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.

Jamestown, gays and elections

Jamestown (Accra) and gay rights, what’s the connection? Not really. Well not until this week. Jamestown is one of the original communities of Ghana’s ever expanding capital, Accra.

The suburb is named after a fort built by the British in 1673 and named after King James II, who was a major shareholder in the Royal African Company that traded in gold, slaves and whisky before he ascended the throne. The fort is now a prison –James Fort Remand Prison.

Also known as British Accra (there are Danish Accra and Dutch Accra), Jamestown warmly kisses the Atlantic Ocean in the south and the rather polluted Korle Lagoon on the west. With a large population and a heavily overstretched public infrastructure, Jamestown is a bustling community and the childhood home of some of Ghana’s best boxers and footballers.

A protest against same-sex relationships early in the week has forced homosexuality and gay rights back into the middle of hot-button topics in this political season. Ghanaians go to the polls to elect a president and parliamentarians in December.

The Jamestown protesters including females assaulted revellers attending an early morning marriage ceremony of a lesbian couple with sticks and canes. The protesters arrested two females, a 19-year-old and a 16-year-old who were at the function and sent them to the local police station and urged the police to arrest all gays in the community. But the reasons for the protest and subsequent attacks were not the usual religious, health or the standard socio-cultural reasons.

For the Jamestown anti-gay activists, the level of lesbianism in the area in particular is depriving men of girlfriends and future wives. That is to say there is an emerging shortage of women or they do not want to compete with other lesbians for women to date.

‘Their activities are depriving us of women. Anytime a man decides to go after a woman in the area these lesbians will pounce on him and beat him up. We cannot allow this to go on in the area. These women use money to lure the young girls into this bad habit and deprive us. It must stop,’ the local press quoted one anti-gay activist.

Now that’s a rather fairly new reason for the growing opposition to homosexuality. In the past, the reasons for public opposition were mainly because the practice is a ‘disgusting western’ concept inimical to African values and also because all three dominant faiths – Christianity, Islam and traditional African religion – frown on same-sex relationships.

In November 2011, Ghana’s president, John Atta Mills called the bluff of British PM, David Cameron to cut aid to African nations with anti-gay legislation. Reacting to Cameron’s threats, Mills told Ghanaians the country will never capitulate to Britain or any other country’s whim to legalise same-sex relationships. 

‘I, as president of this nation, will never initiate or support any attempt to legalise homosexuality in Ghana’. 

‘No one can deny Prime Minister Cameron his right to make policies, take initiatives or make statements that reflect his societal norms and ideals but he does not have the right to direct other sovereign nations as to what they should do especially where their societal norms and ideals are different from those which exist in [the] Prime Minister’s society...

‘Let me also say that whiles we acknowledge all the financial assistance and all the aid which has been given to us by our development partners, we will not accept any aid with strings attached, if that aid will not inure to our interest or the implementation or the utilisation of that aid with strings attached would rather worsen our plight as a nation or destroy the very society that we want to use the money to improve,’ the soft-spoken president and former law lecturer said tersely.

Uganda’sYuweri Museveni and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe attacked Cameron as ‘satanic’ over his gay rights threat. Nigeria also asked Cameron to go to hell. But a week ago, a British cardinal and leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland also described the Cameron government’s plans to legalise gay marriage in Britain as ‘madness’, ‘a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right’ and a ‘redefinition of reality’.

Jamestown anti-gay protesters

Public resentment of same-sex relationship is deep and widespread in Ghana and much of Africa. Homophobia is mostly expressed as attempts to preserve the sanity and socio-cultural fabric of the African society.

With the exception of South Africa no other African country has legalised same-sex relationships. Gay relationships are thus a crime in many of these countries. Classified as ‘unnatural carnal knowledge’, they are considered a misdemeanor in Ghana’s penal code and in most other African nations.

Nigeria and Uganda recently sought to pass new laws in their Parliaments expressly banning homosexuality as well as impose stiffer custodial sentences.

Going to Ghana’s December 2012 elections, the make or break issue is the national economy. The economy grew by 13.5 per cent in 2011 one of the highest growth rates in world albeit it was fueled by oil exports.  
Apart from Mills other presidential aspirants have yet to publicly pronounce on same-sex relationships. But Jamestown may just have pulled the trigger on an issue that may play no mean a role in who gets crowned as Ghana’s president in January 2013 when whoever is elected will assume office.