Annex I parties kick-start Bonn blame game

There’s been hardly any movement at the Bonn climate talks since the last post 12 hours ago even as the meeting draws to a close.

If anything, it is that the blame game has kicked-in in earnest with both the EU and United States ploughing into China, accusing the Asian country in particular of ‘hardening’ its stance on how not to launch talks under the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (AWG-ADP).

US delegation in Bonn

But it is not only China that maintains that the issue of pre-2020 mitigation be completed under the two existing mandates (AWG-LCA and AWG-KP) which are already working on the issue, a large number of developing countries from all regions of the global south (which make up about four billion of the world’s population are united in their call on Annex I countries to honour their legally binding international obligations under the climate change convention and protocol.

Annex I Parties’ mischaracterization of these developing countries as ‘blockers' is not only misleading but is also hollow and scandalous.

**A plenary is scheduled for later tonight in search of a breakthrough after a series of meetings on Wednesday collapsed. Throughout today, May 24, Sandea De Wet, interim Chair of the ADP from South Africa, has been in closed informal sessions with some parties. 

There’s even the possibility that parties could be forced to a vote on the issue. If that happens, it will be the first since the UN climate change process began two decades ago.

BONN climate change talks deadlocked - as developed countries insist on deregulation

The Bonn UN climate change negotiation has hit a stalemate.

The rift is over whether mitigation for the period 2012–2020 should be tackled by the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (AWG-ADP) or the two existing negotiating tracks.

The two already existing negotiating tracks are the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP).  A series of sessions, both plenary and informal, over the last few days have failed to resolve the impasse.

Developed countries have failed to meet their legally binding international obligations under the existing climate change regime and are therefore pushing to have mitigation negotiated under the ADP even though the Durban mandate/COP 17 extended the mandate of the AWG-LCA to enable it to continue its work which includes mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology and capacity building in accordance with the Bali Action Plan (BAP), Decision 1/CP/13.

Three main outcomes emerged from the December the 2011 climate conference in Durban, South Africa. The ‘Durban mandate’ launched a process for the negotiation of a new climate treaty to be implemented from 2020. The mandate also agreed on measures to implement some decisions adopted by earlier COPs.

Developed countries are required under the existing global climate regime (convention and protocol) to cut their emissions and for non-Kyoto protocol members, such as the United States, to undertake comparable, measurable and verifiable emission cuts.

Developing countries are also, under the Bali Action Plan, tasked to carry out Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMA) with financial and technological support from developed countries.

If developed countries are successful in their pursuit, it will abruptly and effectively terminate the AWG-LCA process, outcomes and the principles of equity and Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) which distinguish the actions and responsibilities of both developed and developing countries. These principles have been at the heart of climate negotiations up until now. 

Developed countries’ at Bonn will also render the work of the AWG-KP meaningless.

As a tactic, developed (Annex I) countries have categorized the stalemate as a fight over procedural issues, which imply that developing countries are wasting precious limited negotiating time.

However, as noted earlier, the fight is actually about the substance, context and paradigm of the climate regime pre-2020 and indeed the post-2020 when the Durban mandate requires a new legal global climate change regime to come into force.

Rich countries led by the United States and the European Union are most content with the ADP as it does not have comparability, firewall or support for NAMAs of developing countries unlike the AWG-KP and AWG-LCA.

Chinese delegate: Su Wei

The danger with developed countries’ plan to move 2012-2020 ‘enhancing mitigation ambition’ to the AWG-ADP is that it will reprieve these countries from legally binding commitments to install lower non-binding targets.  It will also impose an inequitable burden on developing countries in meeting mitigation ambition.

Such an outcome will invariably send global temperatures above safe limits and out of control.

Africa-South America ties & a summit put off

It was largely unexpected, at least by the African side, I gather. South America has just requested a postponement of the 3^rd Africa-South America (ASA) summit. It is unclear just yet why South America called off the meeting at this late hour.

The summit was initially scheduled to take place from May 13 to 16, 2012 in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea (for Obiang Nguema to flaunt his stuff again after January’s Africa Cup of Nations). No new date has been agreed upon by the two sides. The postponement is not expected to damage the growing ties between Africa and South America.

The 2^nd ASA summit was held in Venezuela on the theme ‘Closing Gaps, Opening Up Opportunities’. Sixty one (61) heads of state from 61 countries, 49 from Africa and 12 South America attended the summit in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez, who is now ill, loomed large over the 2009 meeting.

Different countries and regions have sought to court the friendship of Africa as a region in recent years even as growth prospects of the continent’s 54 countries continue to improve. Many of these courtships have culminated in glitzy fora and summits and grand announcements, of course with next to no input from citizens and local business owners.

So we now have the China-Africa Forum, Africa-Japan conference (TICAD), Africa-India Cooperation Summit, Africa-Turkey Cooperation Summit and the Africa-European Union Summit. There are many others. The China-Africa Forum seems to have received most attention in the last few years for reasons that aren’t far-fetched.

These meetings have soared in number and profile as global economic power makes a gradual but steady and unambiguous shift to the East, away from the traditional West.

Opinions over the value of these summits are varied in Africa and elsewhere. In Africa, at least, many have expressed worry that these meetings do not build people-to-people relations neither do they deliver tangible results that improve the quality of life of the population. 

Brazil's Lula and Nigeria's Jonathan

Besides that, these summits also appear to be nothing more than polished schemes to perpetuate the milking of Africa’s rich natural resources as some others have done over the last 500 years.

The question really is not whether these allegations are true or not but whether Africa can use these relations to transform itself into an economically vibrant and politically stable place for the benefit of its one billion people.

One thing is clear, given the near irreversible global shifts in economic power, Africa will need some or all of these relationships in different permutations and at different stages of its transformational agenda in the coming decades to thrive.