the future Obama administration is likely to be more proactive than what was seen under George W. Bush, no new funding for technology transfer, such as that being asked for by China and others, has been proposed.

The fact that Obama is sending a delegation to Poznan is viewed as promising. However, it will likely not be until February 2009 - once the new president is firmly ensconced in the White House - that we get a clear sense of the role Washington intends to play on the road to Copenhagen.

ICTSD reporting.