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Bali, Indonesia-

In the disabling humidity of Bali, former US vice president Al Gore last night urged delegates gathered here at the UN conference on climate change to continue efforts towards an international climate change deal, despite attempts by the US delegation to stall progress.

Gore said, to loud applause, that the US was “principally responsible for obstructing progress” at the UN conference, which aims to set out an agenda for how negotiations on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol should proceed over the next two years.

Delegates have now reached agreement on a number of key issues for the ‘Bali roadmap’, including reducing deforestation, providing financial assistance for adaptation and transferring technology to developing nations.

But there are fears that the science that has informed the process is now being sidelined.

The main bone of contention is how the most recent findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with Gore, will be acknowledged in the final text agreed to in Bali.

Most delegations believe that the text should refer to the need for developed nations to reduce emissions by 25-40% on 1990 levels by 2020. But the US says that to do so would be ‘prejudge the outcome’ of the process. Japan and Canada agree with the US and Australia agreed with this stance earlier in the week, though it’s position is a little less certain at the moment.

The EU is standing strong behind the need to include specific numbers on future emissions reductions, arguing that it would be pointless to agree on a roadmap without a destination. “It is crucial for us that we must have an idea where we are heading to – it’s not only to science to show us the destination, but the destination must be consistent with the science”, said Portuguese secretary of state for the environment, Humberto Rosa yesterday in Bali.

European commissioner Stavros Dimas warned US under secretary of state Paula Dobiansky in a meeting yesterday morning that unless a substantive agreement was reached in Bali, there would be little point in the EU attending the Major Economies Meeting to be hosted by the US in February in Hawaii. Rosa and Dimas said this was not a threat, but an acknowledgment of the fact that the Major Economies Meeting is designed to feed into the UN process.

In his address last night, Gore advised negotiators to move beyond their anger and frustration at the US and to recognize that a new US administration, which will take over from Bush in little over a year, will likely embrace more climate-friendly policies.

"Do all of the difficult work that needs to be done and save a large, open, blank space in your document and put a footnote by it [that says] this document is incomplete, but we are going to move forward anyway."

But this morning, executive secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, Yvo De Boer, said that option would be unfeasible.

“It would be impossible to advance here without the US, as this is a consensus”, said De Boer. “It doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to craft a climate change regime without one of the major economies and the major emitter”.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 14, 2007
Categories: Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

Olive is about to fill you in on the content of Al Gore's speech tonight, so, refreshingly honest as it was, and as much as I and many others enjoyed this:

“I am not bound by diplomatic niceties. My own country is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali…but not the only one that can take steps to ensure we move forward”

I won't duplicate. In fact, it was an unscheduled side event that I found rather entertaining – and possibly more enlightening with respect to the ongoing negotiations. With difficulty, I’d found a seat from which to watch Gore’s speech, but several latecomers weren’t so fortunate, which led to a little altercation in the row in front of me.

Several conference attendees had taken seats for themselves and reserved some for colleagues who were hot-footing it to the plenary hall, when another from a different delegation (have a guess - it's not the most obvious - answers on a postcard, 25-40% off your next, er, ten years of emissions for the first correct answer*) swooped in and took a place smack bang in the middle. A good-natured squabble ensued, but with both parties getting gradually more annoyed, and ending with a schoolroom-worthy outcome: the single man refusing to budge, and everyone else talking about his rudeness behind his back, but so he could hear every word.

If what was going on behind the doors of the closed negotiations was anything like this, then no wonder many are finding the inch-by-inch progress frustrating, and no wonder Yvo de Boer opened the press conference this morning with the words: “I am very concerned about the pace of things.”

*subject to there being no actual numbers in the competition smallprint, as we feel this prejudges the outcome

Kerri Smith

Posted by Kerri Smith on December 13, 2007
Categories: Conferences and Meetings, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

As anticipated, deforestation has emerged as something of a thorny issue at the UN conference on climate change, currently nearing a close in Bali.

It was announced yesterday that measures to avoid further destruction of tropical forests, such as the Amazon, will be included in the agreement to come out of the talks at the end of this week. The Bali agreement is expected to act as a guideline for negotiations on an international climate change deal up until the end of 2009.

