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Jeffrey Gogo Climate Story
ANNOYED by the slow progress at the annual UN climate talks, which ended in disappointment in Warsaw, Poland, 10 days ago, the Philippines negotiator, Naderev Sano, who was on a hunger strike, described the negotiations as a “farce (and) an annual carbon-intensive gathering of useless frequent fliers”.
The comments background a devastating typhoon that killed thousands of people in his homeland, the second such calamity in as many years, which, again, coincided with the hosting of the Conference of the Parties meeting or COP under the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change.
This year’s COP, the 19th such meeting, which lapsed a day longer after the original closing date, drew bitter comments from many quarters within the developing world and the civic society for failing to concretise agreements from previous COPs despite mounting evidence of the dangers paused by climate change.
The Philippines’ catastrophe; warnings by the World Meteorological Organisation that 2013 was among the top 10 warmest years on record; further warnings by the UN Environment Programme that at the current level of ambition and emissions growth, the world was on course for an unsustainable 4 degrees Celsius warming; and the increased frequency and extremity of climate disasters worldwide, failed to inspire urgency among the parties at Warsaw.
In the end, those in the developing world, particularly Africa, were left clutching at straws that Warsaw, widely regarded as the “Finance COP or Implementation COP” could deliver neither of the pre-conference targets at the desired scale nor with measurable predictability.
Going into COP19, Africa was particularly concerned that developed countries availed finance for mitigation and adaptation programmes back at home, as agreed at the decisive 2009 COP at Copenhagen.
But after two weeks of gruelling talks, all that Africa received were promises on top of other broken promises for funding, further strengthening the level of distrust among parties while simultaneously weakening the UN climate process.
At Warsaw, Korea pledged US$40 million to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), and seven European countries pledged US$72 million to the Adaptation Fund.
However, since pledges remain only pledges unless fulfilled, the gestures proved insufficient to building confidence among developing countries that the 2009 promise of US$100 billion per year by 2020 would be met. As it is, developed countries failed to fulfil the US$30 billion fast-start finance during the period 2010 to 2012.
Africa and its hard pressed peers in the developing world are concerned climate funding from earlier pledges have declined 70 percent in the last year, and that with only US$7 million liquidity, the GCF virtually remains empty. There is no guarantee current pledges will materialise into actual deposits to realise the 2020 goal.
By any measure, pledges amounting to just US$112 million or 11,2 percent of the desired target per year, are mostly spiteful to African countries who bear the biggest brunt of climate impacts despite contributing next to nothing in greenhouse gases emissions, the major cause of climate change.
Negotiations under the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) continued, but failed to reach convincing, progressive decisions for the benefit of mankind or the climate talks.
The ADP, responsible for designing a new legal agreement applicable to all parties to replace the Kyoto Protocol by 2015 and for advancing the pre-2020 emission and mitigation agenda, held marathon sessions in work-groups and round-tables, but the key elements of a draft negotiating text to guide for the 2015 agreement remained elusive.
With only 25 months left before the 2015 COP in Paris, by when the new agreement must be finalised, the absence of a clear pathway to achieving that goal has left the UNFCCC’s climate process in question, whether it has the ability to respond adequately to the urgency of climate change or if the process is still relevant at all.
For a process that began 23 years ago, its effectiveness in combating climate change remains a matter of conjecture, as the main objective of limiting emissions growth in an effective verifiable manner, and therefore, by extension, climate change, is still far from being attained. As a matter of fact, in the years the Convention has existed, the effects of climate change have worsened.
There is now a lot of climate work that has begun at national and local levels in different countries worldwide outside the jurisdiction of the UNFCCC, which may signify the waning confidence in the multilateral climate system from across many state and non-state actors.
In terms of raising mitigation ambitions before 2020, the effective date for a new agreement replacing the Kyoto Protocol, Warsaw failed, further derailing action for capping global temperature rise at the recommended 2 degrees Celsius, considered by scientists as the safe limit.
Japans’ actions at COP19 all but proved that any Annex 1 party could arbitrarily withdraw from the Protocol or alter the terms of its obligations, if it so wishes, and no one could raise a finger about it.
During the first week of negotiations, Japan, one of the biggest GHG emitters and regrettably missing from the second KP commitment period, announced it was slashing its emission targets.
Japan pledged to reduce its emissions by 3,8 percent compared to 2005 by 2020, which, if using 1990 as the base year, results in an increase of 3,1 percent, whereas under the Kyoto Protocol first commitment period, Japan was supposed to reduce its GHG emissions by 6 percent compared to 1990 levels.
At Warsaw, the ADP was largely expected to strengthen work on the content of the 2015 agreement and solidify outcomes on pre-2020 ambition, as key strategies for growing confidence that this process can deliver on both fronts. That did not happen, to Africa’s chagrin.
Another key COP19 agenda item, loss and damage, was also unable to restore Africa’s confidence that the UNFCCC process can meet their expectations.
Last year in Doha, it was agreed that COP19 would establish “institutional arrangements, such as an international mechanism”, to address loss and damage in countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, and elaborate its functions and modalities in accordance with the role of the Convention. This issue proved to be one of the most contentious of the conference.
The eventual outcome on loss and damage, whose effects cannot be “prevented by even the most ambitious mitigation action”, was a compromise agreement that underperformed the continent’s expectations.
Even when there was some agreement on distinguishing loss and damage from adaptation, hopes for a standalone fund for loss and damage were dashed as developed countries insisted on sticking to the current institutional frameworks, as agreed on at earlier COPs, which was essentially a calculated move to escape additional financial responsibility by rich nations.
The new text does not even oblige industrialised states to extend financial support to those in the developing world.
This is despite scientists concluding that “due to the extreme, and sometimes permanent, nature of the damage and losses involved, loss and damage cannot be adequately addressed through adaptation”.
A major outcome was, however, reached on the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation or REDD+ programme, a carbon-based compensation scheme for projects that result in reduced carbon emissions or enhancing carbon sinks or both in tropical forests.
Parties agreed to a series of decisions on REDD+ finance and institutional arrangements, which are essentially annual meetings between national focal points and funding agencies, among other methodological matters.
In conclusion, developed countries must take responsibility and lead the charge on climate change. Firstly, because they are historically responsible for all the pollution fuelling changing climatic conditions today. And secondly, because they continue leading in emitting carbons. Thirdly, for social justice and because they have the money.
Fomenting distrust through delayed implementation of agreed plans or backtracking on such agreements helps no one at all, particularly those in the developing world.
God is faithful.
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