Lively exchange among ministers on the Durban Platform

At a dialogue session aimed at delineating the contours of the proposed 2015 universal agreement on climate change, ministers and envoys from developing and developed countries expressed divergent views. Hilary Chiew reports.

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THE High-level Ministerial Dialogue on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action saw ministers and special envoys for climate change from both developed and developing countries reiterating their respective positions in the negotiations at the Warsaw climate conference, showing a divergence of views over the agreement to be concluded in 2015.

Several developing countries' representatives stressed the importance of not rewriting the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), respecting the Convention's principles and provisions, particularly the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) and equity. They called upon developed-country Parties to fulfil their commitments under the Convention in terms of mitigation and the provision of financial resources in order to deliver a successful outcome in 2015.

The speakers from developed countries, on the other hand, stated strongly that 'the world had changed' since 1992 (the year the Convention was adopted) and that the two annexes in the Convention representing divisions between developed and developing countries (Annex I and non-Annex I) were outdated and unacceptable.

A brutally honest discussion

The High-level Dialogue held on 21 November was co-facilitated by Ministers Vivian Balakrishnan (Singapore) and Tim Groser (New Zealand), who said that the session was meant to create an opportunity for ministers to provide political direction and increase the momentum of the process under the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP).

Taking the cue from Balakrishnan to 'have a brutally honest discussion as needs be to crystallise the differences and provide strategic guidance with a sense of urgency', the speakers were frank about their expectations.

Three questions were projected on the screen to guide Parties' interventions. They were: What kind of change should a successful and meaningful 2015 agreement catalyse in the world and what elements of this agreement will secure such a change?; How can the 2015 agreement be made to stand the test of time for all and remain durable while adaptable to changing circumstances?; and How can ambitious pre-2020 actions provide for a transitional phase towards the post-2020 world?

The dialogue was preceded by a keynote address by President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania. He hoped that Paris (the venue of COP 21 in 2015) would provide the agreement that had proved elusive since Copenhagen (COP 15 in 2009). He reminded Parties that they agreed to begin working for a new climate treaty no later than 2015 and developed countries agreed to support the developing countries, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, to adapt to climate change. He noted that the agreement had to be comprehensive and balanced in terms of mitigation and adaptation actions, the latter taking into account millions of communities who were innocent victims of climate change.

He also called for addressing the inequality in the current climate regime where Africa was left out from various opportunities in the climate actions particularly those under the Kyoto Protocol (referring to the Clean Development Mechanism).

President Kikwete said African nations were innovating and contributing in their own ways in fighting climate change but leadership must come from the industrialised nations in terms of support. He outlined three areas where attention should be given: (1) dynamism of all governments to increase emission reductions over time in accordance with the principles of the Convention, with Africa needing support in finance, skills and technologies; (2) broad approach to climate finance where public finance must be scaled up and developed more effectively and in the long term, effective policies to involve the private sector; and (3) addressing the ambition gap in terms of finance, technology and capacity building, with the low level of ambition of developed-country Parties remaining a matter of great concern.

Balakrishnan invited three 'ice-breakers' to kickstart the dialogue, starting with China.

Sincere cooperation

Xie Zhenhua, Vice Chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission, said scientific facts had shown that climate change had become a tangible and severe threat to sustainable development, and all countries should work together to tackle it through sincere cooperation. He made the following points: respect the principles of equity, CBDR and respective capabilities; funding was key for success and building trust; the funds from developed countries for the period 2013 to 2015 should be no less than the fast-start finance; a clear roadmap for providing $100 billion each year by 2020; capitalisation of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) with public funds as the major source as soon as possible; ratification of the amendment to the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) as soon as possible; launch the review process to further raise mitigation ambition; non-KP developed-country Parties to undertake comparable emission reductions (under the UNFCCC); and start the formal negotiation under the Durban Platform on the pillars of mitigation, adaptation, funding and technology in a balanced fashion, in accordance with the decisions made in Durban and Doha as a positive signal to assure the international community of a 2015 agreement.

Xie also highlighted China's emission reduction policies and actions and South-South cooperation towards combating climate change.

The United States climate change special envoy Todd Stern stressed that ambition should begin at home, noting that the US carbon emissions had fallen for two decades while its economy grew. He shared the country's new regulation in the energy and transport sectors. On the issue of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), he said the global phasedown presented a huge opportunity and urged use of the Montreal Protocol (on Ozone Depleting Substances) to phase down the production and consumption of the gas but keeping the accounting within the UNFCCC.

