Bangkok fight

Bangkok, Thailand may be the world's capital of 'smiles' but it's no smiling business at the climate change negotiations here. It's another big bare knuckle fight over the future of the earth.

Yours truly heading into the climate talks in the world's capital of 'smiles' - Bangkok

Parties, mainly Annex I (rich countries) have clashed with non-Annex I Parties (developing countries) yet again. Negotiating parties are split down the middle pretty much on every single substantive issue at the informal inter-sessional on climate change underway in Bangkok, Thailand. It's more than a fight over agenda and/or process. It's really about the future of the planet, how to save it from possible meltdown. 

Rich countries want two of the three negotiating tracks terminated at the end of 2012 in Doha, at COP 18, but developing countries which stand to lose the most from an overheating planet, think and rightly so, that the work streams of these two tracks (AWG-KP and AWG-LCA) under the Bali Action Plan have yet to be completed and therefore can and should only be closed when they have delivered on their mandates as per the Climate Convention. The third and newest work stream is the AWG-ADP (Durban decision).

Shutting down the work of the AWG-KP and the AWG-LCA at this stage will effectively leave rich countries off the hook to jump ship (to the AWG-ADP) without actually honouring their prior international commitments under these two tracks. And the big question is what will be the guarantee that any agreements reached under the Durban mandate in future will be honoured by wealthy countries given their failure, morally and legally, to do what they pledged to undertake under the two older negotiating tracks. So, this fight is about trust as much as it is about substance.

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’s fossil fuels & public expectations

Rising discovery of oil and gas in commercial quantities across Africa has unleashed a sea of excitement in potential markets outside the continent but more importantly in Africa itself.

Fossil fuels are essential to the modern economy, never mind the dangers these fuels pose to global climate and the fact that Africa is most at risk from climate change.

Thus, it came as no surprise that Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy, is gripped with excitement following the president’s announcement of a major oil find. The British oil company, Tullow Oil made the discovery last week. It is the first such find in Kenya.

Kenya Energy Minister Kiraitu Murungi

Over the last six years, a host of African countries have made significant oil and gas discoveries. The list includes Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somaliland and Uganda. Many more are set to join the club in the coming months and years. Angola, Nigeria, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Chad in Sub-Saharan Africa contribute a substantial amount to the global output.Nigeria alone contributes about 15% of US annual imports. Angola is a major supplier to China.

Growing instabilities in the Middle East can only emphasis the critical role of African fossil fuels are set to play in the global oil and gas economy.

But intrinsic in these discoveries are the dangers inefficient management and mismanaged public expectations pose to these fragile states. The Nigerian oil narrative is well documented. The growing tension between Khartoum and Juba is in part a proxy battle over oil and public expectation of oil dividends.

The discoveries in Africa is surely good news. It raises the long term prospects of these economies in the face of the ongoing global economic shifts and turmoil.

The oil crisis of the mid-1970s preceded the long and sharp decline 

of African economies which in part resulted in the adoption of the discredited structural adjustment policies in 1980s and 1990s in most Sub-Saharan African countries.

Over the last decade growth rate 

in Africa has been impressive. Millions though remain trapped in poverty with many of the continent’s one billion people still out of the reach of basic public services such as clean water, electricity and healthcare.

Discovery, production and export of the commodity in Ghana in 2007 have spurred foreign and local investment and expansion of the Ghanaian economy but not a lot of jobs. The subject of local content continues to engage analysts, policy makers and the ordinary Ghanaian. Ghana’s economy grew by 13.5 per cent in 2011. The economy  almost doubled last year, after oil exports began.

Evidently, the discovery has raised public expectations sky high to activate a hike in the cost of everything from housing to basic services to food and in some cases heightened tension between hitherto peacefully co-existing communities.

The Ghana Government is presently under fire for changing the proposed location of the country’s first modern gas processing plant to process gas from the Jubilee Field. Traditional leaders and youths of Domunli have even threatened to secede if government goes ahead to site the new plant outside the previously announced Jomoro District in the Western Region.

The plant is now to be sited at Atuabo in the Ellembelle District of the same region. The Domunli area is prone to flooding according to the authorities. It however begs the question why the area was selected in the first place after the first feasibility studies.

Threats of secession may be nothing more than grandstanding but it speaks to the larger issue of how unmanaged expectations could undermine a country’s development agenda and sow seeds of discontent.

Campaigns leading up the keenly contested 2008 presidential elections revolved around the discovered oil reserves. As Ghanaians go back to the polls this December, oil and the larger economy are shaping the campaigns.

Kenya holds its presidential and legislative elections early 2013. The post-election violence of 2007 and 2008 are still fresh in the minds of many even as the ICC seeks to prosecute alleged masterminds of the violence that ensued. Oil discovery in the Turkana County may well raise the stakes to define next year’s election but public expectation must be restrained.

It might seem contradictory but one way to address the possible shortage of relevant skills in the oil sector as well as sufficiently manage public expectation is for the Kenyan authorities to put in place a mechanism to begin the training of young Kenyans in anticipation of commercial production of the black gold. 

This way, Kenya may be more successful (than many other African countries) in minimizing the situation where all the best jobs associated with the industry go to non-Kenyans.