EU « Climate Equity

Four months after the climate summit in Cancun endet with a a series of „Cancun Agreements“, this week, negotiators in Bangkok/Thailand continue to push for an international climate compact.  It is not only the nuclear meltdown in Japan, following the devastating earthquake and tsunami there, which attracts political and media attention instead of the Bangkok talks.  A UN negotiation fatigue, starting with the politically controversial Copenhagen Accord, has not yet dissipated, despite the partial success in Cancun – which agreed to worry about the really contentious issues, like the legal status of a follow-up agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, later.  Many have lost faith that the UNFCCC is the right venue to engender substantial process in the international climate talks.  ClimatEquity talked with Hans Verolme, an advisor to many of the civil society organizations organized in Climate Action Network International, who is participating in the Bangkok negotiations this week.

ClimatEquity (CE): In Cancun, there was a spirit of optimism expressed by many government negotiators and civil society representatitives. Is any of this spirit still palpable in Bangkok?  

Hans Verolme (HV): While the hangover from Copenhagen may have lifted in Cancun, it is my view that the Cancun Agreements were to some extent merely a translation of the Copenhagen Accord into the UNFCCC negotiating text. They also represented an acknowledgement by the world’s governments of their lack of political courage to translate a rather vague, rhetorical ambition to prevent dangerous warming into a fair and binding agreement. The existence of this large (some 10 gigatonnes!) gap between ambition and action is now central to the NGO work here. This sobering but realistic assessment also leads many NGOs to focus on very concrete issues such as how to deliver technology and finance support.

Overall, civil society (and donor) interest in these negotiations has dropped significantly. Where in the run up to Copenhagen the meeting rooms were too small to handle the throngs of activists and the streets of Bangkok were full of protesters, all that remains is a small core of NGO representatives, often members of Climate Action Network with longstanding expertise in these negotiations. Unfortunately the growing climate movement is not felt here. (more…)

Well, let’s start with the good news first: the European Union and its 27 member countries have been good to their word and delivered a summary report on fast-start-finance commitments in time for the COP 16 in Cancun.  It is to be EUR 2.2  billion in 2010. As such, the EU — and the member countries who have taken the exercise serious enough to provide specific individual project information – have to be commended, and I give them a B+ for effort and initiative.  It cannot be easy for the EU Commission to try to bring 27 rascally students, pardon, countries, to order and make them do their homework in time.

Other industrialized countries, such as Japan, the United States or Australia have likewise joined in a mad scramble pre-Cancun — maybe as part of the peer pressure the early EU commitment for such a report created — and offered their take on how they are contributing to fulfilling the collective political pledge  industrialized countries made a year ago in Copenhagen to come up with US$ 10 billion in “new and additional” fast start money for climate change action in developing countries for 2010, 2011 and 2012 respectively.

Alas, the execution of these reporting efforts is still insufficient.  I’ll give the EU effort, the most comprehensive of the FSF reporting by industrialized countries, a C – at present, but hold out hope for, and encourage,  improvement, both short-term (for the next report) and long-term (in the way climate funding is delivered).

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On the road from Copenhagen to Cancun, climate negotiators from around the world will meet in Tianjin, China, from October 4th to October 9th for a last round of negotiations prior to the next COP in Mexico at the end of November.

ClimatEquity asks Chinese climate expert Yu Jie, who has participated in UNFCCC negotiations and COPs since 2004, about her expectations for Tianjin and Cancun.

CLIMATEQUITY: What do you expect will happen during the UNFCCC talks in Tianjin? Will we see any progress? Will climate finance be one area where there might be some high expectation for Tianjin and Cancun? What is the Chinese position on climate financing resources?

YU JIE: At the last session in August in Bonn, the parties in the working group on long term cooperative action (AWG LCA) finally agreed on the new chair’s text to work on. Currently, this text with 70 pages will have to be cut down to more manageable size, although it will be an extremely though job to remove hundreds of brackets, particularly when the thread to connect these pieces is missing. This missing thread is strong political will which in reality, seems to have been sapped by the domestic legislative process in the United States. Therefore, I agree with the view that climate finance could be an area where a substantial result in Cancun seems possible. Tianjin will then be one of the stops to build consensus towards Cancun.

The Chinese government holds the same position as the G77 on finance, but in contrast to many developing countries, it is pretty neutral on issues related to finance such as the debate who should govern a Global Green Fund. On providing resources for financing, China thinks they should come from a global carbon tax, rather than from carbon market proceeds.  (more…)

On Monday, the climate negotiations go into their next round toward the COP 16 in Cancun, when UNFCCC delegates come together in Bonn.  But the hopes of those expecting a boon in talks for a 2012 post-Kyoto climate regime are likely to be busted.  Already before the meeting starts, it seems certain that the results will be minimal — at best. Turnout of negotiators, in the midst of vacation season, is expected to be low.  Even lower are observers’ expectations: Basically, the only joint approach currently thinkable is one blockading further progress in emissions cuts, in which the industrialized countries and the largest emerging market countries operating as BASIC group (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) seem to be, sadly, in agreement…. 

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The good news first: going only by sheer numbers, the European Union is delivering on the fast start funding commitment it gave on behalf of its 27 member countries during the COP15 in Copenhagen as part of the Copenhagen Accord political final declaration. 

The bad news: it is far from certain whether that commitment represents “new and additional” money as promised in the Copenhagen Accord, or rather the ingenious creativity of the European block – very much wanting to be perceived publicly as the “good guys” on the question of delivering money to fund adaptation and mitigation actions in developing countries — in double-counting, recycling, overestimating or blatantly hiding the real figures, as some observers charge. 

During a side event at the Bonn climate talks on Thursday, the representatives of the Commission and several  EU countries delivered ten fast-paced presentations, choke-full of numbers which aimed at knocking out the air – and the many doubts – from the listeners in an already pretty airless overcrowded meeting room.  This was a more detailed presentation than the information gathered from an EU document leaked two weeks ago, which had left observers of fast track climate financing underwhelmed.

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Just a few days ago, the European Investment Bank (EIB), the financing arm of the EU and its 27 member countries, formally joined the ranks of other multilateral development banks and the World Bank  in creating its own climate change fund — thus contributing to the proliferation of new climate funds, supporting the claim of other development organizations to be best equipped to manage large climate financing sums and thereby further undermining a future leadership role of the UNFCCC and its  financing mechanisms in the emerging global climate finance architecture.

The new Interact Climate Change Fund, ICCF was established in cooperation with the French development agency (AFD) as well as a group of 15 bilateral European development groups organized in the Association of European Development Finance Institutions (EDFI).  Focus of the new Fund, whose finance volume was not publicly disclosed, are private sector investments in climate change projects in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, Asia and Africa, all to be undertaken in the course of this year, which the ICCF aims to support by matching investment amounts.  The Fund will act as “catalytic lead investor” in renewable energy and clean technology projects to extend energy access and provide energy stability in developing and emerging market economies.

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