Groser and Smith on Kyoto: Just ducking out for a bit. We may be some time.
Vernon Rive . 15/12/2011 10:53:12 p.m.
By now you’ll know that in the early hours of Sunday morning a deal was thrashed out by the 194 members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change which, for better or worse, will guide the course of international climate law for the next decade or so.
The key components of the “Durban Platform” include agreement in principle by a select group of countries led by the European Union to sign up for a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, establishment of a $100 billion “Green Climate Fund” and high-level commitments to work towards a comprehensive climate agreement that – eventually, and hopefully – will coordinate and regulate emissions reductions commitments by developing as well as developed countries.
The new proposal is presented as one which will draw in climate-pariah states such as the USA, as well as China and India. But the price of doing the deal was the inclusion of weasel words in the text: words that will allow scope for the USA, China and India - and New Zealand - all to argue for a new regime which falls short of imposing binding legal obligations on key parties to reduce emissions. And argue for it they will.
International climate negotiations such as those which recently took place in Durban tend to go down to the wire. Parties hold back their ultimate bottom lines until the last minute. These negotiations took that approach to the extreme. Some key documents containing the proposed final text of the decisions were not circulated parties until the last scheduled day of the conference. Marathon sessions from Friday evening bled into the early hours of Saturday morning, and then virtually through the night without succeeding in breaking deadlocks on critical issues.
It took a last-minute proposal by South African conference President Maite Nkoana-Mashabone for an in-session (and very public) “huddle” involving a number of the core parties to unlock an uneasy compromise.
How much of the final outcome was driven by sheer exhaustion is a fair question. Video footage of the last couple of hours of the session shows many of the negotiators struggling to keep their eyes open.
The complete set of decisions adopted by the parties to the Framework convention and Kyoto protocol include technical arrangements or ‘modalities’ on various aspects of the international climate law regime, addressing matters as such the operational arrangements for an international fund intended to provide financing for developing countries for climate mitigation and adaptation projects, and the establishment of an ‘Adaptation Committee’ (a UN body to coordinate activities, largely in poorer countries, to prepare for the escalating impacts of climate change).
As noted in previous posts, the central and most controversial area for discussion concerned the future of the global climate mitigation regime.
One issue was whether the 1997 Kyoto Protocol should be retained for a second round. The protocol’s first commitment period expires on 31 December 2012. A pressing issue was whether those developed countries who have signed up to the Protocol already (including the EU, Australia and New Zealand) would be willing to accept a second commitment period.
The EU had said that it would be willing to accept a second commitment period with obligations which, on their face, imposed tougher requirements to reduce emissions than in CMP1. But it was only prepared to do so if it could be satisfied that the rest of the world (including the USA, China and India) was willing to bring itself under some sort of legally binding regime of emissions reductions commitments. This issue was at the heart of the matter being wrestled with in the early Sunday morning huddle.
What broke the deadlock (with words put up by the Brazilian delegation) was the following text:
[The parties also decide] to launch a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change applicable to all Parties, through a subsidiary body under the Convention hereby established and to be known as the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action.
The words in red were the ones added at 3am on Sunday morning. Apparently, there were conflicting legal views on the implications of the words. For my ZAR, there was already scope for arguments about the fluid nature of any hypothetical future emissions reductions commitments with the words “another legal instrument”. (Such an instrument could be a beefed up version of the Cancun Agreements, involving voluntary commitments but with mandatory reporting obligations. A country gets egg on its face if it doesn’t comply but otherwise doesn’t breach international law, as long as it accurately reports its non-compliance.) “An agreed outcome with legal force” continues the theme, but with feeling.
Mark Lynas, climate change adviser to the President of the Maldives and Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment had this to say about the phrase:
The importance of this to the future of the UNFCCC cannot be overstated. This paragraph heralds the end of the Kyoto system of emissions targets only for industrialised-country parties and looks forward to the dismantling of the Annex 1/non-Annex 1 ‘firewall’ system through a new legal regime “applicable to all parties”.
Well, ok… it almost certainly does herald the end of the Kyoto system. But whether it sets the stage for a better regime is moot.
So where does New Zealand sit in all of this?
As foreshadowed in my previous post, the COP decision recording agreed outcomes concerning the Kyoto Protocol includes a table which collects together Kyoto countries’ commitments (in UNFCCC jargon, Quantified Emission Limitation or Reduction Obligations or QELROs) in a second round. The line relating to New Zealand is blank, with a footnote as follows:
New Zealand is prepared to consider submitting information on its QELRO… following the necessary domestic processes and taking into account decision 1/CP.17 and decisions on mitigation…of the Conference of the Parties.
Not exactly unequivocal stuff.
On the matter of the Protocol, Ministers Groser and Smith commented on the Durban results this week using very guarded language:
We, and no doubt Australia, will each need to make a decision in coming months whether to join Europe in inscribing our next set of international commitments within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol or to join all the developing countries, the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia and others, in making those commitments under the alternative transitional arrangements described in different texts.
Like all countries, we will need to take account of our national circumstances and compare our efforts to the efforts of others. We want to do our fair share, but it will not be clear for some time what exactly others will be committing to.
One reason why New Zealand might sign up to a second commitment period under Kyoto is because it is one of the few countries with an established emissions trading scheme which has linkages to the present Kyoto architecture.
Another is because the science tells us that the planet is at very serious risk of facing global temperature increases that will be utterly devastating to countries which include some of our closest Pacific neighbours – neighbours that New Zealand professes concern to support and assist. Arguably, promises without the force of law are insufficient to deal with these sorts of environmental risks. (We don’t accept promises when consenting a house renovation in Epsom’s Res 1 zone where the risks are an out-of character window frame in a pretty street. So the logic for accepting voluntary commitments where the existence of entire nations is at risk is deeply questionable.)
But science didn’t seem to play much of a role in these negotiations.
Groser and Smith’s statement raises the distinct possibility of New Zealand moving away from its previous positioning alongside the EU, towards that of the USA and Canada (which not unexpectedly, but still controversially, announced this week that it intends to withdraw from Kyoto completely).
Last week in Durban I asked Minister Groser if it was a fair observation that New Zealand no longer regards itself as a leader on international climate policy. He mentioned that we have the first global all-sectors-all-gases emissions trading scheme. (Accepted – this is, in theory at least, leading edge policy, although he'd be on stronger ground if the Government hadn't signalled the intention to keep agriculture out of the scheme for an indefinite period). And the New Zealand-led Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Emissions. (Again, accepted – this is an important initiative, and one that many hope will produce some technological break-throughs on the difficult area of agricultural emissions.) And the role of New Zealanders such as Adrian Macy in chairing key UNFCCC committees. To that he could have added his own role in Cancun and Durban.
However, to duck out at this stage on Kyoto II would, as I see it, signal a major shift in direction for years of climate change diplomacy for New Zealand. It is all very well to say that a Kyoto Protocol covering only 15% of global emissions is completely indequate to tackle the challenges of climate change. But if it transpires that New Zealand now supports an alternative regime which, on the crucial issue of emissions reductions – particularly for developed states - lacks any real teeth, then to me, that would represent a clear relinquishing of leadership by New Zealand on international climate change policy.
There’s a bit of water to go under the bridge yet. Perhaps a regime can be developed which contains enough sticks and carrots to get all of the main players to do the necessary to avoid an over 2˚temperature rise. New Zealand would be in the best position, I reckon, to advocate for that kind of regime if it is already part of a robust regime (Kyoto II).
Having seen what Groser and Smith have had to say this week, I am not holding my breath…
By Vernon Rive on 15/12/2011 10:53:12 p.m. | Comments (1) | Print |
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