Delegates filed out of the Poznan International Fair early Saturday, ending two weeks of talks with a series of documents that lay the groundwork and set the schedule for negotiations next year (AFP).

In other words, the delegates have merely agreed to what is on the table and when to discuss it. Doesn't sound like much, but, in truth, that is pretty much what they were hoping to do. I talked to more than one observer who said their main objective going into Poznan was to ensure the talks didn't get derailed altogether by the financial crisis. Calls for a "Green New Deal" became the rallying cry.

UN officials are billing the meeting as a success, though many environmental groups say delegates ended up kicking far too many issues into next year. Indeed, Poznan represents the midway point between Bali and Copenhagen, where the talks are scheduled to conclude, but it's not at all clear that half of the work has been done. Aside from launching the adaptation fund (without an expansion of funding), no major issues were resolved.

Negotiators made some progress on deforestation, though not as much as hoped. They also made some modifications to the program that developed countries use to offset their emissions in developing countries, but could not agree on whether to wrap efforts to bury carbon dioxide into the list of eligible technologies for doing so. Instead, they called for a report on the matter.

As things would down Friday night, the conference shifted to Stary Rynek, the square in the centre of Poznan. Bars and restaurants filled up as delegations, lobbyists, advocates and, yes, media gathered for a final set of informal talks before heading home.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 12, 2008
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Things are wrapping up in Poznan, but it's tough to assess the mood. The European Union's last-minute climate deal was certainly welcome news, but the process by which EU leaders got there - and the concessions they made along the way - have left a bitter taste in the mouths of many. A speech by Al Gore, the Nobel-prize winning climate advocate and former vice president of the United States, inspired a standing ovation with a not-so-veiled reference to the new US leadership: "Yes we can!"

Shortly afterward I talked to the delegation from East Timor, whose assessment of the ongoing battle over the launch of the new adaptation fund might be better described as "no we can't." But in truth it's tough to keep track of what's happening here, as information always seems to be shifting depending on whom you are talking to and when. Shortly after my conversation with the crew from East Timor, I encountered a few others who said "eventually, they will."

And indeed they did. We received word a short while ago that negotiators produced an agreement on adaptation, which was billed in advance as a showcase issue for the convention. Developed and developing countries had spent the past two weeks talking about access and verification issues as well as ways to provide additional resources, but the fact that they reached a deal so quickly still came as a bit of a surprise.

It appears that developing countries won out on the question of access: The fund will be administered by a board within the United Nations climate convention, allowing poor countries to bypass entities like the World Bank when they seek money. Industrialized nations wanted some kind of mechanisms in place to ensure the money is spent properly, and it's not yet clear how that debate came out. Nor have negotiators reached a deal on how to secure more money for the fund, which currently contains some $200 million, a paltry sum when you figure that estimates on costs range from tens of billions, or even a trillion, dollars annually.

One of the outstanding issues is whether to include carbon capture and sequestration - burying carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants) in the list of technologies that developed countries can finance in order to offset their emissions in the developing world. There is also talk of various reforms that would make the CDM faster and more reliable, but energy seems to be waning for that debate.

As the talks wind down, the question is what kind of a ribbon delegates can tie around the final documents. Word has it that Poland entered on of the "mini-ministerials" (high-level meetings outside the main plenary) today with a new document titled the "Poznan Solidarity Partnership," which tried to overlay some kind of grand vision over all of the negotiations (it was rejected). Some have pushed for the inclusion of goals for emissions reductions in developed countries, but that idea has encountered resistance as well.

The final plenary session is supposed to take place this evening - and some think it might even end this evening as well. We'll see what happens.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 12, 2008
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European Union officials waltzed into a press conference in Poznan this afternoon and proclaimed, once again, that their latest climate proposal was in no danger. Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas called failure "inconceivable." Hours later, in Brussels, where EU leaders are gathering today and tomorrow in hopes of reaching such an agreement, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi threatened to veto any deal that harmed Italy's interests.

The way Dimas explains it, the debate is over implementation and concessions sought by various countries and not the proposal itself, which would reduce emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 (or 30 percent, if comparable goals are agreed to in an international treaty). Regardless, Berlusconi is driving a tough bargain.

The outcome could weigh heavily on the ongoing United Nations climate talks, where the EU has historically played a leadership roll. Ministers from developing countries laid out various ideas and proposals during a high-level session at the conference this afternoon, but virtually all of them called for bold commitments from industrialized nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon began the day by calling for leadership in a "Green New Deal" in response to the financial crisis. "We look for that leadership from the European Union," he said. "The decisions currently being made by European leaders in Brussels are at great consequence for the whole world."

