Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The United Nations Climate Change Conference 07 ended with a compromise agreement on a "Bali Roadmap," which sets the agenda for defining an agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol when its commitment period expires in 2012. "Parties have recognized the urgency of action on climate change and have now provided the political response to what scientists have been telling us is needed," said Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat. Whether or not to include specific emissions reduction targets had proved a serious source of contention during the meeting. The European Union favoured an explicit goal of a 25 to 40 per cent reduction in emissions below 1990 levels by the year 2020, but this was strenuously, and successfully, opposed by the United States. The final text of the Roadmap only refers to the need for "deep cuts in global emissions." But, with this compromise, the United States will play a role in developing the post-Kyoto regime. The Roadmap commits negotiators to pursue means of encouraging developing nations to curb emissions growth. The negotiators will consider "nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing country Parties in the context of sustainable development, supported by technology and enabled by financing and capacity-building, in a measurable, reportable and verifiable manner." Negotiations on the post-Kyoto agreement will be finalized by 2009.

Agreement was also reached on the future of the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD) scheme, with a commitment to "early action" ahead of the successor to the Kyoto Protocol coming into force in 2012. Methodological work will focus on assessments of changes in forest cover and associated greenhouse gas emissions, methods to demonstrate reductions of emissions from deforestation and the estimation of the amount of emission reductions from deforestation. The ultimate aim is that credits will accrue from avoided deforestation, as from renewable energy projects under the Clean Development Mechanism. "Every previous attempt to have a forest convention bombed because it tended to be a bunch of developed countries telling developing countries what to do," commented John Lanchbery of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. "This was a developing country proposal. It was very cleverly done and avoids all the nasty pitfalls of previous attempts. It is nice and simple. It's about reducing carbon emissions and climate people can understand that," he continued. The initiative was a favoured project of the conference hosts, Indonesia. In a separate development, the World Bank recently announced a new pilot scheme for entering forest-based carbon credits into the global trading market.

The Kyoto Protocol's Adaptation Fund will be managed by a new body, answerable to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, rather than being run independently by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). "This is a major victory," said Amjad Abdullah, chair of the Least Developing Countries negotiating group. "The African countries, small island states and least developed countries stuck together and fought for a dedicated secretariat with a representative governance board that has special places for the most vulnerable nations."

The GEF will provide the Fund's secretariat, which will report to a board consisting of representatives of all the world's major regions, in addition to the countries most vulnerable to climate change. The majority of members will come from developing countries and, if decisions require a vote, this will be on the basis of one country one vote. The arrangement will give "developing countries a more direct and equitable voice in how funds are prioritized and spent," commented South African environment minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk. The GEF's role will be reviewed after three years. The decision was taken at the United Nations Climate Change Conference 07 in Bali, Indonesia.

Al Gore and, on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri collected the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday, 10th December, in Oslo. "Without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself," Gore said. "It is time to make peace with the planet. We must quickly mobilize our civilisation with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war," he continued. He called for understanding of the "connections between the climate crisis and the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these problems are linked, so too must be their solutions," he concluded.

Pachauri paid tribute to the "thousands of experts and scientists who have contributed to the work of the Panel over almost two decades of exciting evolution and service to humanity." Citing the "sterile outcome of previous sessions in recent years", he called on those attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference 07 in Bali, Indonesia, to provide some positive results. "Will those responsible for decisions in the field of climate change at the global level listen to the voice of science and knowledge, which is now loud and clear," he asked. The ceremony was transmitted live to the Bali meeting.