Daniel Nepstad of Woods Hole Research Centre, US said today in Bali that the Amazon rainforest is expected to see a 55% dieback by 2030 through deforestation, logging and drought. Rainforests in other nations, such as Indonesia are facing similar pressures. So, any effort to avoid deforestation, which accounts for an estimated 20-25% of global greenhouse gas emissions, is to be commended. But the solution being put forward to in Bali , known as REDD - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, is being met with opposition on many sides.

Under the proposed scheme for ‘avoided deforestation’, carbon sequestered by forests in developing countries that are not being cut can be traded on the carbon market, where developed countries can buy the credits and ‘offset’ them against their own emissions targets.

A draft text on deforestation is ready to go forward for discussion by the high level ministers, who arrived at the Bali conference today, said executive secretary of the UN conference on climate change, Yvo De Boer.

Countries such as Indonesia and numerous conservation NGOs are celebrating inclusion of the scheme. And given that emissions from deforestation were omitted from the Kyoto Protocol, it is the first such international effort of its kind.

But much remains to be agreed upon. The issue of whether such a scheme should include forest conservation is a remaining “bone of contention”. As reported in the Hindustan Times, the Indian delegation wanted to add 'conservation' to 'avoided deforestation' , owing to the fact that India is one of the few developing countries where the forest cover is going up, not down. “We should not be penalised for that” said secretary of the ministry of environment and forests, Meena Gupta

Continue reading "Deforestation a ‘thorny’ issue at the Bali talks " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 12, 2007
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia -

There was a chance today for journalists to hear from Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the UNFCCC, at a lunchtime press conference usually given by the (often batik-shirted) Yvo de Boer. This conference has so far been a useful purified daily dose of what’s been going on behind closed doors in the Bali meetings.

But today’s was a bit of a disappointment. Although the beginning of Ban Ki-moon’s speech was suitably rousing – “Today we are at a crossroads – one path leading towards a comprehensive new climate agreement and the other towards a betrayal of our planet and our children” - from this point on it felt as if (to bleed the analogy dry) he got a bit lost.

The questions he faced were fairly predictable – but the answers frustrating and woolly. When asked about his view on emissions targets for particular countries, he replied: “There are differences of opinion between developed and developing countries, and even among these groups”.

In contrast, I got the distinct impression that was no difference of opinion among many of the journalists in attendance. Many thought it was all a bit watered-down. That view was epitomised by one question asked of him at the end: if all countries have already agreed to formal negotiations, and the purpose of this meeting isn’t to go any further and define targets and talk numbers, have we achieved what we wanted? Shall we all just go home?

“We need to expedite our process of negotiation”, he said halfway through – but I couldn’t help feeling that if the high-level negotiations going on this week are proceeding at the same swimming-through-treacle pace as this press conference, he would have a hard time expediting anything.

Kerri Smith

Posted by Kerri Smith on December 12, 2007
Categories: Conferences and Meetings, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

As celebrations got underway to mark the tenth anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol, disputes over whether its successor will be a bigger, better deal intensified at the UN climate-change conference in Bali, Indonesia.

I've reported the full story over on Nature News,

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Anna Barnett on December 11, 2007
Categories: Recent contributors, Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

Whether we can avoid the worst consequences of climate change will ultimately be determined by whether we are willing to finance it.

Finding an effective means for financial assistance and investments to flow from north to south could be a make or break issue at the UN conference on climate change here in Bali, where delegates from almost 190 nations have convened to agree a ‘roadmap’ for an international climate agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

NGOs and delegates from the world’s poorest nations, some of which are already beginning to experience the harsh affects of a warming climate, are calling on developed countries to boost funding to help them adapt, and to transfer technology that will help them green their economies.

Under the Kyoto Protocol’s ‘Adaptation fund’, a paltry $163m has been pledged by rich donor countries to developing nations, and just $67m of this has actually been delivered. Yet the sum actually needed to finance adaptation and capacity building in the south is in the region of several tens of billions of dollars, according the World Bank (and reported by the Associated Press). Oxfam says that the very poorest nations also need an up front payment of $1-2bn immediately to address urgent adaptation needs.

