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THERE is a keen interest on this year’s UN climate negotiations due in four weeks in Paris, France. That is where a new global pact to control climate change, replacing the expired Kyoto Protocol (KP), will be agreed, capping four years of negotiations, and re-negotiations. Now, the final round of preparatory talks closed in the German city of Bonn last Friday (October 23), with parties distilling the multi-paged draft Paris climate text agreed at Geneva earlier in the year, with little success on the fundamental aspects of the new deal.

As the talks opened on Monday, parties were shell-shocked to find out that the draft text had been whittled down to just 20 pages, with much of the developing countries’ demands on mitigation, loss and damage, technology and others missing.

“The co-chairs were unbalanced,” Veronica Gundu, deputy director for climate change in the Environment, Water and Climate Ministry, charged from Bonn last Friday, where she was negotiating. As co-chairs of the new climate accord-making process, the US and Algeria were responsible for trimming the draft text down, smuggling out key inputs from poor African nations, and from elsewhere in the Global South.

After much pressure, the co-chairs agreed to bring back into the text, the mock new climate agreement, over 60 additions from developing nations of the material that had been omitted, but the firewall of distrust and anger had already embedded into the talks.

“In the spirit of moving forward each party was allowed to add their components that they felt were missing,” said Mrs Gundu. “As a result, the document is bracketed with increased areas of divergence especially in technology, mitigation and finance. “The compliance issue has been watered down and may not be stringent enough to enable parties, especially the developed countries, to play their role in keeping the temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.”

The talks in Bonn precede the main global climate negotiations held every year in December. The new climate agreement, which only becomes effective in 2020, needs to measure up with the demands of holding global temperature rise in this century below 2 degrees Celsius, the limit considered safe by scientists.

To achieve that, the world’s biggest polluters must cut emissions by as much as 65 percent below 2010 levels by 2050, phase in renewables, as well as avail funding and technology to help poor countries cope, scientists say. This change must be led by developed countries, which have acknowledged responsibility for causing the current climate change problem. But not only that, rich nations must also pay for and help poor countries in Africa and elsewhere adapt.

Widespread anger
At Bonn, the vacuum created by the expiry of the KP’s first period in 2012 and continued calls for firmer reductions commitments by extremely weaker polluters, are hurting global action on climate. Anger has been widespread. A South African negotiator likened the watered down draft climate text to “apartheid,” an inhumane, white supremacists political system that ruled South Africa for centuries until 20 years ago.

“We find ourselves in a position where in essence we are disefranchised,” said Ambassador Nozipho Joyce Mxakato-Diseko, speaking for the Group of 77 and China. The draft text has been criticised for ignoring demands of the poor while favouring unfair rich-country positions at the expense of rapid climate action, both in the pre and post 2020 periods.

Mrs Gundu said some progress had been achieved on adaptation and transparency, but the actions of the co-chairs had left the entire negotiating process in question, uncertain whether they are the right leaders to guide the world towards a fair and equitable deal at Paris. “While we are making progress in adaptation and transparency, there is stalled movement on finance and mitigation,” she said.

“We have managed to put language to adaptation, that it is a global challenge and developing countries need support to address the adverse impacts of climate change. “However, developed countries, especially the European Union, were not ready to negotiate on our proposed text on loss and damage after we felt that the proposed text by the co-chairs was empty.

“Currently the contentious issue with G77 is how do we move forward to Paris? Should we still give the co-chairs another mandate considering that the initial work was not well done?” Hopes for a good deal at Paris are fading away, fast. And that is bad news for Africa. Mrs Gundu said: “For a fair and ambitious agreement, there is need to avoid corridor talk and to increase transparency.”

Corridor talk, informal talks that run concurrently with the formal ones, are reminiscent of Copenhagen. The 2009 UN climate conference in Copenhagen, 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 select representatives from the developing nations took place alongside the main negotiations.

Those meeting informally eventually ‘smuggled’ into the formal talks the Copenhagen 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.

This is what has contributed to the weakening of the UN climate negotiation process, with many delegates at Bonn expressing confusion about the mode of work, lamenting the continuing “compilation, clustering and grouping” taking place. As part of its demands, Africa emphasised on ramping up pre-2020 ambition to avoid an escalation of greenhouse gases (GHG) during this non-agreement, non-commitment period.

The continent pushed that developed countries achieve a minimum 40 percent economy wide emission reductions by 2020, reduce GHG emissions by 25 percent by 2017, 30 percent by 2018, 35 percent in 2019 and 40 percent by 2020.

But much of the mitigation plans from developed countries released to the UN barely address Africa’s hopes, not least in the immediate or at any other time in future. The US, the world’s number two emitter, is aiming to cut GHGs by just 28 percent, maximum, by 2025 compared to 1990 levels. The EU plans to cut emissions by 40 percent by 2030 from 1990 levels.

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.

It is unlikely, however, Africa’s demands will be met at Paris. Such demands have been rejected or completely ignored at previous summits. Nothing has fundamentally changed in the negotiating process from ever since except contrary calls the continent should now also commit.

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.

God is faithful.

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