In preparation for the upcoming UNFCCC meeting in Copenhagen, various parties to the agreement have made submissions, outlining their perspectives on the negotiations. The position of the United States (PDF) is now available.
I don’t personally have time to keep track of the details of all the various proposals. Furthermore, the alliances formed between negotiating parties may prove to be the most important element in determining the outcome of the meeting. Nonetheless, I thought it would be of interest.
Author: Milan
In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford.
Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.
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WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Four more rounds of formal negotiations are scheduled before the Dec 7-18 talks in Copenhagen. These are June 1-12 in Bonn, Germany; Aug 10-14 in Bonn; Sept 28 to Oct 9 in Bangkok; and Nov 2-6, at a venue yet to be decided.
In addition, heads of state and government will gather in September at a U.N. climate change summit in New York and President Obama will host a major economies forum on the sidelines of the G8 in Italy in July. Two other meetings convened by the United States will take place, one probably 26-27 May in Paris and another in June.
Under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), there is a legal requirement to have a draft text on a new climate pact on the table six months before a formal gathering of all members of the convention. Likewise, any new amendments to the Kyoto Protocol must be submitted six months in advance.
These texts will be discussed at the next meeting in Bonn.
Climate change: the road to Copenhagen
Every year in December, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meet for a major Conference of the Parties (COP), as part of an ongoing international diplomatic process designed to avert catastrophic climate change by reducing countries’ greenhouse gas emissions.
The Copenhagen conference will be the 15th COP and represents the last stop in global talks, launched in December 2007 in Bali, to clinch a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The post-2012 global climate-change policy regime will provide the international framework for action.
With energy-related CO2 accounting for 61% of global greenhouse-gas emissions today, the energy sector will have to be at the heart of discussions. The target that is set for the long-term stabilisation of greenhouse-gas concentration will determine the pace of the required transformation of the global energy system.
A major challenge is to find a way of sharing global emissions reductions between rapidly developing countries like China and India and more industrialised countries like the US and Europe, which are responsible for the bulk of historical CO2 emissions.
The conference in Poznan last December, a key milestone between Bali and Copenhagen, achieved little progress. Developed countries were supposed to submit proposals on emissions reductions, finance and technology but little has actually been achieved.
Have any of the big players responded to this US document? China, etc?
Vague intentions
U.S. pledges something or other on climate
Posted 6:31 PM on 5 May 2009
by Jonathan Hiskes
Today U.S. negotiators promised “ambitious actions,” “robust targets,” and pretty much nada details in a proposal overdue to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The paper suggests a structure for the international climate treaty to be hashed out in Copenhagen this December—something the UNFCC had requested from participating nations by April 24, a deadline many countries missed.
“The United States supports a Copenhagen agreed outcome that recognizes the magnitude and seriousness of what science demands … is pragmatic, and recognizes the diversity of countries’ circumstances and opportunities,” the proposal said.