The fund, which will finance projects such a building sea walls and irrigating crops, is currently derived from a 2 percent levy on revenues generated by the Clean Development Mechanism, the scheme that allows industrialized nations to pay for carbon credits produced by emissions-reduction projects in the developing world and credit then against their own emissions targets. But it now looks as though the UN will have to expand its funding for adaptation, potentially through a direct tax on emissions.

The transfer of clean technologies to developing nations is another goal of the Kyoto Protocol that has clearly not been met. In part, this is owing to lack of funding from the public sector and a lack of interest from the private sector, says Yvo De Boer, executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change.

The solution, says De Boer, will require the creation of investment potential through mechanisms such as the carbon market that can send a clear price signal to private investors, who are expected to fund 86% of future clean energy technology projects in the south. It will also require “intelligent financial engineering, to make public and private money go where it has never gone before” akin to “embarking on a star trek expedition”, says De Boer.

A group of finance ministers is now trashing out the details in side meetings at the Bali talks. By the end of the conference, it should be clear whether the worlds’ richest nations are willing to cough up their portion of the much needed cash.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 10, 2007
Categories: Adaptation, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

A group of scientists from the estimable Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change yesterday presented ministers of more than 180 nations in Bali with the overwhemling evidence on climate change. I caught up with IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri after the event to get his take on the state of play in Bali…and beyond.

Since being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with former US vice-president Al Gore for their work on climate change, the IPCC has become something of a household name and Pachauri, or ‘Patchy’ as he is known to friends, has come as close to celebrity as is possible in science. With the recognition comes constant requests ...not least for interviews from pushy journalists, I imagine.

We meet in the lobby of the palatial Aston Bali Resort and Spa, where during our brief meeting, he is stopped and congratulated by vitually every passer by. He humbly reminds his admirers that the winning work was that of the many hundreds of scientists who make up the UN body on climate change.

I query if he ever tires of the praise, but he admits that he’s a sucker for it…and says it’s unlikely to last longer than a few weeks anyhow. If anything, he seems to take from it a renewed vigour for communicating the urgency of global warming, a task at which he is certainly adept.

The IPCC has been assessing the status of climate change for nearly 20 years and this November issued a synthesis report, the result of almost two years work that acts as a primer on the scientific understanding of climate change.

The synthesis is not merely a summary of the three latest reports released by the panel in the first half of 2007, which each give a detailed discourse on the science, impacts and options for dealing with climate change, respectively. In addition, the neat 23-page document clearly sets out the consequences of various courses of action. The IPCC presentation at the plenary session here in Bali brought that work formally into the UN negotiating process.

Notable at this round of UN talks on climate change, the 13th conference of its type, no-one is questioning the science. A few lonely looking sceptics can be seen outside handing out flyers and openly admitting ‘We’re the least popular people here”.

Pachauri believes that winning the Nobel Peace Prize has convinced people of the magnitude of the issue. “It brings home that climate change is an issue that affects the future of humanity and a dimension that people haven’t really thought about previously – if we don’t deal with this in time, it could become an issue of peace and national security”, he says.

Continue reading "Interview: Rajendra Pachauri in Bali " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 08, 2007
Categories: Recent contributors, Conferences and Meetings, Olive Heffernan, Opinion, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

The chances of the world’s major emitters agreeing to mandatory emissions reductions are becoming an increasingly unlikely outcome of the UN talks on climate change here in Bali.

“Nothing has been ruled out yet”, said Yvo de Boer, secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) today in Bali, but he described the possibility of binding emissions cuts for developing nations such as China and India as “crawling towards the edge of the table”.

China has been receiving praise for its proactive role on addressing climate change and its willingness to enter into talks on a post-Kyoto agreement, but De Boer said that India has not been at the forefront of the discussions this week in Bali.

Both India and China have introduced strategies to mitigate climate change this year in a notable departure from historic concerns that to do so would threaten economic growth. Rajenda Pachuari, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that neither China nor India has had sufficient time to act on climate change since introducing their respective strategies and expects that they will demonstrate more significant efforts in the coming months.

