Durban, South Africa – Half full or half empty? Depends on how you look at it.
UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres was quoting from Nelson Mandela when she tweeted: “In honour of Mandela: It always seems impossible until it is done. And it is done.”
She also tweeted: “COP17 remarkable new phase in climate regime. Critical next step, and still insufficient. Must continue raising ambition.”
What COP17 delivered in the early hours of Sunday morning — termed the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action — was a better deal than many had anticipated before, and during, the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol (CMP7). COP17 kicked off in Durban, South Africa on November 28 and was set to end late on Friday December 9.
Climate and environmental activists — representing the conscience and accountability of society and a voice for both the planet and the poor, most affected, but with no voice when it comes to the impact of emissions, global warming and climate change — held an all-night vigil on a rainy Friday at Speaker’s Corner across the street from the ICC.
Intense round-the-clock debate and exhaustive wrangling ran through until almost 5am on Sunday December 11.
South Africa’s International Relations Minister and COP17 president Maite Nkoana-Mashabane opened Saturday night’s proceedings by telling delegates that, “On this day 60 years ago, Chief (Albert) Luthuli received the Nobel Prize for Peace. He was a man who achieved the highest award against all odds – a prize for peace in a country where at the time there was none.”
She added: “Colleagues, let us take a brief moment here and take a step back in history and remind ourselves where we came from with this climate change process. We were able to negotiate the foundation of the system we have today. We concluded the Convention and we were able to craft the Kyoto Protocol. Some of you were personally involved in these milestone events. Bearing these accomplishments in mind, I have to urge you not to lose this ability to be courageous pioneers in the climate change process.”
Serious and Urgent Challenges
“The Government of South Africa and the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change should be congratulated for what has been achieved, given the low expectations in the months and weeks before Durban,” said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director.
But, he added, “The outcome in the South African coastal city has left the world with some serious and urgent challenges if a global temperature rise is to be kept under 2 degrees Celsius in the 21st century.”
While Durban had kept the door open for the world to respond to climate change “based on science and common sense” rather than political expediency, “... The key question of the Durban outcome is whether what has been decided will match the science and lead to a peaking of global emissions before 2020 to maintain the world on a path to keep a temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius.”
By some estimates the cost of cutting emissions will cost four times more beyond 2020 than they would cost today with the price rising over time, said Steiner. “By some estimates the current emissions trajectories, unless urgently reversed, could lead to a global temperature rise of 3.5 degrees Celsius or more sometime by the end of the century.”
Delivery and Accountability
Overall, what was delivered is nowhere near what environmentalists, representatives of most developing and poorer countries, envoys of Africa and island states, climate scientists, academics, faith groups, activists, concerned members of civil society and others committed to human rights, women’s rights, and the planet, know was needed by way of action, delivery and accountability.
The South African government conference hosts and some UN officials hailed the outcome as a “historic breakthrough.” And no doubt the wording “Durban Platform” was welcomed by the host city. Presumably, like Kyoto Protocol, the epiphet will raise the global profile of the South African coastal port city that is the country’s most popular tourist destination with South Africans and a destination of choice for conferences and specific events, but not on the travel itinerary of your average overseas tourist.
“The good news is we avoided a train wreck,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, recalling predictions likely failure. "The bad news is that we did very little here to affect the emissions curve."
Longest COP in History
Thousands of negotiators, officials, media and technicians ground through two relentless nights working toward a resolution, notching up the “longest COP in history,” according to Figueres.
Negotiations and discussions continued until almost dawn on Friday, Saturday and then Sunday. Late night the halls of the ICC were full. Media caught cat-naps at desks, on benches and on floors during breaks between sessions. The electronic notice boards announcing plenary sessions kept changing times and schedules before finally dropping many planned press briefings. People looked jaded. Glassy-eyed.
During discussions that ran through until almost midnight on Saturday (of working group drafts on the “Kyoto protocol” followed by “Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention”) — pending submission of proposals to the final plenary session — delegates variously continued to call for changes or voice their dissatisfaction or despair.
