Category: Climate Change

UN climate change negotiations end with no answer to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

The UN climate change negotiations which ended yesterday in Bangkok have largely failed to deliver any substantive progress to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In a statement issued yesterday in Dar es Salaam, Saleemul Huq, senior fellow in the climate change group at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said the negotiations have also failed to transfer technology and finance from rich to poorer nations for adaptation and mitigation, leading to serious questions about the political commitment of the industrialized nations.

Huq, who is also a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said;

"Last month, President Obama, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other leaders of industrialised nations all lined up to say how committed they were in tackling climate change and reaching an effective agreement on how to do this when UN negotiations end in Copenhagen in December."

"This gave the world high expectations for the international negotiation session that has run for the past two weeks in Bangkok," he added

"But it seems like the negotiators from industrialised nations either didn’t follow their leaders’ speeches or haven’t been receiving any new instructions because in virtually every aspect of the talks, there has been minimal progress of any substance," he said.

The G77/China group of 132 developing nations said that the EU is trying to "divide and conquer" developing nations and detract attention from their own broken promises.

There was virtually no progress on new targets for developed nations that are party to the Kyoto Protocol to cut their emissions, despite them being legally bound to agree new targets, he said.

The G77/China accuses the United States and the European Union of trying to kill the Kyoto Protocol, the only legal agreement that commits nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. The EU as a party to the protocol is legally bound to agree new targets for a post-2012 period.

In the negotiations focusing on ways to tackle climate change by reducing deforestation, the European Union has removed a provision that would protect against the conversion of natural forests to plantations, threatening impact for biodiversity and forest-dependent people.

"One area of hope is that countries are now reaching agreement that adaptation is essential to protect people and economies in the developing nations," said Huq.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change binds rich countries such as the United States and European Union member states to provide funding for developing nations to adapt and mitigate climate change.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

Political frameworks: responding to climate change

Africa yet to benefit from carbon finance

The global value of the carbon market doubled between 2007 and 2008 growing from US$ 63 million to US$ 123.4 million. However, Africa’s participation in this market is very limited. Only 1% of the projects in both mandatory and voluntary markets are implemented in Africa.

Indian and China posses large share of mandatory market projects. Unlike in Africa, India and China have developed infrastructure and institutional capacity to develop carbon credit projects. Furthermore, Africa is faced by limited human resource capacity to plan, prepare and implement carbon credit projects and small size of the projects which makes them less attractive for financing. The most common type of projects in these countries is renewable energy projects from hydro power and energy efficiency.

Even with voluntary markets, India and China are enjoying long term experience with CDM projects to develop and implement carbon credit projects.

Voluntary markets were developed to function parallel to Kyoto protocol mechanism with simpler, quick and low transaction costs. Over the years the voluntary markets have gained integrity and grew interms of both number of projects and value. The initial rapid growth of the carbon market has triggered various associated service providers and financial mechanisms such as offset retailers, carbon fund, trading platforms and registers.

The largest market for the carbon credit is the European countries which has set the target of reducing 8% of the emission under the framework of the Kyoto protocol adopted in 1997. Countries under the Annex 1, industrialized countries and those with economies in transition, are set to reduce 5.2% of their emissions compared to the 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

Under the 2008-2012 timeframe Kyoto protocol operates through three mechanisms namely Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Joint Implementation and Emission Trading. Despite good intentions of the Kyoto Protocol, still it is haunted with a number of problems including non-ratification of some key countries including the United States and the fate of the protocol after 2012 when it will come to end. Canada and New Zealand are reported to have abandoned the Kyoto protocol because of changes in the economic strategies which has force them to increase dependency on fossil fuels.

Constraining carbon emission if associated with constraining economy for which some countries are not ready to accept. These countries also argue that the Kyoto Protocol would be appropriate if India and China would have commitment in emission reduction targets.

There are a number of questions on the effectiveness of the Kyoto protocol framework in addressing climate challenge. The reduction in emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) has already reached around 6% although other sources estimate the reduction at 11%. However, this rate seems little if the reductions have to decrease to 60% as required by the protocol.

Many practitioner in the carbon trading are looking at the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP) 15 meeting in Copenhagen to resolve some of the major current issues including the Kyoto protocol post 2012, support to increase participation of African countries in carbon markets and acceptance of the projects related to reducing emission through deforestation and degradation (REDD).