[Several developing countries led by India argue that HFCs are greenhouse gases (and non-ozone depleting) and should thus be dealt with under the UNFCCC.]

Stern said the 2015 agreement needed to include meaningful participation of all Parties, and was encouraged by the significant convergence in negotiations in 2013. He further noted that the idea of nationally determined commitments ensured that Parties could put forward self-differentiated commitments and this was fully consistent with CBDR, adding that the US was ready to submit its commitment well ahead of Paris.

He said quite a few Parties had argued that self-differentiation was not enough to satisfy CBDR, which was based on the two categories of countries (set in 1992) that could never be changed no matter how out of date those categories were in the 'new world'. This, he said, was a prescription for orthodoxy and not for solving the problem. Therefore, it just would not work. If those categories were to be operational, then they must evolve according to circumstances. Alternately, they could remain unchanged if they were not operational.

Venezuela's climate change envoy and Vice Minister Claudia Salerno Caldera expressed four points that she felt Parties should be tackling. She said in Durban (COP 17 in 2011), they agreed to negotiate a rules-based regime under the Convention which should be an essential part of the 2015 agreement, which included the principles and provisions that were part of the Convention such as its rules, annexes and structure. They were not negotiating the rules of the ADP. In her view, the ADP discussion and decisions should not prejudge or limit the 2015 outcome. She recalled that in Durban, Parties agreed on three forms - a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force. Therefore, discussions and decisions should respect the fact that the three options would remain on the table until 2015.

She said developing countries had strong concerns regarding the issues of finance and technology transfer being held hostage in Warsaw and this was a bad signal as the ADP was not merely a mitigation agreement. She described the current state of the ADP negotiations, where developed countries were calling for flexibilities, as a revised form of the Copenhagen Accord, where an individual country's mitigation commitment had no obligation for compliance, with every individual country doing 'what they can, when they can and as they can'.

Co-facilitator Balakrishnan then opened the floor for interventions.

The European Union's Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said she appreciated the frank ministerial exchange but expressed concerns over where the negotiation was heading. Citing the discussions on the draft text in the ADP negotiations, she said they could not afford any backtracking from the Durban decisions.

She said Parties agreed that they must respect CBDR but it was also clear that reaching far into the 21st century, they needed a more dynamic way than when they started in 1992. To close the mitigation gap, one key area lay in the phasedown of HFCs. She said the EU was phasing down HFCs and would like others to send a similar strong signal. She also wanted those that had not submitted their mitigation pledges to do so and hoped that at the ministerial session in June 2014 in Bonn, all Parties, not just those that were obliged to do so under the second commitment period of the KP, would be prepared to raise their efforts. She urged Parties to leave Warsaw and go back and do their 'homework' in time for the Paris COP (in 2015).

Too exotic to be understood

On the concern over a bottom-up regime where some said there was a risk it would not go far enough, she said there was also a problem with a top-down approach as there were too few participants. She said there must be some kind of a hybrid approach that would ensure enough was done to stay below the 2øC warming limit. She argued that while developed-country Parties had to deliver more than others for very good reasons, it could not be ensured that the world would stay below 2øC warming unless all were committed to doing their utmost in the post-2020 regime.

In response to China's assertion that mitigation and adaptation must be balanced, Hedegaard said that did not mean less could be done on mitigation because, according to the science, it was not possible to adapt to a world with more than 2øC temperature rise. She stressed that Parties should leave Warsaw saying loud and clear that 'we will go home and do our homework', adding that it was not a fantastic outcome but a minimum one.

Nauru, representing the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), said the language of the COPs was too exotic to be understood. It stressed that the ADP workplan under workstream 2 (on the pre-2020 mitigation ambition) provided an effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help each other to do it. However, developing countries needed funding and capacity building for the efforts. It did not understand why countries with greater wealth were not providing the promised finance, adding that AOSIS needed a clear outcome from Warsaw and asked for a workplan to deliver finance and capacity building.

Japan said the post-2020 framework must be fair, effective and transparent for all countries to ensure that commitments were evaluated and performance was reviewed, adding that it was important to foster mutual understanding of Parties to enhance transparency of commitments.

