Canadian Conservative Government Rejects Kyoto

Canada's newly reelected Conservative government has confirmed that it will not support an extension of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions after 2012. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper had already announced his government would not meet the binding emissions cuts it committed to under the first round of Kyoto.

The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 192 of the UNFCCC Parties. Under the Protocol, 37 industrialized countries have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments. The Kyoto Protocol contains key rules to quantify and monitor efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and important market-based mechanisms that enable cost-effective mitigation.

Harper has opted to renege on Kyoto even though the International Energy Agency found that found fossil fuel emissions hit record highs last year, topping 30 gigatons, (about 5 percent more than the previous record set in 2008).

Ottawa, joined the US, Russia and Japan in rejecting an extension of the international agreement at the UN preparatory climate change conference in Bonn, Germany.

Buoyed by their recent election victory, Conservatives can be expected to exploit the tar sands and do as little as possible on the environmental front.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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Progress at the Bonn Climate Talks and Hopes for COP17

Climate talks wrapped up in Bonn on Friday June 17 ahead of the seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP17) which will take place later this year in Durban, South Africa.

Before the climate talks in Bonn, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) encouraged countries to come together: "No nation will solve climate change alone. And no nation is alone in feeling its impacts. We're only a few days away now from the mid-year climate negotiations and governments need to pick up speed."

After the Bonn talks, Figueres indicated that she is optimisitic that countries will make progress on a wide range of issues at COP17. These issues include the Kyoto Protocol, global mitigation framework, the Adaptation Committee, the Green Climate Fund, funding, and the Technology Mechanism.

She reiterated the importance of the link between negotiations on mitigation under the UN Climate Change Convention and mitigation under the Kyoto Protocol. As explained by Figueres, the Kyoto Protocol contains key rules to quantify and monitor efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and important market-based mechanisms that enable cost-effective mitigation. The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 192 of the UNFCCC Parties. Under the Protocol, 37 industrialized countries have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments.

Figueres pointed to progress on the Adaptation Committee and the Technology Mechanism that will boost global clean technology cooperation. “Strong convergence has emerged on how the Adaptation Committee will be governed, what its composition will be and what its specific role will be,” Figueres said. “This progress means that the Committee could be fully operationalized at Durban."

The Bonn talks also made progress on the Technology Mechanism which will include a Climate Technology Centre and Network which will operate with the strong involvement of the global clean technology stakeholder community. Participants also discussed the effects of implementing mitigation measures including economic transition and diversification, along with health and trade-related issues.

Figueres said the Bonn session included discussions on the design of the Green Climate Fund, as well as identification of sources for long-term funding. Another meeting related to the Green Climate Fund will take place in Tokyo in July.

Other meetings are also planned to help pave the way for progress at COP17. A ministerial conference is planned for 2 to 3 July in Berlin. The leaderships of South African and Mexico are planning to meet with Heads of State and Governments at the UN General Assembly in New York in September and ministers are scheduled to meet approximately one month ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in South Africa.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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Hope in the Face of the Fastest Ever Rise in Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Despite 20 years of climate negotiations global warming causing greenhouse gases (GHGs) from energy are now rising at record setting levels. As reported in the Guardian, UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres, indicated that we are experiencing the fastest-ever rise in greenhouse gas emissions, but she added that the data should not lead people to believe that the problem is impossible to tackle.

"This is the inconvenient truth of where human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are projected to go without much stronger international action now and into the future." But Figueres added, "I won't hear that this is impossible. Governments must make it possible for society, business and science to get this job done."

Estimates from the International Energy Agency, reveal that despite government policies aimed at curbing greenhouse gases the 2010, global emissions from energy were 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, compared with 29Gt in 2009 and 29.3Gt in 2008.

Three quarters of the emissions rise came from developing countries, with a quarter from the developed world. Although most of the record rise in emissions came from rapidly emerging economies, including China, there is growing evidence that the west has "exported" billions of tonnes of its emissions by relying on imports from the developing world.

The developing world is simply using the developed world for more of its energy intensive manufacturing. This is the finding in research being conducted by Sir David King, director of the Smith School of Enterprise at the University of Oxford and former chief scientific advisor to the UK government. Similar results were also revealed in studies from the Carbon Trust and others.

Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA and one of the world's foremost experts on energy and climate, said: "Unless bold and decisive decisions are made very soon, it will be extremely challenging to achieve the global goal agreed [at the last UN climate change conference in December] in Cancún."

Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's climate chief, said: "One wonders how many more worrying figures the world needs. The promises of world leaders at Copenhagen and Cancún to stay below 2C of warming need urgently to be followed by more action."

Hedegaard said the EU had put in place strong policies that had reduced emissions, and said other countries should follow. In 2008-10, emissions from EU heavy industry fell by more than 8%, in part owing to the recession and in part to climate policies. Hedegaard said: "We in Europe have specific policies, binding targets and a price on carbon. Europe has committed to an ambitious agenda of climate action. We look to our partners to do likewise.''

Hedegaard insisted there were reasons to be optimistic, "Countries, including the biggest economies, are moving forward with new policies that promote low-carbon prosperous growth, even if they don't always attach climate labels to these policies. And the private sector continues to increase its investment in low-carbon business and renewable energy and wants to do more."

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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Video: Bonn Climate Change Conference June 2011

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres provides some of the highlights from the June 2011 Climate Talks in Bonn, Germany. This video was recorded on the final day of the UN Climate Change Conference. Figueres indicates that it is important to resolve the future of the Kyoto Protocol which is fundamental and critical for at least two reasons 1) It contains the key rules to quantify monitor the mitigation efforts of countries. 2) It also contains important market based mechanisms that allows those countries to reach their mitigation levels in a cost effective manner.

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Yvo de Boer on the Future of the UNFCCC

At the World Energy Congress in Montreal, Canada, Rebecca Lutzy, interviewed the former UN climate change boss Yvo de Boer, on the future of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the UNFCCC and the sixth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP) is being held in Cancun (Quintana Roo), Mexico, between 29 November and 10 December 2010.

After four years of hard work, de Boer left the UNFCCC earlier this year to work with KPMG. When asked about the future of the UNFCCC process and what to expect in Cancun, de Boer was optimistic, saying that he believes that "it should be possible to make practical progress on frameworks on adaptation, mitigation, technology, finance, capacity building, and forests."

de Boer explained that managing climate change is about a lot more than just reducing emissions. "If coming to grips with climate change were only about reducing emissions, then it would make a lot of sense to just bring the 20 or so major economies of the world together in a room and get them to focus on emissions reduction, but...the climate change agenda isn't only about reducing emissions. It's about adapting to the impacts of climate change as well...and then you're talking about the 100 or so developing countries who did absolutely nothing to contribute to climate change but will be confronted with the bulk of the impacts. So...you need a larger group at the table."

However, at the World Energy Congress roundtable, de Boer noted that more productive progress can be made by splitting up issues and having subsets of countries work on specifics, rather than having all countries "at the table" for all discussions.

de Boer also said that companies first need to figure out where they stand on carbon and other sustainability measures and then to respond to the risks and opportunities presented by their footprints.

He stressed that "it's clear that the international community wants to address climate change...it's clear that sustainability is rising to the top of the agenda of governments and companies and of consumers...the environment in which businesses have to operate is changing very rapidly." He used airlines, companies with long supply chains, and beer breweries as examples of businesses that face risks related to their carbon (and water) footprints but also face business opportunities through smart choices in responding to and reducing impacts.


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