In the meantime, NGOs are hoping that the passage of two climate relevant bills through the US House of Representatives this week will put increasing pressure on the Bush administration to sign up to binding emissions targets.

First up is the Energy Bill, which is the only piece of legislation in over 30 years to require a rise in vehicle fuel efficiency. Designed to improve energy security while reducing emissions for transport, the bill would raise fuel economy by 40% by 2020. Second is the Liebermann-Warner Climate Security Act, which would cut emissions from the power and industrial sectors by 70% by 2050 relative to 2005 levels.

The passing of these bills sends a clear signal to the world that the political centre of gravity in the US has shifted on global warming, but all signs indicate that domestic policy is unlikely to sway the stance of the US on the international front.

Both bills have yet to pass through the Senate and White House, and President Bush has already threatened to veto them. But according to Angela Anderson of the National Environmental Trust in the US, this would be rather ironic given that these are exactly the kind of measures that other major emitters have enacted into their own legislation - the very nations that the US is currently engaging with a serious of talks parallel to the UN process.

Yesterday, Harlan Watson, head of the US delegation, said that neither the passing of these acts to limit US domestic emissions nor the move by Australia to ratify Kyoto would change their stance in Bali. "We're not changing our position," he said.

Given that the US is the only nation that appears to be cutting its fossil fuel emissions, while those signed up to Kyoto have failed to meet their targets, some say that binding cuts may not be the way to go after all.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 07, 2007
Categories: Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

For the first time this week at the UN conference on climate change, scientists today sounded their views on the specifics they believe the road from Bali should lead to if we are to avoid catastrophically changing the climate.

Signed by more than 200 of the world’s most eminent climatologists, the ‘Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists’ issues a stark warning to negotiators that unless they take immediate, bold action on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, many millions will be at high risk of some of the most sinister effects of global warming including extreme sea level rise and increased drought and heatwaves.

“This declaration makes a clear and unambiguous statement about what our emissions targets have to be. To achieve these targets, we need action now, this week, here in Bali, said Matthew England, climate modeller at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Specifically, the document states that atmospheric GHG concentrations need to be stabilised long-term at 450 ppm CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) or lower to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius. Formally announced at a press briefing in Bali this morning, the declaration calls on governments to reduce emissions “by at least 50% below 1990 levels by the year 2050”.

Though the science is taken from the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the signatories comprise the most prominent IPCC authors, the policy-prescriptive statement is distinct from the UN process which assesses the current understanding of climate change. “This is simply outside the charge of the IPCC process”, said Richard Somerville, meteorologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Not all of those invited signed. England, one of the coordinators of the declaration, reckons they had at least a 70% success rate with getting authors on board. According to Andrew Pitman, a climate scientist also at the University of New South Wales, Australia, some authors didn’t sign because they felt the emissions cuts called for were simply not tough enough.

The declaration advises stabilising at 450ppm CO2e, yet this would only give us a 50% chance of avoiding dangerous climate change, explained Pitman. To increase that chance to 75%, we would need to bring atmospheric GHG levels down to 400ppm CO2e. With emissions steadily increasing, the urgency of the situation is brought home by the fact that we are now at GHG levels close to those at which the scientists recommend we stabilise.

Developed nations party to the Kyoto Protocol agreed in Vienna in August that emissions should be cut by 25-40% by 2020, based on 1990 levels. England confirmed that the target announced today is in line with this figure.

But the scientists won’t go as far as to say when the targets should be implemented or how nations should go about reducing their emissions. “We don’t have recommendations for how the negotiations should proceed”, said Somerville. He added that there is no magic bullet and that all approaches to reducing emissions will need to be considered.

As for whether their recommendations are likely to be taken on board, it’s probably too early to say. Diana Liverman, climate policy expert at Oxford University, UK and signatory of the statement, said that she hasn’t seen any evidence of the talks derailing yet and that a consideration of stricter targets than those under Kyoto may come next week.

On being asked for his response to the consensus document, US Senior Climate Negotiator Harlan Watson said that he wasn’t aware of it. He added that the US administration wholly approved of the IPCC, but that they wouldn’t endorse any specific scenarios from the latest report.

