First Week in Lima: Slow Progress but Optimistic Perspective
With 2014 to be the hottest year ever on records, global climate negotiators gathered again on December 1 in Lima. The importance of this meeting lies in shaping a new global climate agreement (i.e. the 2015 agreement), which will be finalized next year in Paris to replace the Kyoto Protocol in the commitment period after 2020. Learning from the failure of the top-down Kyoto Protocol, this time negotiators are trying a bottom-up approach: every party submits their intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) for the new agreement.
Progress on the 2015 agreement
Days before Lima, top three emitters — China, US, and EU have already finished their “assignments” with announcement of their post-2020 mitigation targets. Undoubtedly, now the world’s attention turns to the fourth largest emitters — India. Feeling this international pressure, India hedged that they might announce its peaking year of CO2 emissions when Barack Obama visits New Delhi next January and the expected range of this peaking year is 2035–2050.
The most urgent agenda in Lima is to decide what every country needs to submit in INDCs. Parties are required to submit their contributions by March next year based on this guideline. However, with INDCs only including mitigation is not the outcome that developing countries, especially the Alliance of small island states (AOSIS) and least developing countries (LDCs), expect to see. They are arguing that adaptation and financial support should also be included.
Yet it is hard to feel the urgency and controversy in the first three days of negotiation. Despite repeating the importance of defining the form of INDCs and stating each group’s position, little real negotiation happened. The biggest achievement in the first three days was an agreement to introduce parties’ proposals of the draft text comprehensively by displaying them on the screen. This is strongly argued by developing countries to make sure their voice was heard.
From Thursday, negotiators finally started to work on the draft text with concise suggestions. Opposite positions of developed and developing countries clearly emerged. While developed countries firmly stated that INDCs should focus on mitigation and opposed binary divisions among parties as the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries strongly disagreed because it violates the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities. EU was among the few developed parties who would like to talk about adaptation and finance, but they equivocated that they were “open to including some processes that would provide our partners with reassurances that these elements are core to the 2015 agreement”.
There were also debates on the commitment period. EU and China preferred a 10-year commitment period which provides some stability for the market to follow. However, US argued for a revisit of commitments every five year to speed up mitigation and be in line with their 2025 commitment.
Incorporating parties’ suggestions in the last week, a new version for the draft text of INDCs was just released today. The biggest update was to increase the options for the form of INDCs from three to six. Negotiators need to make the choice this week, and certainly debates will be more tense.
Progress on the Pre-2020 ambition
In terms of raising the ambition of developed countries in the pre-2020 period, the perspective is less clear. The only good news last week was two more countries — Guyana and Palau ratified the Doha Amendment which is the legal agreement for this pre-2020 period. However, this only brought the total number of ratifying parties to 21, meaning 123 more ratifications are needed in order to make the Amendment enter into force.
More bad news came from the status of market-based mechanisms that allow parties to reduce GHG emissions in a more cost-effective way. Activities under both Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) have declined dramatically. Although developing countries and NGOs repeatedly raised this issue, little substantive discussions have yet taken place on how to expand climate action before 2020.
Looking into this week, the stages of INDCs have been set. Parties will begin making compromise to achieve a final choice. Hopefully the coming of ministers this week will speed up the agreement. Though there is another big disagreement left: the legal status of the new deal. EU and developing countries are pushing for legally binding, but it is impossible for US to ratify such a deal. Politicians will have one more year to negotiate on that.