On a lighter note, Berlusconi's comments earned Italy first place in the "Fossil of the Day" competition in Poznan, a daily award that environmentalists give to those who exhibit particularly bad behavior. For kicks, the second and third place awards follow:

-- Australia took second place for a plenary speech that was "stunning in its substancelessness." Environmentalists criticized the Aussies for calling for "collective actions" - and then waiting until Monday to formally announce their new climate policy.

-- Canada eked out third place for ordering the UN Secretariat to tear down a photo exhibit on the tar sands in Alberta. The exhibit was set up by the youth delegation at the US Climate Action Network booth.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 11, 2008
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Even if the international community is able to sign a global warming treaty in Copenhagen in 2009, ratification and implementation could take years. This inevitable lag is reviving interest in various fast-track strategies that could slow the rate of warming today, providing a little breathing room for the carbon dioxide regulations to kick in.

Leading the charge is Durwood J. Zaelke, a man of many titles, one of which is president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. Zaelke begins his talks by citing recent research by Veerabhadran Ramanathan at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography indicating that we are already facing warming of 2.4 degrees Celsius - based on greenhouse gases that have already been pumped into the atmosphere.

He quickly slides into a host of impacts, from melting glaciers and ice caps to droughts, storms and the like, rattling off various unpredictable "tipping points" that could lead to irreversible damage. "Climate is no longer just a mid- to long-term problem. The fact is, it's a problem for us today," he says. "That changes the focus."

So what to do?

Continue reading "Poznan: A push for early action on climate " »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 11, 2008
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Climate negotiators will take an official break today as global environmental ministers sit down for a high-level session in an effort to hammer out a broader agreement on where to go from here. The United Nation's top climate official, Yvo de Boer, says the goal is to establish a "shared vision" to underpin discussions in 2009.

Early reports indicated little evidence of a major breakthrough, but there might yet be room for surprises - or at least an interesting debate. The Guardian is reporting that the European Union has upped its ante with a pledge to cut emissions by 80-95 percent below 1990 levels - if developing countries will in turn agree to curb the growth in their emissions 15-30 percent over the next decade.

Perhaps the message being delivered by Martin Parry and others is getting through. Unfortunately, this kind of horse-trading might be a bit premature given that the United States remains in limbo until January. For their part, countries like China have adamantly opposed signing up to numeric targets, which isn't to say that they are unwilling to commit to anything.

Continue reading "Poznan: Let's make a deal" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 11, 2008
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One of the ongoing debates in Poznan is whether to enumerate some kind of goal for emissions reductions, at least in the short term. The usual number that comes up for Annex I countries - the industrialized world - is 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and the EU has been pushing for a 50-percent reduction by mid-century in order to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The scientific basis for this, however, is unclear at best.

The United Kingdom's Martin Parry, who co-chaired the impacts and adaptation group for the International Panel on Climate Change's 2007 assessment, reiterated his position that the policymakers are aiming too low. "The 50-percent pathway won't do what they think it will, and that's a pity," Parry said after his presentation this afternoon. "The problem is they are working with old information."

Parry crunched some numbers before the conference and determined that the odds of staying under 2 degrees of warming are only slightly better than 50/50 even if emissions peak in 2015 and then decrease to 60 percent below 1990 levels by mid-century. (Because the climate takes time to respond to greenhouse gases, the full impact of warming in this scenario does not occur until 2100; Parry addressed this issue in Nature Reports Climate Change in June). If you want to increase the odds of coming in under 2 degrees and avoid the most serious impacts of global warming, you need an 80-percent reduction by 2050.

Continue reading "Poznan: It's worse than you think" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 10, 2008
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Things weren't looking good on deforestation last night. Delegates cancelled a public session yesterday afternoon, presumably to keep from airing their dirty laundry, and then got bogged down in a closed-door session that lasted until 10 p.m. Things weren't looking much better this morning, but they reached a decision a short while ago that seems to have everybody - including environmentalists - moderately satisified.

"It's not as much as we would like to see, but it does represent some forward progress," says Stephan Schwartzman, a deforestation expert with the Environmental Defense Fund.