The Durban package “... is a very significant package. None of us likes everything in it. Believe me, there is plenty the United States is not thrilled about,” said U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern. The package captured important advances that would be undone if it rejected, he added.
But Venezuela’s chief climate negotiator Claudia Salerno was one of many who pointed out disparities, poor compromises and how developing countries were paying the price for the self-interest, emissions and politics of developed countries. She called the conference “a charade” and agreements under debate “very bad.”
A glimpse of COP's political dark side became apparent when Salerno forced her hand, and the final gavel on the LCA draft meeting, insisting she be allowed to “tell the world” that she had received two threats in the conference hall passages. The first was a threat that if her country did not adopt the text under consideration there would be no second commitment period to the Kyoto protocol. “The (second) most pathetic and lowest threat — that if we don’t give them their comfort zone, then we won’t get the Green Climate Fund.”
Presumably Venezuela, along with many of the developing nations, saw no choice but to accept a weak COP17-CMP7 outcome to save the climate action framework.
So yes, the world nations represented at COP17 agreed to push for a new climate treaty, which would deliver a legally-binding global deal to cut emissions.
But no, it did not come close to what environmentalists, scientists and others were calling for in the name of the planet. Not in the ballpark of what Archbishop Tutu, for example, called for at the “We Have Faith – Act Now for Climate Justice” concert and rally he hosted ahead of COP17: Namely “people and planet before profit.”
The deal extends Kyoto, set to lapse at the end of 2012. The new commitment period, part of the Durban Platform, will run from January 1, 2013 to the end of 2017. Delegates are set to start negotiations for a new, legally binding treaty to be decided by 2015, to come into force by 2020.
While the UK’s Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne hailed the deal as a significant step forward” and said it sent a strong signal to businesses and investors about moving to a low carbon economy, environmental groups said negotiators had failed to show the ambition necessary to cut emissions by levels that would limit global temperature rises to no more than 2C and avoid "dangerous" climate change.
Urgent Action is Needed
Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF-UK, said: "Governments have salvaged a path forward for negotiations, but we must be under no illusion – the outcome of Durban leaves us with the prospect of being legally bound to a world of 4C warming.
“This would be catastrophic for people and the natural world. Governments have spent crucial days focused on a handful of specific words in the negotiating text, but have paid little heed to repeated warnings from the scientific community that much stronger, urgent action is needed to cut emissions.”
The Durban talks made headway by agreeing on the design of a Green Climate Fund to channel up to $100 billion a year by 2020 to poorer nations. But it was not established where the money would come from.
Things nearly derailed at the 13th hour when the European Union objected to the late addition of the phrase “legal outcome,” which it said would allow countries to wriggle out of commitments. The final compromise was reached at 3:30am on Sunday after Nkoana-Mashabane accepted a proposal to allow a last-minute “huddle” of relevant negotiators and the wording was changed to “an agreed outcome with legal force.”
The Durban platform contains an agreement to establish an Adaptation Committee and a process that will lead to the establishment of a Climate Technology Centre and Network with likely funding from the Global Environment Facility.
“The movements forward on the Cancun agreements in respect to adaptation and climate technology institutions are welcome, as is the operationalization of the Green Climate Fund. But the core question of whether more than 190 nations can cooperate in order to peak and bring down emissions to the necessary level by 2020 remains open — it is a high risk strategy for the planet and its people,” said Steiner.
“Nationally many governments are acting as are companies, cities and individual citizens. In 2010, over US$210 billion was invested in renewable energy, for example. But this bottom-up approach needs a top to which it can aim — and a time-line for building that top is narrowing ever year,” he added.
Observers and delegates generally agreed that actions taken at the meeting, while sufficient to keep the negotiating process alive, would not have a significant impact on climate change.
“They haven't reached a real deal. They watered things down so everyone could get on board,” said Samantha Smith of WWF International.
© Wanda Hennig, 2011
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