COP 20: Extra-Time.

The 20th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP20) being held in Lima, Peru was scheduled to end at 18:00 local (23:00 GMT) yesterday. For the most part this did happen with the only exception being the Ad-Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (ADP) which is tasked with producing a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol (KP).

Due to what was essentially a filibuster by certain less capable nations led primarily by Uganda the ADP session lasted until past 02:00 (07:00 GMT) this morning. It has also led to a stock taking session which is starting pretty much as I write. What seems to have motivated the developing nations is a desire for more elements of Section E which deals with Adaptation and Loss & Damage and Section G dealing with finance to be agreed upon.

These are of course the sections that I have been delaying dealing with because the sections dealing with INDC's need to be the priority. Also Section's E and G aren't yet developed enough to be agreed upon. There are of course some very good ideas contained within them but there are also some very bad ideas and some serious contradictions. Therefore I need more time to consider how to expand on the good ideas to solve the problems. All I have at this point is quite a long and insulting list of where some of the less capable nations have got things badly wrong.

For example the adaptation section requires that the Green Climate Fund (GCF) receives USD100 billion a year. To put that in perspective it was at this session that the GCF finally reached its 1st year funding target of USD10 billion which was considered a major achievement. The agreement is intended to last until the end of the century giving it a minimum life-span of 85 years. This would make the total contributions to the GCF around USD8.5 trillion. With the US just passing a USD1 trillion spending bill this figure isn't as outrageous as it sounds but getting governments to agree to spending commitments that will last long after all the people involved have died seems extremely unreasonable especially when the nations making the demands are also blocking alternative sources of finance.

On the Loss & Damage the less capable nations want to establish a system whereby they are compensated for loss and damage caused by climate change - farmland turning to desert for example. The problem is that such a system already exists in the form of the International Court of Justice. However the level of scientific understanding to the levels of loss and damage and the role climate plays is not sufficient to support individual compensation claims. Therefore nations that are demanding that such a system is included in a binding agreement whilst at the same time refusing to take steps to improve everyones understanding of the issue are coming across as extremely unreasonable

Hopefully some of these issues can be dealt with today the ADP can be formally closed because if this was COP 21 I would now be writing an explanation of how efforts to reach an agreement on climate failed because the nations who are most at risk from climate change simply refused to sign an agreement.

15:30 on 13/12/14 (UK date).