BONN, Germany—Two weeks of United Nations(UN) climate talks ended on Thursday, with negotiators trimming a draft global climate pact but leaving core sticking points to be untangled later, before a December summit in Paris, where the landmark agreement is to be adopted.
Frustrated by the slow pace of the climate talks, some negotiators and observers called the Bonn meeting a squandered opportunity to capture the momentum of a declaration this week by seven world leaders, including President Barack Obama endorsing a long-term goal of decarbonizing the global economy—moving away from a dependence on fossil fuels. “We must go faster,” European Union delegate Ilze Pruse said.
Earlier, officials leading the Bonn talks called for patience, with Co-chairman Ahmed Djoghlaf telling reporters no one can craft a universal agreement with more than 190 countries overnight.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,” he said. He noted that some delegates worked so hard in Bonn, they missed Saturday’s Champions League soccer final in Berlin.
French climate envoy Laurence Tubiana likened the painstaking UN process to giving birth, saying it’s difficult to judge the outcome until everything is done.
“You have to wait until the baby is born to see its face,” she said.
The Paris deal, which is supposed to take effect in 2020, would be the first where both rich and poor countries pledge to limit their emissions of greenhouse gases that scientists say are raising global temperatures, resulting in more intense heat waves, rising sea levels and other climate impacts.
A previous agreement, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, only required rich countries to take action.
In Bonn negotiators reorganized sections as they shortened a 90-page text to 85 pages.
The cochairmen were asked to streamline the text further by August. The draft still contains multiple options on contentious issues, including how to differentiate between the obligations of rich and poor countries to fight climate change and what commitments of financial support to fight climate change poor nations want from the rich. It remains unclear whether the pact will be legally binding.
Also undecided is whether the first round of emissions targets should cover the 2020-to-2025 or 2020-to-2030 period. Most targets submitted so far are for the latter, while the US insists on the former.
“The modest progress made in Bonn did not match the significant action taking place around the world,” said Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based environmental group. Athena Ballesteros, director of the Finance Center, World Resources Institute, said, “After two weeks of discussions, there remains much to do to cut the finance text down to a workable size.
While G7 leaders reaffirmed their commitment to mobilising $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020, donor-countries have yet to elaborate how they will meet this goal.
“As negotiators head back to their capitals, they need to focus on converging around a robust finance package to deliver in Paris. This package should include establishing regular cycles to scale up funding over time, closing the finance gap on adaptation, and sending a clear message that all investments be oriented toward achieving the two-degree goal and building climate resilience.”
One main area of agreement was on REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation), a concept that was formally agreed to at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007.
REDD is intended to reward the preservation of forests with carbon credits, which can be sold to polluting companies in the North wishing to offset their harmful emissions. (REDD+, agreed later, extends the concept beyond forests and plantations to include agriculture.)
The deal reached in Bonn resolves all of the outstanding technical issues on REDD+, including finance mechanisms, safeguards and non-market approaches.
REDD has long been a target of criticism by indigenous peoples and other forest dwellers who lack formal land rights and rely on forest resources for their livelihoods—and are all too often excluded from the benefits of international investment. “Today’s breakthrough was unexpected, and countries should be praised for their hard work over the last decade,” said Gustavo Silva-Chávez, who manages the Forest Trends REDDX tracking initiative.
“While REDD+ is finished on paper, the Paris global deal must provide the policy certainty to implement REDD+ on the ground.”
More than 40 countries also released their national climate plans and Norway announced that it will divest $8 billion from coal—the most polluting fuel—in its efforts to accelerate clean energy. Norway’s Statoil was also one of six European oil and gas giants to formally ask the UNFCCC executive secretary, Christina Figueres, for “an open and direct dialogue” on carbon pricing.
Pope Francis is expected to release his high-level teaching document on ecology and climate change next week. But some civil-society groups remain sceptical of pledges by the Group of Seven (G-7) to “decarbonize” the global economy, noting that leaders gave only vague assurances they would work to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 to help poorer nations cope with the worst effects of climate change.
“G-7 countries have signaled their agreement on the importance of tackling climate change eventually, but haven’t announced any meaningful action,” said Susann Scherbarth, climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe.
“The emission cuts they’ve promised are less than half of what climate science recommends and justice requires. We are on the path to a disastrously empty deal in Paris this December, but ordinary people are making the energy transformation that our governments have failed to.”
AP and IPS
Image credits: AP/Martin Meissner