Yesterday, one of the world’s smallest countries, Tuvalu, made a big impression. Wikipedia tells me that there are about 12.000 Tuvaluvians (?) on a territory of 26 square km. Yet, this small country shifted the discussions at Copenhagen on Wednesday by proposing to start up an informal group for discussions on a new Protocol under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. What does this actually mean?
Currently, there are two official working groups. One working group brings together all 184 countries that are members of the Kyoto Protocol and focuses on further commitments of industrialized countries after 2012, both in terms of emission reductions as well as financial support for developing countries to adapt to climate change. As there are a number of countries that have not ratified to the Kyoto Protocol, notably the United States, another working group was established to focus on ‘long-term cooperative action’ and includes all 192 states that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (i.e. the 1992 Rio Convention).
By basically relinquishing the Kyoto Protocol and starting a discussion on a new protocol, Tuvalu opened the door to discussing emission reduction commitments, not only for industrialized countries but also for developing countries like China. With support from other small island states and some African countries, Tuvalu hopes that this initiative will result in a more ambitious protocol. For example, small island states hope to insert the target of a stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at 350ppm in such a new protocol. This would increase the planet’s chances of avoiding more than 2 degrees of global warming (generally accepted to be the upper limit of a ‘safe’ level of warming) and necessitate more ambitious mitigation targets.
There are two positions on Tuvalu’s initiative. Some observers believe that Tuvalu has split the G-77, the group that brings together developing countries, because China continues to refuse any negotiation on a text that could contain a specific timing for a peak in Chinese emissions. Given that the Kyoto Protocol is currently the only legally binding instrument with specific reduction targets, Tuvalu’s move comes at a considerable risk of losing some of the very modest achievements in the Kyoto Protocol by shifting the focus away from the mitigation commitments of the industrialized states under the Kyoto Protocol.
Others believe that the lack of support by India and China for Tuvalu is no split, but only a tactical difference on how to hold developed countries accountable in order to secure a legally binding and fair deal. China and India feel they need to secure numbers on both emission reduction targets for industrialised countries and climate finance first. Tuvalu wants to give priority to legal issues. This is essentially an issue of sequencing. The main problem is that countries like Russia, Japan, Canada and Australia want to kill the Kyoto Protocol; and the US constantly wants to lower the level of ambition of the Copenhagen outcome. India and China do want a legally binding outcome for everyone, including the US, but are still exploring what the exact form would be.
To summarise, there are so many draft proposals currently circulating, the Danish proposal, the Tuvalu proposal, a paper by China, South Africa, Brazil and India and I might have missed some. This makes the dynamic of the negotiations in Copenhagen rather unpredictable. Is it really possible to develop an entirely new protocol in the remaining week? Will developing countries be able to iron out their differences? Is President Obama willing to offer anything beyond the climate policy is under debate in Congress? Can Chinese president Hu Jintao hint at a peak in Chinese emissions in e.g. 2030?
Watch this space! Thanks for reading
Geert
