The tasks ahead of global climate pact

Ministers and representatives of 194 countries returned home from the two-week-long marathon UN climate conference in Warsaw cracking some soft-nuts and keeping more hard-nuts to smash on way to Paris via Lima with a heavy load of homework to do before drawing up their respective countries' emission cutback plans by early 2015 paving the way for Paris Protocol to be reached in December, 2015 in the capital of France.
The 19th UN Conference of Parties, known as COP 19 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Warsaw from November 11- 23 last, gave the negotiators a scope to return to their national capitals to 'do their home task' and come back prepared to sign the deal in Paris with a draft agreed in Lima.
As agreed in Warsaw, by the first quarter of 2015 the countries must draw up their respective 'contributions' to the global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that will come into force from 2020. In fact, those national contributions - not the stronger 'commitments' as wanted by the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and SIDS - will be the centrepiece of any new worldwide agreement on climate change, set to be inked in Paris in December 2015 at the COP 21.
What is interesting to note is the contributions will be set at a national level and overseen domestically, but they will also be subject to "assessment" by other participants. The exact format of this assessment has yet to be established, but will involve attempts to judge whether the contributions are fair and equitable and commensurate with the challenge of staying within the global carbon budget, set out starkly by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in September this year.
UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said: "If delegates leave here with a sense of how much is left to do, then, maybe, that will focus on efforts in the coming 12 months, because without that sense we have all reasons to be very concerned."
UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres said: "We have seen essential progress. Now governments, and especially developed nations, must go back to do their homework so that they can put their plans on the table ahead of the Paris conference. A groundswell of action is happening at all levels of society. All major players came to the COP 19 in Warsaw to show not only what they had done but to think what more they could do. Next year is also the time for them to turn ideas into further concrete action."
However, that concession in the first quarter of 2015 does not leave a long time for the assessment process to take place. But, that timetable has been drawn up essentially to take account of the realities of the US electoral timetable. The US government announced earlier this year that it would set its post-2020 target in the first quarter of 2015. That is necessary to ensure that the decision does not get tangled up in the US congressional elections in autumn 2014 - they are likely to be touchy enough, without introducing the incendiary subject of climate change.
On the other hand, other developed countries, led by the EU, are sympathetic to the need to adopt this timetable, even though it means time will be squeezed, and some countries may try to take advantage of this to let the clock run down on the Paris talks in December 2015. There is little indication yet of what the future targets from most countries might look like. The European Union is most advanced, as it had already met its 2020 pledge seven years ahead. The proposal likely to be put forward is a 60 per cent cut in emissions from the 1990 level, by 2030. Reaching that target agreed by all member states may not be straightforward.
AN OPEN ROW: There was an open row in Warsaw between the European Commission and the coal-fired Polish hosts, who were accused by high-level EU officials of deliberately dragging out and reopening negotiations in a way that enabled some countries to backtrack on issues that were previously agreed.
At Warsaw, the efforts of the LMDC led by India and China focused on attempting to reintroduce in key texts the restatement of separation of countries into 'developed' and 'developing' that was first set out in the 1992 Convention and enshrined in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, under which developing countries bore no obligations to emission cuts and rich and industrialised nations faced steep cuts. The US, the EU and other developed countries regarded this separation as having been left behind at Copenhagen in 2009, in Durban in 2011 and in Doha in 2012, when both developed and developing countries signed up under a single agreement to curb their emissions. They argue that this new arrangement is needed, as the world has moved on in 20 years: China is now the world's biggest emitter and the second biggest economy, and combined emissions from developing countries are on track to overtake those of the developed world by 2020.
The rationale of either keeping or redrawing this 'firewall' between the developed and developing countries is likely to dominate the negotiations in the run-up to Paris.
WARSAW INTERNATIONAL MECHANISM: The COP 19 has devised a new Warsaw international mechanism to help developing countries affected by loss and damage from climate change, such as hurricanes, Sidr, Aila and Mahasen in Bangladesh and the typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and such disasters in Palau and Vietnam. It was a landmark decision taken at the closing plenary on November 23 evening, a full day after its scheduled ending. However, the COP 19 took some other major decisions-one on how to proceed with negotiations on the Durban Platform, and seven decisions on climate finance.
 However, in the run-up to COP 19, the developed countries billed it as the finance COP. But, the developing countries were deeply disappointed that what they termed as the Finance COP yielded hardly any concrete results except topping up funds for the depleted Adaptation Fund under the Kyoto Protocol.
 The Warsaw loss and damage mechanism to help victims of hurricanes and typhoons, floods, drought and other effects of climate change was devised after many days of negotiations.
 The Warsaw mechanism is meant to meet the institutional and financial gaps within the UN Climate Convention, which is the world's premier body dealing with climate change. The UNFCCC presently mobilises funds for mitigation or reduction of emissions and adaptation like preparing for effects of climate change such as building sea-walls and drainage systems.