First, we need to reiterate a bit of background: This decision comes out of a technical body, not the entire Conference of the Parties (or COP, in the local lingo). The document says in so many words that the methodologies for tracking and assessing emissions from deforestation are ready to go (specifically citing work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). That kicks the issue up to the COP, which will need to settle on a system for wrapping them into the treaty itself.

Advocates had been pushing for a decision by COP itself, one that would formally put the issue on the larger agenda and give a date for somekind of feedback. The delegates eventually decided not to push for a COP decision, electing for wishy-washy language suggesting that guidance from the COP "would facilitate" progress as the technical folks continue sorting out the details in meetings next year.

Believe it or not, just getting this represented a major breakthrough. Objections of one sort or another came from all over the map. The US delegation initially balked because it didn't want to tie the hands of the Barack Obama administration next year, for instance, while Brazil raised questions about whether the science is actually ready.

The delegates also came under intense pressure from indigenous groups to include language on the rights of native people. Many of the parties would like to see something on the matter, but linking to something like the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples presents a host of legal issues, given that many signatories to the climate convention are not signatories on the declaration. Language on the issue was removed from one of the early drafts, sparking protests outside the press room yesterday. In the end, delegates settled on language calling on parties to submit ideas for later discussion.

It's not clear exactly how all of these impasses were breached, but the international spotlight undoubtedly played a role.

"The world is watching," Schwartzman says. "They didn't want to leave here looking like do-nothings, bickering about parochial issues while the world around them burns."

No word yet on whether delegates will be able to bridge an impasse on the other big issue in Poznan: Launching the adaptation fund to help poor countries prepare for a warmer world.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 10, 2008
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UN climate chief Yvo de Boer was again hit with questions during today's news conference regarding the goal for Copenhagen. As with the Kyoto accord, it could take multiple years to get all the details worked out, he said, but an overarching, ratifiable treaty must be signed. De Boer didn't flinch when asked whether it would constitute "failure" if said agreement does not include specific commitments for developed nations to reduce greenhouse gases (which is farther than many believe Barack Obama will be able to go his first year in office).

"Yes."

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 09, 2008
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The notion that it will be difficult to complete a global warming treaty next year in Copenhagen is hardly controversial in the United States, but it still doesn't sit well with many in the international community. Indeed, Reuters has reported that UN climate chief Yvo de Boer went so far to dismiss such statements by Eileen Claussen at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change as "unhelpful and incorrect."

But from Claussen's perspective, now is the time to talk about what is possible, so as to avoid misunderstanding and recriminations down the road. She isn't alone. The Environmental Defense Fund and the International Emissions Trading Association hosted a side event last night featuring several staffers representing both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

People flocked to the room, and many ended up sitting on the floor when chairs and standing room filled up. The congressional aides' carried a simple message across the Atlantic: Legislating is a complex affair in the United States, due in large part to founding fathers who distrusted government and therefore created a system rife with checks and balances. Expediency was never the goal.

"You need to understand the process, so that if it takes longer than you would like you don't take away the wrong message," said Lorie Schmidt, counsel to outgoing House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan. (Schmidt has headed up the issue under Dingell, but it's not clear what kind of staffing changes might be in order when California Democrat Henry Waxman takes charge of the committee next year.)

At this point, it's not so much a question of will on the part of the new Democratic leadership in Washington as the sheer volume of work that needs to get done. The process is even more difficult because ratifying a treaty requires 67 votes in the Senate, which means the leadership will need to build a broad bipartisan coalition. The congressional aides were optimistic, but very blunt about the challenges ahead.

"There's a lot of us with good will," said Mark Helmke, counsel to Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee. "Bear with us."

I asked the Finnish gentleman sitting next to me what he thought. He said the debate in the United States is "very different" from the debate in Europe, "but they are getting there."

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 09, 2008
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I found myself sitting on the floor with John O. Niles Monday evening in front of a bank of computers just outside the Elk Room. He was walking me through a two-day-old draft decision document on deforestation from a technical working group, which was busy debating the latest draft inside.

“For people like me who follow this process, this is like crack,” Niles joked, hardly taking a breath between a series of explanations that rolled off his tongue in a passionate, yet controlled, manner. “They had a huge argument about semicolons versus colons versus commas.” “That’s awesome,” I ventured, enthused by his enthusiasm. He concurred: “It’s really awesome.”

John O. Niles (also known as John-O) heads the Tropical Forest Group, one of those non-profit groups that keeps everybody on their toes by poring over every sentence that comes out of every meeting, with particular attention to things like punctuation. He pulled out another document under consideration within the Elk Room, an early draft proposed for a vote by all delegates at the conference. “It’s a 510 word sentence,” he said, this time disappointed. “There’s only one period, right there at the end.”

