Bonn talks deadlocked: Annex I Parties 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.

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.