| Tue Dec. 14, 2010 11:09 AM PST
By all accounts, the progress made on climate in Cancun last week was a modest step. At the conclusion of the summit, 193 world leaders formalized an agreement that follows through on some of the commitments they made at the climate summit the year before, but punted a lot of the big questions to the future. Among the more concrete steps was the official creation of a global climate fund—though much of the specifics on that front are also still unclear.
The agreement includes the establishment of a $100 billion fund by 2020 that will help poor countries both adopt clean-energy technologies AND? avoid the carbon-intensive development that got the world stuck in this climate change problem in the first place. The fund would also help those countries adapt to the changes that are already taking place and may be unavoidable in the future.
Developed nations agree to "mobilize" billions of dollars for what has been dubbed the "Green Climate Fund." But one of the key questions still lies in the use of that word, "mobilize." This doesn't just mean that developed countries are going to donate that amount through public funds; given the economic situation many governments are facing right now, few are expecting that to happen. Instead, those funds are probably going to come though more innovative mechanisms.
To address this issue of where those funds could come from, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon earlier this year formed the High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, which was tasked with finding new ways of generating money for the fund. The options the group listed included an emission fee on international aviation and shipping, the revenues from the sale of emission permits, and the removal of subsidies for fossil fuels. But leaders gathered in Cancun didn't really address the question of where the funds would come from in their final agreement. So, right now, the fund is basically an empty account, and developed countries still have to figure out how they're going to put money in it.
Development groups are pleased, however, that they did establish the fund, and that the oversight bodies for it will represent a balance between developing countries and the donors. A transitional committee, which will spend the next year (or more) determining how exactly the fund will work, will represent a realistic balance between the developed/developing world, with a focus on the areas most impacted by climate change. It will have 40 members, 15 from the donor countries and 25 from developing nations, and will include seven members from Africa, seven members from Asia, seven members from Latin America and the Caribbean, two members from small islands, and two members from the bloc of least developed countries. The fund's governing board—the group that will decide how to dole out the funds when it is actually set up—will have 24 members, half each from developing and developed countries.
But there are a couple of big questions and potential issues. One is the role of the World Bank in the fund, as the agreement designates the multinational bank as the interim trustee of the fund. The interim trusteeship is scheduled for review three years after the fund is operational. The United States negotiating team fought to get the World Bank as the trustee, but developing countries aren't particularly enthusiastic about the bank playing any role in the fund. For one, the Bank specializes in loans, rather than donations. And it has a dismal recordon energy financing, most recently backing a massive new coal-fired power plant in South Africa earlier this year.
The World Bank, said Siziwe Khanyile of the Groundwork Project in South Africa in a statement, "should be allowed no role in the delivery of climate finance." "The World Bank has already harmed Africa enough, it cannot be trusted with the responsibility for responding to climate change, which threatens many Africans' very survival," said Khanyile.
There are also concerns about how the money will be spent. The short-term finance that countries have already started providing is going overwhelmingly to mitigation efforts, while just 10 percent is going to adaptation, despite the fact that the expenditures are supposed to be balanced between the two. And there is a good deal of concern that most of the funds are actually just repackaged from other development aid programs rather than representing new and additional spending. An analysis from the World Resources Institute found that many of the pledges made so far are "restated or renamed commitments already made in the past."
That's not to say groups aren't happy that the fund exists; whether it would even get off the ground was in question for most of the two-week negotiations. Its establishment is among the more noteable outcome of the two-week summit.
More Thoughts on Cancun
| Tue Dec. 14, 2010 3:01 PM PST
I penned a wrap-up report [1] on the Cancun climate talks in the wee hours of Saturday morning, just before rushing to catch a flight back to the US. Now I've had some time to ponder the agreement.
In short, nearly everyone acknowledges that the broad goals nations agreed to in Cancun, which largely mirror those outlined in the Copenhagen accord [2], fall far short of what is actually needed to avert disastrous impacts of climate change. While leaders have, on paper, committed to limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the pledges so far [3] won't meet that. Instead, they leave the world [4] on a path to a temperature rise of 3 to 3.9 degrees Celsius—dangerously high for the most vulnerable regions of the world. Meanwhile, small island states and other vulnerable nations are still arguing that 2 degrees is already too much; leaders should aim for 1.5 degrees.
The Cancun agreements also leave some of the thorniest questions about the legal status of international climate deals unanswered. Whether industrialized nations will extend the life of the Kyoto Protocol (excluding, of course, the US, which never ratified it) was a major subject of disagreement [5] at COP16. Japan and Russia said no way, while developing nations have stood firm that dropping the only legally binding instrument to curb emissions would be a deal-breaker for them. There was really no resolution on that issue in Cancun; instead, it was punted to next year's meeting in Durban, South Africa—even closer to the looming 2012 expiration date for the first commitment period for Kyoto. The debate probably isn't going to get any easier in the next 12 months.
I think Sivan Kartha of the Stockholm Environment Institute put it best when he noted that it's not yet clear whether the one-year delay will serve as "a lifeline or a noose" for Kyoto. Unless something changes significantly in the next year, it sure looks to me like the latter. This is largely because there's no real sense yet of where the separate track of negotiations, the one that would bring the US and China, into an agreement is heading in terms of its legal form. As many times as US climate envoy Todd Stern has insisted that the US doesn't have a say on Kyoto, it really does—if only because the tension around it is the fact that there's very little faith globally that the US is going to pass a new domestic climate law and/or ratify a treaty for at least another two years (if ever). So until the legal path of a new agreement takes shape, the fate of Kyoto will continue to plague negotiators.