Continue reading "Poznan: Deforestation, through the eyes of an activist" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 09, 2008
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P.S. Scratch the questions about people not having fun, raised in my post yesterday. Many of the folks I talked to last night celebrated until 5 a.m. Saturday (Sunday morning, rather) at a party tossed by various non-governmental organizations. It's an annual event, I'm told, that takes place at the midpoint of the conference each year. And for the record, multiple sources reported seeing none other than UN climate chief Yvo de Boer on the dance floor. No idea when he went to bed...

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 08, 2008
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Adaptation is the only major area in which climate negotiators actually hope to strike a bargain before leaving Poznan this week, but judging by the tone of a panel discussion I attended last night, such an outcome is by no means assured.

The goal is to sign off on a new adaptation fund that has been collecting money from a tax on projects in the Clean Development Mechanism, which allows wealthy nations to meet their targets under the Kyoto Protocol by paying for clean energy and other such projects in poor countries. But negotiators from developing nations say their counterparts in the developing world, namely Europe, are insisting on overly burdensome requirements that will increase bureaucracy, delay projects and ultimately waste money.

That anger bubbled over on Sunday at a meeting held by the International Institute for Environment and Development and others. Bernaditas Muller, a lead negotiator for the Philippines, lashed out at developed nations for pretending that the adaptation fund is a charitable gift to the developed world. “This is not a donor situation – this is a debt owed,” Muller says, quickly citing UN convention language laying out the obligation. Moreover, she says, developing nations themselves took the lead in setting aside this particular pot of money for adaptation, because they recognized that many countries are in fact too poor to benefit from the CDM program (you can’t reduce emissions that you aren’t producing in the first place). “It’s our gift to our own people,” she told me later.

I tracked down Amjad Abdulla, director general of the Maldives Ministry of Environment, after the meeting as well. He put it in simple terms: “We feel that you don’t trust us."

Continue reading "Poznan: Disputes arise over adaptation fund " »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 08, 2008
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“Heard it’s dark and rainy” a fellow traveller wrote in an email to me Friday, as I was finishing up preparations for the trip. Toss in a few logistical issues, including some long commutes from out in the suburbs, and you get a sober assessment: “People are not having fun.” So I wasn’t terribly surprised when I arrived this morning to find Poznan dark and rainy. To be fair, the sun has since made a brief appearance, and it’s not exactly cold. But Bali it’s not.

And I can’t yet testify as to people having fun or not, but I guess that’s not really the goal here. As for myself, I’m still recovering from a long transatlantic flight to Munich, which offered little in the way of sleep but plenty of time to catch up on reading, followed by a quick connection in a prop plane into Poznan.

I wasn’t the only Washingtonian on this particular itinerary - spotted a pair of Republican congressional staffers on the plane, representing Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. I also bumped into staff representing a pair of Democratic senators. All are here to watch, listen and learn, and the Democrats might even end up reporting back to President-Elect Barack Obama’s team, as requested by Obama himself.

So. I’m going to head over to the conference centre now to get my feet on the ground, but first a quick update on a related note: French President Nicholas Sarkozy failed to reach a deal yesterday with Eastern European leaders, including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, on the next phase of the European Union climate plan (BBC, Reuters)

Sarkozy will get another chance later this week, but his term as EU president is up this month. After that it goes to Czech President Vaclav Havel, who is mostly famous these days for his antagonism toward not only climate regulation but frequently the EU itself. His ascendancy to the six-month rotating post isn’t likely to halt discussions, but it could make them more difficult.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 07, 2008
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I'm not sure how many stories Google News would have picked up searching for "Poznan" on a random day in, say, 2005. A city of some 561,000 people, Poznan has been around for about a millennium and claims to be the cradle of Polish civilization. The city apparently has a long history of trade fairs, and its conference center is the largest in Poland. But still. Google tells me it has found some 1,600 stories in the last 24 hours, and spurious though that number may be, my guess is that the media spotlight is certainly brighter than usual.

Anyway, I've sifted through some of them and picked out a few that caught my eye:

Continue reading "Poznan: Perusing the news... " »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 04, 2008
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No major news out of Poznan yet, but there’s been no shortage of analysts and experts and panels addressing the topic here in Washington. The primary message is one of managing expectations, for both Poznan and next year in Copenhagen, such that “failure” doesn’t become the primary message if, as most expect, the talks stretch into 2010 and beyond.

