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Under the 196-member Kyoto Protocol, Annex I countries are legally bound to reduce emissions

Jeffrey Gogo Climate Story
INDUSTRIALISED countries must show improved political and financial will to effectively deal with climate change, a problem historically manufactured in Europe and America’s emitting economies, but predominantly affecting poor developing countries, particularly in Africa. The grounds – ethical or otherwise – on which developed nations continue to ask those in the developing world to undertake commitments in a new climate deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol (KP), as was the case at the two-week Bonn climate talks that closed in Germany on June 15 are strongly questionable.

Demands that Africa and the rest of the developing world commit to limiting carbon emissions at the same level as those for Annex I (developed countries) are not only immoral, but also a clear show of lack of leadership, commitment and justice by those countries most responsible for driving climate change.

Whereas Africa contributes under 5 percent of global greenhouse gases (GHG) – climate catalytic gases such as carbon dioxide and methane – the continent suffers disproportionately the science’s dangerous impact.

In recent decades, climate-linked droughts and floods have become a common occurrence across Africa, resulting in extreme hunger, damage and loss for a continent with the least capacity to adapt due to widespread poverty and limited technologies.

At Bonn, participants heard that while developed nations were busy forcing through plans that bound developing countries to commit, the same parties had failed to meet their own targets under the protocol’s first five-year commitment period that expired in 2012.

The European Union made premature claims that it had “overachieved” its first commitment emission reductions of 20 percent below the 1990 levels, the base year. These claims could neither be verified nor supported by the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the global body responsible for leading multi-lateral negotiations aiming to stabilise atmospheric carbon concentrations.

Yet, Annex II countries or developing countries that are party to the protocol but not legally obliged to reduce emissions, actually achieved much more than their lethargic counterparts in the developed world. Developing countries with commitments under the first commitment period reported reductions of 22,6 percent below 1990 levels, the UNFCCC confirmed.

Under the 196-member Kyoto Protocol, Annex I countries are legally bound to reduce emissions in an effective, verifiable manner by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels, but commitments also vary from country to country.
However, some countries still need to be pushed, hard.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the climate convention, told the Bonn negotiations, a key preparatory conference for the main UN climate talks held each year-end for the past 20 years, “that only 10 out of the required 144 ratifications of the Doha Amendment had been received.”

The amendment is key to establishing a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol between now and 2020, when a new climate agreement comes into force. It will also allow for a review or enhancement of global action on climate change as well as addressing mitigation and adaptation.
Adopted at the climate talks convened in the Qatari capital of Doha in December 2012, the amendment is an important part of a package of outcomes from that meeting called the Doha Climate Gateway, as the world seeks to limit temperature rise to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius, the safe limit, according to scientists.

While Figueres hoped that the dangerous warnings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from its recent Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) would “jolt parties into action,” at Bonn, the vacuum created by the expiry of the KP’s first period and continued calls for firmer reductions commitments by extremely weaker polluters, are hurting global action on climate.

With just 18 months before the decisive Paris conference in 2015, these calls are likely to disrupt the pathway to a just and effective agreement, which is acceptable to all, especially by those countries still developing and already aggrieved Annex I nations constantly shifting goal posts.
The absence of the US and China – the two countries producing a combined 50 percent of all world emissions – as well as other major polluters including Japan, Russia, Australia and recently Canada from the KP’s commitment phase is already a thorny issue for African negotiators.

At Bonn, the EU said it was considering a push to limit emissions by 30 percent below 1990 until a new agreement comes into effect in 2020. Such ambitions are critically low and inadequate, falling far below Africa’s expectations of over 40 percent emissions cut by the same date.

Scientists who produced the Fifth Assessment Report said emissions would have to be cut by as much as 80 percent in this century to achieve the desired and sustainable warming of 2 degrees Celsius or under. That would mean cutting by more than three quarters all industrial activity like fossil fuels extraction and use, and applying a corresponding increase in the switch to use of sustainable energy sources such as solar and wind.
The entire economic chain would have to limit emissions by that much to attain targeted warming levels.

The current level of ambition, mistrust and lack of transparency in the climate talks suggests this is far from being achieved, setting the world for an unsustainable above 4 degrees Celsius warming by 2100, as predicted by a 2012 World Bank report, “Turn Down The Heat”.

The 2009 UN climate conference in Copehagen, Denmark is on record for disputes regarding transparency and procedure.
During high level ministerial meetings, informal negotiations involving a handful of highly industrialised and highly polluting countries and some selected representatives from the developing nations took place along side the main negotiations.

Those meeting informally eventually “smuggled” into the formal talks the Copehagen Accord, a set of outcomes crafted by a few countries backstage, but aimed for adoption by several others. Parties responded by “taking note” of the accord although 140 countries later agreed to it in 2010.

Watershed Paris 2015 Conference
The conference of the parties under the UNFCCC negotiating platform in the French capital, Paris, in 2015 will be a sun “riser” or sun “setter” in the course that global action will follow in the post-2015 climate and development agenda.
Copehagen still lingers fresh with huge doses of bitterness, mistrust, accountability and transparency issues.

The promise of $30 billion in quick start finance by developed countries to fund mitigation and adaptation in developing nations between 2010 and 2012 was only half met, as Annex I parties struggled with the financial crisis in their home economies.

Many African states do not regard this an economic recession issue, but a case of broken promises by a dishonest negotiating partner accustomed to arm-twisting the continent, uncharacteristically viewed as a junior partner.

The 2011 climate talks in South Africa produced the Durban Platform, an outcome tasking parties to come up with a new deal, legally enforceable to replace Kyoto in 2020.

This agreement first has to be adopted and agreed to by all parties at the Paris COP. The period between Durban and Paris is being used to create that deal.

At Bonn discussions under the Durban Platform continued but did not yield any agreeable text on the key elements of the new deal, suggesting this year’s COP in the Peruvian capital of Lima in December will not make the negotiators’ work any easier.

With ministers attending the Bonn sessions for the first time, there was high hopes of progress on the ADP this time around. That did not happen. As a matter of fact, the African Group described the two-day ministerial meetings on the Kyoto Protocol “a lost opportunity for raising ambition.”
However, an acceptable agreement in Paris, as far as Africa is concerned, is one that will show significantly increased levels of ambition to cut emissions by developed countries in the pre-and post-2020 periods, and the fulfilment of promises to fund adaptation, mitigation and technology across the continent.

If parties are able to raise ambition to 45 percent by 2020 and 90 percent by 2050, as targeted by Africa, that would be acceptable. A deal under these terms is likely to pull the African Group, a coalition of 53 African countries speaking with a single voice at the climate talks, into joining an agreement that forces its members to commit.

This is not absolute, however. It is unlikely Africa’s demands will be met at Paris. Such demands have been rejected or completely ignored at previous COPs. Nothing has fundamentally changed in the negotiating process ever since except contrary calls that the continent should now also commit.

Already, the EU has said that in October it may adopt resolutions raising reductions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Africa wants that kind of action to come sooner.

A middle of the road deal for Africa, under the current and future circumstances, will, therefore, be one that meets at least half its expectations. That deal must also be very flexible, lowering the continent’s legal commitment targets significantly, if at all, relative to other regions and countries.

Hopefully, these issues could be covered under the intended nationally determined contributions scheme, which aims to gain predictable, measurable and measurable emission commitments from individual states in addition to the legal obligations under KP or the new deal.
God is faithful.

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