A new round of United Nations climate talks kicks off next week in Bonn, Germany.
And like most United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meetings, news surfaces just before the talks to make the negotiations even more interesting.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) released documentsestimating that 2010 had the highest amount of greenhouse gas emissions in history, with emissions at 30.6 gigatonnes, a 5 percent increase from the previous record year of 2008.
Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA, said she was worried that this trend, despite the minimal dip in emissions during the recession, is making it difficult to achieve limiting global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius, a figure that all parties have agreed upon.
Meanwhile, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said that the two degrees Celsius goal is not enough. She recently called for countries to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Two degrees is not enough – we should be thinking of 1.5C," she said. "If we are not headed to 1.5 we are in big, big trouble."
While the ambition to do more in the UNFCCC framework is clear, the debate over this target may disturb future negotiations. In the Conference of Parties (COP) in Cancun, countries agreed to achieve a building block approach, learning from the mistake at Copenhagen of trying to tackle an overarching legally binding agreement. Focusing on areas where there is a clear mutual understanding can then build the trust that is needed to negotiate further targets.
Some developing countries also want to address issues that were not resolved in the Bali Road Map. The two degree Celsius target and the issues with the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) can present distractions in the upcoming climate talks.
Meanwhile, United States climate envoy Todd Stern, whose comments on the UNFCCC process caused a stir in the last set of climate talks in Bangkok in April, testified recently in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In his testimony, he highlighted flaws in the Kyoto Protocol and reaffirmed the U.S. position that it will not support a treaty that does not impose targets on major economies, such as China.
“The Kyoto paradigm is unworkable as a matter of substance…You cannot build a system that treats China like Chad when China is the world’s second largest economy, largest emitter, second largest historic emitter, will have emissions that are some 90 percent larger than the U.S. by 2020, and has even surpassed France in per capita emissions,” said Stern.
He also reinforced the idea of nationally-based targets and commitments, a position the U.S. and China share. Stern even said that this approach will help to bring major economies on board.
These developments all lead to an interesting setup for the climate talks over the next two weeks.
First, the issue of what to do post-Kyoto Protocol is still on the table. Even though the U.S. has not signed on to Kyoto, and instead took the Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA) route, it is clear that the U.S. will not sign on to a Kyoto-type treaty. Negotiators will need to hammer out details of a workable agreement.
Second, Figueres’s comments on the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, partnered with some of the developing countries’ desire to return to outstanding issues from COPs past, may lead to a sticking point in the negotiations.
However, the Green Climate Fund progress brings hope. The Green Climate Fund’s transitional committee met in April, and while the committee moved forward on good governance and accountability in that set of meetings, more details should become clear during Durban.
Furthermore, it seems like all parties are on the same page regarding adaptation, clean energy investments and deforestation.
Stern said that aiding poor countries “will strengthen our international posture, contribute to our own economic growth, and help build a clean-energy world less exposed and more resilient to the very real dangers of climate change…Whether you agree or disagree, it is vital to U.S. diplomatic leverage generally, and to long-term U.S. interests in the world, to be seen as meeting our responsibilities in this regard.”
Despite the possible setbacks that may stem from differences on global temperature rise targets or outstanding issues from previous COPs, the talks have the potential to move forward smoothly if parties build on what was agreed upon previously under the Copenhagen Accord and Cancun Agreements, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, or in this case, the negotiating agenda.