Malaysia's Natural Resources and Environment Minister G Palanivel said the 2015 agreement must be firmly rooted in the understanding that historical activities that increased the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, facilitated the amassing of wealth in developed countries and reduced the atmospheric space needed for other countries to sustainably develop, must form the scientific, factual and moral basis. Such an agreement would also ensure that developed countries take the lead in undertaking enhanced mitigation commitments and would provide certainty on the provision of the means of implementation to developing countries to undertake action, resulting in the desired upward spiral of ambition by all countries. He called for a clear workplan for the pre-2020 period to scale up mitigation in developed countries while scaling up mitigation and adaptation in developing countries through the provision of finance and technology development and transfer, together with the requisite capacity building.

Peru, the host for the next COP in Lima, said to produce a draft agreement by May 2015, there was a need for substantial results from Warsaw and for Parties to draw up clear deadlines of their mitigation ambition between now and Lima. It was equally important for developed countries to announce additional financial inputs and carry out appropriate mitigation action.

Bolivia said a work programme for 2015 was vital to ensure a legal instrument under the Convention which is governed by its principles and provisions especially CBDR. It stressed that CBDR also implied that developed countries must undertake quantified emission reduction commitments of at least 40% reductions compared to 1990 levels; otherwise the mitigation gap could not be closed before 2020. There must be clear decisions on finance and technology transfer to be adopted in Warsaw such as a finance target of $70 billion by 2016 and $100 billion a year by 2020. There must not be attempts to dilute these efforts by taking money for other sources like bank loans, carbon markets and private investments. It stressed that the operationalisation of a loss and damage mechanism was vital, considering what happened to the Philippines, in reference to the devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan.

The UK's Secretary of State for Energy Ed Davey acknowledged that while developed countries needed to lead, they could not do it alone. In response to China on differentiating the actions of developed and developing countries in the 2015 agreement, it would like to pose the issue differently: how can the agreement be designed so that it is fair - where big economies do more? He said a molecule of carbon, regardless of whether it was emitted in the past, present or future, would be equally damaging today and in the future. He urged Parties to look at things practically and not to split the world (into developed and developing countries), recalling that in Durban, it had been decided that the agreement would be applicable to all.

Intergenerational equity

To this, India's Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan, who took the floor following the UK, said Parties must consider intergenerational equity.

She asked about developing countries that had to face the consequences of historical emissions. She said equity and historical responsibility emerged from a moral obligation and a scientific fact. An ambitious agreement could not be achieved in 2015 unless both science and history were recognised and built upon. She stressed that the ADP must be guided by the principle of CBDR and they were not assembled here to rewrite the Convention. She said they needed to build on the edifice since 1992 and not preside over its demise in Warsaw. On technology transfer, she said India was putting forth a new proposal which would reward innovators by calling for a new window in the Green Climate Fund for funding technologies protected by intellectual property to developing countries by paying the difference in cost.

On the issue of HFCs, Natarajan said that some countries from the G20 major economies grouping had opposed efforts to bring the gas under the Montreal Protocol. The issue, she added, should not be seen from a business perspective of providing markets to domestic companies (in developed countries). Developing countries needed clarity on identified substitutes, their costs, safety and economic feasibility. She said the decision of the last COP to set up a mechanism for addressing loss and damage must be taken to its logical conclusion.

Nepal, speaking for the least developed countries (LDCs), said only a new legally binding protocol would truly stand the test of time as it would ensure all Parties play their roles, with developed countries taking the lead. It said the 2015 agreement must incentivise developing countries to transit to a low-emission and sustainable pathway. It expressed concern over proposals for a non-binding pledge and review system, adding that the new agreement should include a continuous commitment period for a maximum of five years.

France, the host of COP 21 in 2015, said the Warsaw outcome should launch a work programme for the 2015 agreement. The Parties could not tell themselves there were still two years to Paris but had to start the work now, France said, adding that it hoped that by early 2014, the text would be ready for Paris.

Brunei, Colombia, Ireland, Fiji, Switzerland, the Marshall Islands, the Russian Federation, Kenya, Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, Egypt, Palau, Norway, Iran, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Slovenia, Portugal and South Africa also shared their views.

In conclusion, co-facilitator of the dialogue Tim Groser said he heard nothing in the interventions that was irreconcilable. There had been more agreements than disagreements and he urged Parties to make progress.

Hilary Chiew is a senior researcher with the Third World Network.

*Third World Resurgence No. 279/280, November/December 2013, pp 29-32