Efficiency First

This is the last in a series of dispatches from the 2009 climate change summit sent to us by Amy L. Jarvis of Environmental Resources Management

I am back in the U.S. and will not be sending any additional updates from the ground in Copenhagen. Here are some final thoughts about the conference and its progress moving forward:

• As you have seen or heard on the news, there have been vocal demonstrations inside and outside of the Bella Center walls. Speaking of which, at the last BINGO meeting, we were told that capacity has been reached within the Bella Center and UNFCC will be issuing separate badges to delegation parties in attempts to reduce the number of people in the venue. When the heads of state arrive later this week, that number will shrink even smaller. The demonstrations are getting a lot of media attention but have yet to have any true impact on the political process that is going on inside.
• This week will either produce an agreement from the increasingly divided developing nations and developed nations or shelve any possibilities to either a) amend the Kyoto Protocol or b) institute a legally binding document with emissions targets. This morning caused a stall in the talks when the African delegation walked out due them feeling that developing nations are not being treated appropriately at the COP.
• Many of the meetings are now behind closed doors, and the COP and CMP remained suspended on Friday. But with only a short working week left, the negotiations will be kept busy debating, debasing or canvassing support for the various texts being released or leaked. The closing out of NGOs and the delegate periphery from the majority of core meetings is causing tensions, and will also increase some of the suspicion and divisions between the rich and poor. On day five, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese chief negotiator for the G77, representing 134 developing nations, walked out of COP15 in much dismay. He was disturbed by the way in which the poor countries were being treated. Some of what we are seeing is posturing ahead of the big decisions in week two, but some of it is public confirmation that a political agreement that satisfies all parties is a long way off.
• The Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board (CDM EB) contact group met up on day five and presented a brief text on Ad-hoc Working Group on Long Term Co-operative Action (AWG-LCA) mechanisms. The text on sectoral crediting has been made very basic and doesn’t even include the word sectoral anymore. In addition, two new draft texts have been put together by the AWG-LCA and AWG-KP (Kyoto Protocol) chairs and have been circulated internally to the parties (i.e. they’re not public – officially anyway). These are draft final agreements, one for each of the AWGs, and were apparently well received by most developing countries. Hopefully they’ll be more clarity, and in a more readable format by the end of the week. I can’t promise that it will be entertaining, but it should be informative. CDM is a very important element to any post-Kyoto agreement.
• The relationship between business and climate change will also raise its profile this week. The need for a market-driven solution to capital-raising and distribution of a climate change fund is being promoted and needs to be included in the final COP text.
• One of the best places to go to understand the relationship between business, risk and climate change is the Carbon Disclosure Project Web site at www.cdproject.net.

– Amy L. Jarvis