Bangkok climate talks: parties clash

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

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 from August 30 - Sept. 5, 2012. 

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.

Negotiators

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 to do what they pledged to undertake under the two older negotiating tracks. So, this fight also an issue of trust and not only substance.

A global coalition of climate change campaigners, the Assembly of the Global Campaign to demand Climate Justice hit the streets of Bangkok to urge developed countries to honour their moral and legal obligations to save the planet and world's most vulnerable from climate change.

Blame game kick-starts in Bonn

There’s been hardly any movement at the Bonn climate talks in the last 24 hours 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).

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 would 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.

UNFCCC 2012 climate change conference in Bonn

The 2012 inter-sessional meeting of the UNFCCC will take place in Bonn, Germany from May 14–25. The Bonn meeting is the first session post-Durban’s COP 17. Negotiators are expected to launch the Durban Platform and plan their work to negotiate a new climate regime which is expected to be completed by 2015 for it to take effect from 2020.

The inter-sessional will also discuss technology and adaptation support developing countries require to build their own sustainable energy futures and to adapt successfully to existing climate change.  Other critical issues for the Bonn meeting are the question of finance, the Green Climate Fund and how to expand funding support for developing nations to and beyond US$100 billion per year by 2020.

Negotiators will also work on finalizing other decisions for their adoption at COP 18 in Doha in December 2012 and this includes the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. 

TWN-Africa staff, Kwesi Obeng will blog the inter-sessional from Bonn.