Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon embraces with COP17/CMP7 officials in Durban (UN Photo/Mark Garten)
COP17 finally drew to a close Sunday morning, bringing an end to 13 days of tense negotiations that actually ran a day and a half overtime. Delegates of the 194 UN member states reached a landmark agreement which lays the groundwork for an extensive and far-reaching future accord.
The final deal, the ‘Durban Platform’, establishes the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, which will immediately begin work on a new legally-binding instrument that includes both industrialized and developing nations. For the first time all countries, both developing giants like India and China and wealthy developed nations like the US, will be bound under the same accord. The Durban Platform calls for the creation of this future accord by 2015, with enforcement starting no later than 2020.
Kyoto Protocol Extension
The Kyoto Protocol, set to expire on 1 Jan. 2012, also received an extension. 35 industrialized nations agreed to a second commitment period which will end on 1 Jan. 2013. Recognizing the ambiguous nature of the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period, the extension establishes an accountability mechanism aimed at ensuring the Protocol’s effectiveness. This mechanism requires committed nations to submit quantified emission-limitation or reduction objectives for UN review by 1 May 2012.
Also agreed upon was a framework for new market mechanisms that take into account the “…different circumstances of developed and developing countries.” The final emissions reduction mechanism will be anchored in international law, with details set to be finalized at COP18 in Qatar.
Under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, delegates also wrote new rules amending and extending carbon capture and sequestration technology as a means of carbon offset.
The Green Climate Fund
Though it’s funding mechanism remains undecided, delegates in Durban agreed upon the full implementation of the Global Climate Fund, part of a package created at COP16 aimed at aiding poor developing nations deal with climate adaptation. The package also included an Adaptation Committee designed increase international coordination on adaptation, and a new Technology Mechanism, all set to become fully operational in 2012.
The Fund is designed to provide up to $100 billion dollars a year by 2020 for climate mitigation and sustainable development initiatives, however it fell victim to many developed nation’s sovereign debt crises. The recent proposal to levy a tax on international shipping emissions also failed to be included in package.
Ambition & Anger
While comprehensive and multifaceted, the outcome of COP17 leaves many questioning if it is enough. Tonya Rawe, the Senior Policy Advocate for CARE USA criticized the outcome as “weak” and “bitterly disappointing.” Members of the World Wildlife Fund had stronger opinions: “the bottom line is that governments got practically nothing done here COP17 and that’s unacceptable.” Another organization, Friend of Earth agreed, stating “led by the US, developed nations have reneged on their promises, weakened the rules on climate action and strengthened those that allow their corporations to profit from the climate crisis.”
However, chief UN climate negotiator Christiana Figueres took a more cautious approach, saying the Durban agreement is a “critical next step,” while also admitting its “still insufficient.”
The UNFCCC expanded upon Figueres, stating “[governments] acknowledged the urgent concern that the current sum of pledges to cut emissions both from developed and developing countries is not high enough to keep the global average temperature rise below two degrees Celsius,” going on to say “…therefore [it is] decided that the UN Climate Change process shall increase ambition to act and will be led by the climate science in the IPCC’s [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's] Fifth Assessment Report and the global Review from 2013-2015.”
Figueres provided closure, stating that while deadlines must still be met, “countries, citizens and businesses who have been behind the rising global wave of climate action can now push ahead confidently, knowing that Durban has lit up a broader highway to a low-emission, climate-resilient future.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the outcome: “taken together, these agreements represent an important advance in our work on climate change,” urging countries to “quickly implement these decisions and to continue working together in the constructive spirit evident in Durban.”
The next UNFCCC Conferences of Parties, COP18/MOP8, will be hosted by Qatar and will take place from 26 November to 7 December 2012.
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