The real issues related to the future of the Kyoto Protocol and the extent to which countries not covered by binding targets under it were going to be willing to take on increased ambition to reduce their emissions. Essentially an impasse had been reached with some countries walking away from the Kyoto Protocol unless countries such as China, India and Brazil agreed to some form of binding targets.
This was important to New Zealand as it looked likely only to accept a new commitment under the Kyoto Protocol if:
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sufficient progress was made under the Kyoto Protocol’s rules
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it was clear that developed and developing countries took on emission reduction commitments of equal legal force.
This stance was consistent with the conditions NZ had placed around its 2020 emissions reduction target.
So what came out of Durban? Progress was made in many aspects of the Cancun Agreement but it was incremental.
For example, the reporting requirements for both developed and developing countries were agreed with clarification of how international assessment and review (for developed countries) and international consultation and analysis (for developing countries) would work. The goal here is to drive the two regimes closer together.
The roles and governance arrangements for the Adaptation Committee, the Technology Executive Committee and the Finance Standing Committee were also agreed, but key elements relating to their work programmes and long term finance funding, were pushed into next year. The review of the adequacy of the long-term global goal, and the progress being made towards it, was also fleshed out.
Other areas, such as identifying a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050 and a time frame for a global peaking of greenhouse gas, international aviation and shipping, and the economic and social consequences of response measures were also too difficult to reach agreement on.
It was simply agreed that work on these issues would continue. The establishment of a forum to consider the issue of response measures is particularly important as it seems to deflect the highly contentious issues of easier access to intellectual property rights, and the circumvention of the WTO as the most appropriately qualified organisation to address trade related issues arising from climate change responses.
As noted above, the key issue for Durban was the extent to which a pathway could be found between those willing to continue to take obligations under the Kyoto Protocol and the need for those countries not covered by it to be covered by a balancing agreement. This became increasingly important with a number of developed countries in addition to the USA (Japan, Russia and Canada) disavowing the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, the end of the first commitment period.
Some progress has been made with the establishment of a new Ad hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. This is a process to “develop a new protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the UNFCCC on climate change applicable to all Parties…” (draft decision -/CP.17, advanced unedited version). The Ad hoc Group is to “complete its work as early as possible but no later than 2015 in order to adopt this protocol, legal instrument or legal outcomes at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties and for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020.”
Much work is to be done to determine whether this will result in binding mitigation commitments by all major economies reflecting their economic capacity, and whether such an agreement will be underpinned by MRV, clear accounting rules and functioning market mechanisms.
What this means in practice for the future of the Kyoto Protocol is as yet, still unclear. Decisions have, as in the past, continued to be made under the Ad hoc Working Group on the Kyoto Protocol. But these decisions are not binding as they relate to after 2012. Importantly, neither do the decisions taken mean that agreement to a new commitment period will be ratified by the end of 2012 by all of those who have signalled a willingness to continue to be bound under it. Domestic constitutional processes in many countries, including New Zealand, will prevent this. The absence of clarity on issues such as the length of the second commitment period (either five or seven years) and suitable emission reduction targets (or quantified emission limitation or reduction objectives, ‘QELROs’) virtually guarantees this. This means that a ‘gap’ remains likely (at least for New Zealand) and a transitional arrangement necessary.
But this doesn’t mean that New Zealand will not eventually continue under the Kyoto Protocol in the run-up to the new post-2020 agreement. Rather, the decisions made at Durban have put New Zealand in a good position to choose both form of the post-2012 arrangement it wishes to take and its timing.
Early hopes about progress on the LULUCF rules, the use of flexible market mechanisms and a decision to finally unbundle agriculture from the issues associated with international maritime issues, have been realised. These were prerequisites to New Zealand continuing under the Kyoto Protocol.
The level of emission reduction ambition expressed by our trade‑competitors, the comparability of that ambition to New Zealand’s effort and how soon this can be established with any clarity is likely to be influential in New Zealand’s choice of arrangement and timing.
Understanding other’s ambition is a key condition to defining New Zealand’s level of emissions reduction. Slow progress on getting this clarity in the context of the new post‑2020 arrangement is likely, and may well see New Zealand choose to sit outside of the Kyoto Protocol while informally adopting its rules and procedures until clarity emerges.
Draft text suggesting that countries who sat outside the Kyoto Protocol could not get access to the CDM did not survive the negotiations. The alternative is to offer up a low QELRO and ratify a second commitment period when able to. It is possible that little differentiates this choice and political judgement is likely to come into play.
Modest outcomes have been delivered from Durban, and there is good reason why the key element to emerge from Durban has been called a ‘platform’. Countries now need to decide whether it is one on which future decisions can be built, or on which aspirations to strike a new global arrangement founder. Only time will tell.
John Carnegie
BusinessNZ