In the meantime, I figured I would post a few links to some key documents, studies and analyses that might prove useful for those of you trying to figure out just what all of this means.

First, the current talks evolved out of the Bali Action Plan, which came out of last year’s meeting in Indonesia. The UN climate folks also have produced a nice summary of international proposals that are currently on the table. Given that there isn't much else to go on at present, this document is likely to be key in Poznan.

Perhaps poking fun at hard-line skeptics who claim climate change is a vast left-wing conspiracy, the Global Canopy Programme has released The Little REDD Book as a guide to negotiations over deforestation, which accounts for some 20 percent of global emissions. REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degredation. Its inclusion in the talks was a major breakthrough in Bali, led by many tropical countries who see an opportunity to cash in on conservation.

More broadly, the discussions to date are largely framed around how to create a single global cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases, like the European system established under Kyoto Protocol. The problem is that developing nations – the largest source of new emissions going forward – are legitimately worried that emissions caps would curb their efforts to escape poverty. Rich countries are willing to let that commitment slide in the early years and put money (amount to be decided…) on the table to coax them into the system.

But that begs the question: What can be expected of developing nations today? Countries like China, India and Brazil might be willing to adopt a suite of carbon policies that, say, promote clean energy. Or perhaps they would be willing to set require stricter environmental standards for various heavy industries. Both ideas are hot right now, although the United States and others are looking for ways to ensure that the resulting emissions reductions are, to use the UN lingo, “measurable, reportable and verifiable.” The Pew Center on Global Climate Change reviews these and other issues on its website.

And I’ll finish with a study posted last week by the Harvard Project on International Agreements. This document looks at four different architectures - only one of which is a global cap-and-trade system. Two other options include carbon taxes, widely applied at the national level, and a portfolio of treaties that tackle various problems one at a time. The fourth is based on linkages among separate cap-and-trade systems that are gradually popping up around the globe, a ground-up process that the Harvard folks believe is already under way.

The latter two scenarios might well serve as an optimistic assessment of what might happen if the pessimists - who believe that global warming is too big, too difficult and too complex to address in a single treaty - are right.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 03, 2008
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Cross-posted from The Great Beyond, on behalf of Jeff Tollefson:

The United Nations global warming negotiations got of to a predictable start today in Poznan, Poland, with global leaders calling for urgent action to stem the rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

Day one also offered a taste of the antagonism that has become a hallmark of US relations with most of the world during the George W. Bush administration. This might make for good press, but everybody is already looking forward to President-Elect Obama, who has pledged aggressive regulatory action to curb emissions.

Polish Prime Minister and conference host Donald Tusk found himself in an awkward position as well. He called for action on global warming - and then had to answer questions about his opposition to a European Union proposal to begin a new round of emissions reductions in 2013. Tusk later cited his country's reliance on coal and said Poland is looking to "create and adapt the package, not to reject it," according to The Associated Press.

The United Kingdom also received a bit of a jolt Monday with the release of a new report documenting the early implications of its commitment to slash greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050 (see the Guardian's story here). Although the Committee on Climate Change led by Adair Turner was optimistic in saying that the proposed reductions are doable "without harming the UK's economy," Reuters reported that there will be consequences, namely increased energy costs that could push some 1.7 million homes into "fuel poverty."

Given the ongoing economic crisis, there are plenty of questions about how all of this will play out, both at the national and international levels. But one thing is clear: Poznan is unlikely to provide any concrete answers. The two-week conference is more of a preparatory forum for the nitty-gritty negotiations that will take place next year.

Posted by Alex Witze on December 02, 2008
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Cross-posted from Climate Feedback, on behalf of Jeff Tollefson:

Shortly after finishing up this week’s Nature story (subscription required) on the upcoming climate talks in Poland, I finally secured an interview with US Ambassador Harlan Watson, the United States' chief climate negotiator.

Continue reading "Poznan: the chief US negotiator speaks" »

Posted by Alex Witze on December 02, 2008
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Jeff Tollefson, Nature's climate reporter, will be at the UN climate conference in Poznan, Poland, starting this weekend. He'll be posting updates from the meeting as they happen on this blog. For his preview of what to expect from the conference -- the last big step before negotiators convene in Copenhagen next year, hoping to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol -- see here (subscription required).

Posted by Alex Witze on December 02, 2008
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