The IPCC will present their synthesis report at the plenary tomorrow morning – watch this space….

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 06, 2007
Categories: Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

The road to building a Bali roadmap was looking increasingly rocky today, as the vastly differing expectations of what will emerge from the two weeks meeting of the 13th conference of parties (COP) to the UNFCCC became increasingly apparent.

One of the biggest bones of contention, of course, is whether the roadmap will include an agreement on the need for binding emissions targets from 2012, which signals the end of the second period of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol.

At the opening plenary talk on Monday, Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC Executive Secretary said that “A marriage contract is not something to discuss on a first date”, eluding to the fact that the willingness of nations to co-operate must first be established here before they get down to the nitty gritty of asking parties to act on their promises.

But many feel this is a COP-out. Today, Matthias Duwe of Climate Action Network, a worldwide association of some 400 NGOs, retorted to De Boer’s comment, saying “These parties have been dating for over 15 years now, so we’re not exactly on a first date here”.

Duwe is one of many who believe that a process without an end date and without specific substance will be insufficient for the enormity of the task at hand.

But others feel that pushing for targets now will rock the boat…and possibly capsize it.

Meena Raman of Friends of the Earth International basically agrees with De Boer. She believes that there needs to be more evidence of good will from industrialised nations before we can reach that point. “To put the targets on the table right now would be going in the wrong direction”, said Raman.

There’s also the argument that you need to have the right tools for the job, lest we (again!) agree to targets we fail to meet.

De Boer compared setting targets first to being asked to swim across the Atlantic without knowing whether you’d have a team, be allowed breaks, use rescue equipment etc. Basically, you’d hardly sign up for the task without knowing the details beforehand.

This approach, however, would be a flip on the order in which the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, which set targets first and then looked at how to achieve them. And that’s bound to ruffle feathers.

Among all the political wrangling and finger pointing, there has been some light hearted relief takes on the Bali talks, such as the giant thermometer erected by Greenpeace outside the conference venue and the Fossil of the Day Awards announced each evening by the Climate Action Network. The prize is in recognition of the efforts of countries that block progress at the conference.

Yet again, Saudi Arabia won first prize today for complaining that the protocol has an unfair focus on CO2 (and then called for prioritisation of CCS, which is concentrated on CO2). And secondly, for saying that article A "should not attach an economic element to the noble cause of fighting climate change"--when for years, they have been trying to undermine the fight against climate change specifically by campaigning by alleging adverse economic effects!

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 05, 2007
Categories: Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

The second day of the UN conference on climate change has seen some diverse opinions emerge on what the immediate priorities should be for a 'Bali roadmap'.

Environmentalists claimed today that a group of obstructionist nations, including Saudi Arabia, Canada, the US and Japan, was forming against binding emissions targets.

Steven Guilbeault of Environmental NGO Equiterre cited Canada’s “abandonment of it’s targets under the Kyoto Protocol” and Japan’s statement today that it is time to move away from a Kyoto approach to addressing climate change as reasons for their inclusion.

“Canada and Japan are saying nothing about legally binding emission reductions after 2012," said Guilbeault.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Yvo De Boer said that although Saudi Arabia had expressed concern about whether the time is right to enter formal negotiations, no other nation has openly backed this stance in Bali. Though that’s not to say that others don’t agree.

Describing the mood today in Bali as “mixed”, however, De Boer said that there was a clear divergence of opinion between industrialised and developing nations on where the focus should now lie. Whereas developed nations are honing in on the long term goals for addressing climate change, many developing nations are concerned that this will diverge attention from the need to address immediate priorities, such as establishing a sufficient fund for adapting to climate change and transferring technologies from developed countries, objectives which have not been realised under the Kyoto Protocol.

A open ‘special group’ was established today to address these issues and others that will shape the Bali roadmap, including whether the negotiations up until 2009 will include targets and measurable objectives, or will comprise a looser period of informal dialogue that could faciltate buy-in from major emitters such as the US, China and India.

One thing is clear: as of yet, there is no consensus on what shape the roadmap will take; for now the son of Kyoto is still gestating.

For direct live webcasts of the conference, visit the UNFCCC website.

Olive Heffernan