Final sprint at snail's pace

"There was no real convergence on any of the major issues," was Regine Günther's comment on the outcome of the Bonn talks for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Günther heads the Environment and Climate Policy department of WWF Germany.

Criticism was not only expressed in the NGO camp. Karl Falkenberg, the European Commission's director-general of environment, also reckoned that the schedule for negotiations may be too tight. He thus cast doubt on new carbon-reduction targets being agreed this year at all. Complaining that the international talks were not constructive enough, he told Süddeutsche Zeitung that the United States in particular was dragging its heels, presenting proposals that were "still not very precise and not ambitious enough".

The Bonn talks were largely blocked by the rich countries' reluctance to state categorically how much money they will put up to help poorer countries. Bones of contention included financing action for adapting to climate change and mitigating the impacts of climate change as well as technology transfer. It is clear, however, that the industrial nations need to contribute at least $100 billion a year to make progress on climate protection in the emerging and developing world. That is the conclusion reached in a current European Commission study.

The EU will have to come up with a large share of those funds. However, its member states cannot agree on how much money to contribute. In June, they at least settled on criteria for determining how to divide the total EU contribution. National shares will depend on countries’ economic power and their total emissions. Some countries had only wanted to consider financial capacity, while others insisted on taking into account CO2 reductions achieved already.

Industrial countries’ willingness to pay for the damage they have done to the climate – and thus to the global community – will influence the scope for negotiation in Copenhagen. The level of financial support for developing countries will be one of the factors that determine their willingness to commit to emission-reduction targets of their own. And the cooperation of the major emerging nations is urgently needed. China, Mexico and India, in particular, now make large contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions.

Experts describe the industrial countries' reduction targets as not ambitious enough. Even according to the most optimistic estimates, the industrial world's pledges at present will only reduce its emissions to 24% below the 1990 figure by 2020. One reason is that some countries have still made no promises at all – notably the USA and Russia. The world over, it would make sense to cut emissions by 40 % (note comment on p. 307).

Despite the difficulties, WWF, Greenpeace and other NGOs are convinced that a “fair, legally binding agreement based on science can be reached in Copenhagen”. The organisations presented a draft “Copenhagen Climate Agreement” of their own, setting out demands for a workable treaty. To monitor whether individual countries fulfil their obligations and to ensure that measures are implemented to adapt to climate change, they call for a new international institution. It should reach its decisions democratically and on a basis of regional proportional representation. The NGOs are also calling for a review of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which enables companies to improve their own pollution balance by investing in pollution-reducing projects abroad. There are still problems at the implementation stage. A recent Öko-Institut study conducted on behalf of the WWF found the work done by the CDM validators lacking. The five “designated operational entities” that were studied had rejected half of the applications sent to them at least once for failing to meet the requirements.

Claudia Isabel Rittel