 But until now it did not have the clear mandate for helping countries recover from loss and damage. However, with the new mechanism, a burst of pent-up energy and organisational efforts can be expected at least from developing countries, especially the LDCs and SIDS that will request for funding under this new mechanism within the UNFCCC and complement the tasks of other agencies.
British economist Lord Sir Nicolas Stern at the first annual adaptation forum held on November 19 in Warsaw pointed out that damage caused by natural disasters rose from about US$ 200 billion a year a decade ago to around $ 300-400 billion annually in recent years. Climate scientists and economists argue that adverse impacts of climate change are increasing in terms of both frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Developing countries, led by the G77 and strongly supported by the LDCs, Africa and AOSIS and countries like Bangladesh, the Philippines and Bolivia, made a plea to amend the text that the loss and damage mechanism would be "under the Cancun Adaptation Framework".
A COMPROMISE WORKED OUT: After a prolonged huddle between the US, the G77 and other developing and developed country delegations, a compromise was worked out that included three components: first, adoption of a new preambular paragraph, second, the acceptance of the term 'under' the adaptation framework but subject to a review of this in three years at COP22 in December 2016, and third, specific reference to a review on the structure, mandate and effectiveness, with an understanding that the issue of structure would include placement of the loss and damage mechanism.
After a long huddle, the important new paragraph was adopted by the COP: "Also acknowledging that loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change include, and in some cases, involve more than that which can be reduced by adaptation." For LDCs like Bangladesh, SIDS and other developing countries, this means that the loss and damage concept goes beyond the adaptation issue in the Framework Convention.
It can be recalled here that an enormous amount of flexibility has been shown by US, EU, EEG and G-77 in reaching this agreement on the Warsaw mechanism. A work plan for result-based financing was also adopted for reducing emissions from forest-related activities known as REDD-plus and pledges from developed countries to meet the goal of having US$ 100 million for the Adaptation Fund, the resources of which had dried up after the drastic fall in carbon prices.
 A CAUSE FOR FRUSTATION: However, the ministers and delegates from developing countries, especially LDCs and SIDS, were frustrated essentially because of slow progress in addressing the main issues of finance-how to mobilise funds up to the level of the already pledged US$100 billion a year by 2020, to help developing countries take climate-related actions. So far there has only been a trickle of funds and no roadmap between now and the 2020 deadline. The developing countries had persisted in asking that milestones on a roadmap be set, mentioning that $70 billion can be mobilised by 2016, on the way to $100 billion by 2020 as targeted. It was not accepted by developed countries. They did not agree on any roadmap or milestone.
This gave rise to expression of disappointment and frustration by many developing countries and their groupings. This scribe at the COP plenary described this lack of figures and commitments as a great failure in what is supposed to be a Finance COP. Even some developed countries were at one point not agreeing to continue with the work programme on long-term finance. Eventually a decision was adopted on continuing deliberations on long-term finance, which includes in-session workshops on scaling up long-term finance; a biennial high-level ministerial dialogue on climate finance starting in 2014 and ending in 2020; and a request to developed countries to provide biennial submissions on their updated approaches for scaling up climate finance during the period from 2014 to 2020.
A major test of climate finance will be the developments in forming the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in the next one to two years, as the GCF is supposed to become the major climate finance entity, and so far it has not received any substantial contributions.
 However, the ministers and representatives at the COP19 spent a sleepless fortnight on how to take forward the talks in the next two years dubbed the Durban Platform that will lead to a new climate change pact in December, 2015. Some of the rich countries were determined to break the differences in mitigation of obligations between developed and developing countries. On the other hand, many developing countries were fighting to retain the 'firewall' between the commitments of developed countries which carry a higher legal obligation and the enhanced actions of developing countries which are to be supported by finance and technology.
 The disagreement on a crucial paragraph of the decision on this issue almost led to a collapse of the talks on the Durban Platform, but at the last minute the countries agreed on neutralising the language on how all countries would put forward details of their contributions.
INTERNATIONAL MECHANISM FOR LOSS AND DAMAGE: The leader of Bangladesh delegation, environment secretary Shafiqur Rahman Patwari, made a passionate statement at the high-level opening plenary calling for progress in the Durban Platform negotiations, mobilisation of support for adaptation and an international mechanism for loss and damage.
 The debate on how various countries will have to contribute to addressing mitigation and adaptation activities and the issue of securing the support of financing and technology for developing countries will be the subject of very intense talks next year.
 Ahead of the meetings scheduled for March 10-14 next year as well as in June and December, Bangladesh and other LDCs should do the home work more seriously to guard the concerns of the poorest of the poor people of developing countries. The journey towards Paris via Lima will be arduous as many a hard nut is to be cracked to reach an ambitious, fair, balanced and robust legally binding agreement in 2015.
The writer is a lead climate negotiator of the grouping of 49 LDCs, a member of UN Adaptation Committee and chair of FEJB and APFEJ.                    [email protected]