Cancún or Can'tcún? Summary of COP 16
This post was written by Jennifer Smokelin.
Last year, after months of build up, politicians, scientists, environmental activists, and Reed Smith attorneys flocked to Copenhagen for COP15: a conference that many hoped would produce a binding international agreement on carbon emissions and an actionable plan for addressing climate change. These goals, of course, weren't realized. Nearly twelve months later, the Conference of the Parties convened once again, this time in Cancun, Mexico. The issues, controversies, and conflicts were very similar.
The outcome of COP 15 last year was the Copenhagen Accord – an agreement that was not adopted by the UN congress as a whole because of the objections of 5 countries. The outcome of this year’s COP (over the objection of one country, Bolivia) are the Cancun Agreements. The Cancun Agreements are a lot less than the comprehensive agreement that many countries wanted and leave open the question of whether any of its measures, including emission cuts, will be legally binding. This is a modest step in international climate negotiations and in its modesty highlights the international discord on the subject and punts a lot of the harder decision to future COPs. For example, the Cancun Agreements declare that deeper cuts in carbon emissions are needed, but do not specify any given mechanism for achieving the pledges each country has made.
The following is a summary of progress (or lack thereof) on key international issues.
Future of the Kyoto Protocol
As background, the Kyoto Protocol is the binding international agreement regarding greenhouse gas emissions and is the framework for international reduction of such emissions. The protocol was signed at COP 3 with the signatures of (now) 121 countries. The agreement sets binding greenhouse gas emissions targets for 37 industrialized countries including the European Union in a first phase from 2008-2012. Because it is legally binding it has been instrumental in framing countries’ legal response to climate change – like the EU ETS, Europe’s cap and trade system. But what happens after 2012?
At COP 16, there was clearly a divide between rich and poor countries over the future of the Kyoto protocol after 2012. Maintaining Kyoto is crucial to the future of the Clean Development Mechanism and the offset market, such as LULUCF and REDD+. The Kyoto Protocol is the connecting tissue on all the international GHG framework issues –if it falls (like a house of cards) so do the rest.
From the get-go of COP16 it was clear there was disagreement with regard to the future of the Kyoto Protocol. The crisis over Kyoto erupted at the start of the talks when Japan said it was not prepared to sign on to a second phase of the agreement without commitments on reducing emissions from emerging economies such as India and China because without these other economies, the Kyoto Protocol only committed 30% of the world’s GHG emission to any sort of emission reduction. By the end of COP16, Japan softened its position but Russia and Canada became even more forceful about scrapping Kyoto – meaning that if all three backed out, only 18% of global carbon emissions would be covered by the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol. 18% is not enough to do any sort of good from a climate standpoint.
Midway through the second week, EU and a group of small island Pacific states jointly proposed a new international treaty at the talks to commit developing and developed countries to reducing their climate emissions. The move outraged many developing countries, including China, Brazil and India, who fear that rich countries will use the proposal to lay the foundations to ditch the Kyoto protocol and replace it with a much weaker alternative
In the end the continued resistance by some countries to the Kyoto Protocol was a stumbling block for any meaningful and comprehensive reduction agreements. Still, negotiators finally found a compromise in the Cancun Agreements and, late into the night, delegates cheered speeches from governments that been demanding during negotiations – as, one by one, they endorsed the final draft. However, not much concrete was actually agreed to. The Cancun Agreements state that countries will “aim to complete” work about extending the Kyoto Protocol “as early as possible and in time to ensure that there is no gap between the first and second commitment periods.” Developed nations will consider extending the Kyoto Protocol, but only as part of a wider agreement that commits all countries to making emissions cuts. The text refers to findings by the UN panel of climate scientists that greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations would have to fall by between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst damage
Green Climate Fund
The debate over the future of the Kyoto agreement was not the only potential breaking point in the talks. The US climate envoy, Todd Stern, was accused of blocking a deal on the Green Climate Fund by insisting the details be fully worked out at Cancún – instead of deferred to the next set of climate negotiations. If you recall, the Copenhagen Accord (negotiated at COP 15) created the Green Climate Fund, where developed nations promised new funds "approaching $30 billion for 2010-2012" to help developing countries. In the longer term, "developed countries commit to a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion a year by 2020." However, the Copenhagen Accord was never formally adopted by the UNFCCC congress and the Copenhagen Accord avoided the crucial point of how to fund this Green Climate Fund, particularly the long-term $100 billion. Of the agreed $30 billion that was pledged since Copenhagen, only $8 billion has actually been committed to international climate change programs and only $4 billion has actually been received. Going into COP 16, a recent report from the high-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Finance convened by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon found that while it will be challenging, the developed countries can meet their pledges.