That said, the outcome in Cancun was, I think, as positive as it could have been given the scaled back expectations. Negotiators accomplished what they set out to at the summit, and 193 of the 194 countries there left satisfied—or at least as satisfied as anyone really can be when you're trying to reach global consensus. But more than the outcome, it was heartening to see negotiators actually happy with the process, especially after the muddled end to the Copenhagen climate talks a year ago. Sure, President Obama and a small group of leaders were able to hash out a deal [6] last year that largely serves as the basis for the Cancun agreement. But it ended in utter chaos—with countries feeling betrayed and shut out, and the body unable to formally adopt the deal. Contrast that to the multiple rounds of standing ovations that the Mexican presidency received Friday night and into Saturday morning and the near-unanimous agreement on adopting the package.
The cheers were more for the process than the substance, but that means something in the context of these climate summits. It's really, really difficult to get the countries of the world to agree to anything. Doing so takes masterful mediators, trust among the parties, and it takes time—probably more time than the pace of climate change really allows us, unfortunately.
I'll have a few more posts in the coming days about specific portions of the Cancun agreement. In the meantime, here are a few other perspectives.
In short, nearly everyone acknowledges that the broad goals nations agreed to in Cancun, which largely mirror those outlined in the Copenhagen accord [2], fall far short of what is actually needed to avert disastrous impacts of climate change. While leaders have, on paper, committed to limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the pledges so far [3] won't meet that. Instead, they leave the world [4] on a path to a temperature rise of 3 to 3.9 degrees Celsius—dangerously high for the most vulnerable regions of the world. Meanwhile, small island states and other vulnerable nations are still arguing that 2 degrees is already too much; leaders should aim for 1.5 degrees.
The Cancun agreements also leave some of the thorniest questions about the legal status of international climate deals unanswered. Whether industrialized nations will extend the life of the Kyoto Protocol (excluding, of course, the US, which never ratified it) was a major subject of disagreement [5] at COP16. Japan and Russia said no way, while developing nations have stood firm that dropping the only legally binding instrument to curb emissions would be a deal-breaker for them. There was really no resolution on that issue in Cancun; instead, it was punted to next year's meeting in Durban, South Africa—even closer to the looming 2012 expiration date for the first commitment period for Kyoto. The debate probably isn't going to get any easier in the next 12 months.
I think Sivan Kartha of the Stockholm Environment Institute put it best when he noted that it's not yet clear whether the one-year delay will serve as "a lifeline or a noose" for Kyoto. Unless something changes significantly in the next year, it sure looks to me like the latter. This is largely because there's no real sense yet of where the separate track of negotiations, the one that would bring the US and China, into an agreement is heading in terms of its legal form. As many times as US climate envoy Todd Stern has insisted that the US doesn't have a say on Kyoto, it really does—if only because the tension around it is the fact that there's very little faith globally that the US is going to pass a new domestic climate law and/or ratify a treaty for at least another two years (if ever). So until the legal path of a new agreement takes shape, the fate of Kyoto will continue to plague negotiators.
That said, the outcome in Cancun was, I think, as positive as it could have been given the scaled back expectations. Negotiators accomplished what they set out to at the summit, and 193 of the 194 countries there left satisfied—or at least as satisfied as anyone really can be when you're trying to reach global consensus. But more than the outcome, it was heartening to see negotiators actually happy with the process, especially after the muddled end to the Copenhagen climate talks a year ago. Sure, President Obama and a small group of leaders were able to hash out a deal [6] last year that largely serves as the basis for the Cancun agreement. But it ended in utter chaos—with countries feeling betrayed and shut out, and the body unable to formally adopt the deal. Contrast that to the multiple rounds of standing ovations that the Mexican presidency received Friday night and into Saturday morning and the near-unanimous agreement on adopting the package.
The cheers were more for the process than the substance, but that means something in the context of these climate summits. It's really, really difficult to get the countries of the world to agree to anything. Doing so takes masterful mediators, trust among the parties, and it takes time—probably more time than the pace of climate change really allows us, unfortunately.
I'll have a few more posts in the coming days about specific portions of the Cancun agreement. In the meantime, here are a few other perspectives.
Here's Lisa Friedman reporting for ClimateWire [7]:
And here's Michael Levi [10] of the Council on Foreign Relations: "Politically, it takes what was a toxic agreement and obtains much more solid buy-in from the most important parties."
Throughout the halls, the mood was a mixture of jubilation and relief. Few cast the Cancun Agreements as major step forward, but most said it did repair the damage done to the U.N. climate negotiations by the chaotic and contentious meeting last year in Copenhagen, Denmark.
"We've definitely exorcised the ghost of Copenhagen," said Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, as he hopped back on crutches from the Moon Palace after the initial vote.
"The emotion is a little ahead of the substance, but that's OK. It's a good night," Meyer said. Angela Anderson, director of the Climate Action Network, called it a Copenhagen "do-over."Here's what Brad Johnson, of the Center for American Progress's Wonk Room, had to say [8]:
The first lesson of the Cancun talks is that the governments of the world can in fact work together on global warming, even though decoupling civilization from greenhouse pollution is a herculean task. However, the second lesson is that their leadership only gets humanity so far. Only the full mobilization of the present generation can overcome the institutional barriers to change and protect our fragile civilization from the raging climate system our pollution has created. The Cancun compact has restored hope around the world, but now the actual work has to begin."It represents a set of modest steps forward," writes Robert N. Stavins [9], director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. "Nothing more should be expected from this process."
And here's Michael Levi [10] of the Council on Foreign Relations: "Politically, it takes what was a toxic agreement and obtains much more solid buy-in from the most important parties."
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