Climate change talks on the road to nowhere

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that gathered 9000 delegates from around the world in Poznan, Poland, failed to deliver actions needed to fight global warming and help developing countries to cope with its effects, the environmental experts and campaigners agreed yesterday.

The UNFCCC conference was expected to be an important landmark marking halfway through a two-year negotiation process seeking to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. But after a slow start in Bali last year, little progress has been made towards reaching a new global climate change pact in Copenhagen planned for December 2009.

Phil Bloomer, Senior Executive with Oxfam, said “Poznan was meant to be a staging post on the way to an ambitious deal that would be achieved in Copenhagen, but instead, it is like a polluting truck stalled in the truck stop.”

The Poznan negotiations were intended to set targets for emissions reductions, deforestation, the Adaptation Fund and sharing clean technology and finance.

The Executive Secretary, Yvo de Boer, was pleased with the outcomes of the meeting. He said: "What this conference has very clearly shown is that from now on it's for real in this process, that countries are getting down to serious negotiations for an agreement in Copenhagen."

But environmentalists are less optimistic. According to Tim Jones, the World Development Movement's Climate Policy Expert, in Poznan Europe's credibility as a leader on climate change has slipped away. A long-term goal to keep global warming below 2°C was not established and there was no agreement on targets for reductions of green house gases emissions.

He said: "Yet again rich countries, who carry the historical responsibility for climate change, have failed to offer sufficient cuts. Several, such as Australia, Japan, Canada and the United States, made no significant offers to reduce emissions before 2020."

According to Oxfam, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has called for industrialized countries to make cuts of 25-40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020 but instead of proposals Annex 1 countries arrived pleading for their special circumstances.

The seemingly biggest success of the conference was the establishment of the Adaptation Fund aimed to protect vulnerable communities from the impacts of climate change. However, as Yvo de Boer admitted, it has caused "some bitterness".

Barry Coates, Oxfam’s Senior Executive, said: “This was an important decision on the crucial issues of accountability, effectiveness and control over the money available to poor countries for urgent adaptation needs. However, the elephant in the room is still where the money for adaptation is going to come from. We urgently needed a decision on increased future funding for adaptation, but we didn’t get there.”

Oxfam estimates that at least $50 billion a year is needed. In Poznan Norway proposed innovative, market-linked mechanism that would provide adequate funding. A deal was on the table right until the end of two-week conference, but was blocked by the EU, Canada, Australia and Russia in the last hours of negotiations.

The talks on avoided deforestation held in Poznan also caused concerns among environmentalists. The UK has already committed £15 million to support the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, established during the UNFCCC discussions in Bali last year, and another £60 million to the Congo Basin Forest Fund. The aim was to ensure the sustainable economic growth in rainforest countries allowing them to develop their infrastructure without having negative impacts on the environment.

The UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, speaking at the conference said: “I’m impressed by the commitment demonstrated today – it shows that we can make real progress on protecting the world’s forests and secure ambitious goals in Copenhagen next year.”

But the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility also aims to built developing countries’ capacity to engage in REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanism that creates carbon credits by reducing deforestation in poor countries and sells them to rich countries so they can offset their industrial emissions. This way industrialized countries can continue polluting while the world poorest work to reduce the damage.

“The lack of meaningful action in Poznan leaves a lot to be done in 2009,” Tim Jones said. “All those wanting a just climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009 will need to radically increase their ambitions in the New Year. No rich country, including the UK, has yet proposed anything like the action needed to stop climate change destroying the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people in coming years.”