The Cancun Agreements formally set up a financial structure or “Green Climate Fund” that provides funding and technology to less developed nations to stave off the threats posed by climate change. The Fund will manage the annual $100 billion pledged by developing countries at the Copenhagen COP, money that is to be handed out beginning in 2020.
In the Cancun Agreements, the structure of the fund is set out in detail, including governance, voting and accountability. The board will have 15 members from developed and 25 from developing countries. The World Bank is appointed to serve as Trustee for the first 3 years.
Going in to COP16, negotiators recognized the big problem in designing the Fund was giving its operational control to a body with significant financial proficiency, and identifying a financial caretaker for the fund that has the institutional capability to handle billions of dollars. The Cancun Agreements resolved the financial caretaker issue (World Bank), but didn’t advance significantly on the first part of the problem
CCS
Discussions on whether CO2 capture and storage (CCS) can be included under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) have been underway since COP-10 in 2005. At each COP, a decision is often discussed and yet ultimately postponed, with Parties’ positions on support or opposition seeming immobile. At COP-16, on December 4th, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice (SBSTA) proposed a draft decision that, while recognizing that there are issues with CCS and CDM, provided a new context that both respects the issues and establishes a process for resolving them. In contrast, previous decisions on this issue have simply listed concerns, framing the decision in a “yes” or “no” framework.
In the end, the COP parties adopted as one of the Cancun Agreements a decision that carbon dioxide capture and storage in geological formations is eligible as project activities under the clean development mechanism, provided that the issues identified at COP 15 (in decision 2/CMP.5, paragraph 29, to be exact) are resolved and the next SBSTA “elaborate modalities and procedures for the inclusion of carbon dioxide capture and storage in geological formations as project activities under the clean development mechanism, with a view to recommending a decision to the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol at its seventh session (that is, COP 17)” Thus there is now a path towards getting CCS included under CDM.
REDD+
REDD+ (“reducing emissions from deforestation and (forest) degradation”) essentially supports developing countries financially and technically, to either prevent deforestation or regenerate forests through afforestation. The resulting carbon sequestration is aimed to reduce overall emissions, while the move itself will enable sustainable forestry and halt degradation. The negotiating language covering REDD+ was the most settled coming into Cancun.
The final language is a careful compromise among the parties. The negotiation points in COP 16 were limited to a few obstacles, specifically related to financing (see above) and whether REDD+ can be counted in countries'" Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions". The Cancun Agreements build an international system to reduce deforestation, another important step in officially adopting proposals from the Copenhagen Accord. For much of the developed world, REDD is being viewed as a mechanism to reduce global GHG emissions. At present, developed nations are facing severe economic and political roadblocks to implementing concrete emissions reduction targets through domestic legislation – they can use REDD credits instead to meet reduction targets. However, funding REDD remain unclear, particularly in the long term. As of now, REDD would be financed in an adhoc approach through seed funds set up by developed nations and through private sector voluntary carbon markets. When negotiators meet next year in South Africa they will need to add more substance to these efforts.
In sum, in Cancun 193 nations attempted to hammer out their differences and finalized the Cancun Agreements that alone will not solve global warming. The Cancun agreements did formalize many of the proposals of the Copenhagen Accord and establish a temperature target for climate change mitigation, an agreement on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), and the architecture for a climate green fund that apply to all parties and not just developed countries. Look for clarification on all these issues at the next COP. Most agree that REDD will rapidly move forward over the next few years with encouragement from developed nations (for the cheap offsets) and developing countries (for the preservation of forests and offset profit) that view REDD as a faster vehicle to control deforestation and GHGs, as well as a source of economic incentives to tackle clear cutting and forest fires.