The UNFCCC's June Meeting.

On Wednesday (4/6/14) participants in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) begin a 10 day meeting in Bonn, Germany intended to draw up a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol (KP). 

I should point out though that while there is to be a high-level (ministerial) portion to this meeting its purpose is to lay the groundwork for the COP20 Summit in Lima, Peru in November 2014. The purpose of the COP20 itself is to lay the groundwork for the signing of the replacement to the KP at the COP21 in Paris, France in late 2015. As such this June meeting is much more about building relationships between delegates and finding common ground on the issues rather than producing some sort of headline grabbing, tangible announcement.

However that does not mean that delegates have time to waste. That is because one thing that is going to be key to producing a replacement to the KP is the delegates ability to avoid the mistakes of the past which tend to involve leaving everything until the absolute last minute so the COP Summits are incredibly rushed, high pressure affairs with dozens of sleep deprived people charging around trying to negotiate very complex positions before time runs out. In fact a number of parties have raised the need for the bulk of the work to be completed six months in advance of the COP21 leaving those two weeks free to work out the finer details ahead of an orderly signing. The Russians have specifically highlighted the problems of the usual headless chicken scenario although they incorrectly termed it "Force Majeure Conditions."

This reference to Force Majeure seemed intended to draw attention to New Zealand's rather ground breaking submission to the March meeting. This was so comprehensive in its thinking that it even raised the possibility of Force Majeure clauses in any agreement. These are pretty standard clauses in international agreements and private sector contracts laying out the extreme conditions under which parties are freed from their obligations. Japan's 2010 tsunami and the devastating impact on its predominately nuclear energy sector serve to highlight that Force Majeure clauses certainly need to be considered as part of any replacement to the KP.

The main revolutionary idea from New Zealand's submission though was that it proposed a sort of hybrid agreement where nations are able to submit a minimum baseline mitigation commitment. The nation is then free to exceed that baseline if they are able but if they fail to meet that baseline rather then being directly punished they would be given the option to offset that failure by increasing their support to developing nations. So for example while it might cost a developed nation USD100million to upgrade their powerstations they may be able to produce the same mitigation result by spending USD50million to help a developing nation to switch from household electricity generators to a solar powered electricity grid or similar task that said developing nation needs doing.

This sort of flexibility helps to increase ambition in the developed world and would provide the sort of data that could be used to set higher baselines as part of a trajectory approach to develop the new agreement beyond its first 10 year period. It is also very helpful to developing nations because it allows them to set out what their minimum commitments will be without international help, what their commitments will be if they receive a small amount of international help and what their commitments could be if they got all the help they require. This provides a powerful negotiating tool because it helps narrow down the specifics of what developed nations wish to achieve through their spending and shows that developing nations are committed to reducing greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions rather then trying to use the process as a boondoggle to weasel money out of the developed world.

Based on how things stand at the moment I would say the biggest threat to negotiations and an eventual agreement is the issue of whether to continue with the Annex I (developed) and Annex II (developing) nations split that was used in the KP. It must be said that amongst the more forward thinking parties there is a growing realisation that the very rigid structure of the KP is restricting what people are able to do and that is limiting what they are able to achieve. This rigidity could well be one of the core reasons why the KP failed.

Also there is almost a uniform consensus that nations such as China, India and Brazil which were considered developing when the KP was signed now need to be reclassified as developed. This creates a difficult situation where nations in the middle face being squeezed very hard by reclassification or creates the need for an even more complicated three annex system to be developed.

The least developed nations are understandably passionately opposed to the phasing out of the annex system. However I do feel the need to warn them that they are being backed by larger nations such as Saudi Arabia whose entire survival are wholly dependent on the maximum number of people producing energy by burning fossil fuels at the highest possible price. These nations have absolutely no interest in helping poor nations develop economically and are instead using the annex issue as a way to sow division in order to prevent a replacement to the KP being signed at all. As such the least developed nations need to think very carefully about whether they are in fact trading the possibility of a fairer but less profitable deal for the probability of no deal at all.

In terms of an outcome from this June meeting I will consider it a success if a majority of nations find themselves in a position where they will be able to draw up prototypes of their National Action Plans (NAP's). These should go beyond the type of template that South Africa very helpfully laid out their submission by including examples of mitigation and adaptation action and actual numbers. However I should point out that these do not necessarily need to be real numbers and most certainly should not prejudice any future commitments even if that would assist with the ex-ante issue. This is an area where the European Union (EU) can be more useful then simply pointing how serious the problem is and how little time there is to solve it because putting actions already under taken as part of KP into this new methodology will certainly help people understand how these new methods will work in practical terms. Singapore also seem able to help in this area because they are certainly economically and technologically advanced enough to draw up an exemplar NAP and their small size means that it should be simple enough to convey the basic principles.

Essentially what I'm looking for is an example so simple even I can understand it. After all Obama's attempts to introduce the States to the mere concept of an Action Plan are simply not sufficient. 

22:05 on 3/6/14 (UK date).