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Climate Change

What's critical at Durban: removing the firewall between developing and developed countries

Durban, December 6: Remove the firewall at all costs: this sums up what the rich countries are doing in the climate negotiations at Durban to remove the differentiation between past polluters – responsible for climate change impacts currently occurring – and the future polluters, who need ecological space to grow.  This is the core of the politics at the Durban conference on climate change. The rich countries are doing all they can, in different ways, to remove this distinction, for until the distinction remains, they will have to take action first to reduce and create carbon space for the poorer countries to increase their emissions.

Green Climate Fund: Yes and NO

Durban, December 7: Today, Wedsensday 7 December, 2011, the high-level segment will discuss the Green Climate Fund (GCF). Ministers will put their wise heads together and decide the fate of the GCF, which has had quite a stormy year since its inception at the Cancun CoP in 2010. Their goal is to create what is called a ‘cover decision’ that adopts the governing instrument and puts in place an interim arrangement until the GCF is finally operational.

New AWG-LCA text out!

Durban, December 7: It is a humdinger.  At 138 pages of bracketed text, and paragraph shifts, this exemplar of sharp and concise decision-making is longer than the one the Chair circulated on Saturday, December 3, 2011. Let’s look at an immediately notable ‘change’ between the two drafts, for now only in the text related to ‘A shared vision for long-term cooperative action’.

How to rewrite the Durban script

It’s that time of the year again. Climate change talks are heating up, with the next conference of parties scheduled in Durban in end-November. There is heat but no light. The negotiations are stuck despite the clear signs of climate change: dangerous and potentially catastrophic extreme weather events.

New REDD+ draft decision circulating!

The discussion on the latest draft decision text and language has been thrown open, for Tuvalu has made a strong and determined representation against the use of new market mechanisms as instruments of climate mitigation in the climate treaty of the future. We are scanning the document. More on it later.  

High-level segment: the freaths of bresh air

Durban, December 7: Tuesday wasn’t a heavy day at the Nkosi Albert Luthuli Convention Centre for the ‘non-governmental’, the way my presence at CoP 17 is measured, reported and verified. For country negotiators, though, it was a heavy-duty day: throughout the day, informal groups of delegates were locked in consultations.

3.2.5: A humble sub mission, italics added

Agenda item 3.2.5: Various approaches, including opportunities for using markets, to enhance the cost-effectiveness of, and to promote, mitigation actions, bearing in mind different circumstances of developed and developing countries

At the cusp of another lost decade

 The climate talk at Durban is heading for a stalemate. I do not see any major breakthrough other than some sort of “Durban declaration / mandate” to take the negotiation process forward. We might also have some decision on Green Climate Fund and its architecture, which the host South Africa and the African Union is pushing for.