COP20 in Lima to establish the groundwork for a future climate treaty will take place in limbo over tangible commitments on climate action only expected throughout 2015. Yet, discussions on a number of crucial issues will happen in light of this uncertainty. A hot potato will be the level of climate ambition needed for countries that want …
With the adoption of human rights language in Decision 1/CP. 16 of the UNFCCC COP held in Cancun in 2010, the initial resistance which trailed the conception of climate change as a human rights issue may have been defeated, but critical issues remain unresolved. The upcoming COP20 in Lima will provide a crucial opportunity to address these issues and advance the operationalization of the important Cancun decision.
It is critical that civil society is actively involved in discussions about the shape of new market mechanisms. But what lessons can be learned from previous efforts to promote reform such as the CDM Policy Dialogue?
Success at the upcoming COP20 in Lima to establish the groundwork for a future climate treaty will largely depend on the willingness of rich nations to live up to their promises of delivering climate finance. With tangible commitments on climate action only expected throughout 2015, the challenge in Lima will be to establish necessary rules without having certainty of the level of ambition countries are prepared to make.
At the recent round of climate negotiations in Bonn in June, countries showed little interest in fixing the flaws of Joint Implementation (JI), the UN’s second largest offsetting scheme. The proposed new rules do little to tackle the severe quality problems that have dogged the scheme and led to very few genuine emission reductions. With the continued unwillingness of Parties to reform the system we see little reason why the JI should continue after the UN’s Kyoto Protocol ends in 2020.
Since early 2000 almost 7000 projects have sprouted on the UNFCCC registry, claiming reduction of more than 1.3 billion tonnes C02. All these projects except for a handful are corporately initiated, owned and controlled. The carbon being traded is an icing on the profit cake of companies, thus subsidizing initiatives that should otherwise be penalized. If there is further profit to be derived from carbon trading it should make way for the poor.
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