14 December 2011
Observers have welcomed the surprisingly positive outcomes of the UN climate talks in Durban, but cautioned that several blanks remain to be filled in. Among them, the emission reductions New Zealand and Australia will commit to when Kyoto 1 comes to an end on 31 December 2012. Negotiators finally reached agreement in the early hours of Sunday to start work next year on a new treaty with 'legal force' for post-2020, for all countries, developed and developing, with a view to concluding this deal by 2015. A second commitment period under the existing Kyoto Protocol was also agreed, with 35 industrialised countries agreeing to take on further targets from 2013, once the first commitment period lapses next year. It is yet to be decided if this period will run until 2017 or 2020."This is highly significant because the Kyoto Protocol's accounting rules, mechanisms and markets all remain in action as effective tools to leverage global climate action and as models to inform future agreements," said UN climate chief Christiana Figueres at the close of the Conference of the Parties (COP).
New Zealand's climate change ministers Nick Smith and Tim Groser say the outcome of the negotiations in Durban met all the realistic expectations the New Zealand delegation had when it arrived in South Africa two weeks ago.
The agreement:
• Maintains the legal structure of the existing Kyoto Protocol while improving rules in the treatment of land use and forestry. These changes have environmental integrity and make more sense for New Zealand moving forward;
• Reinforces commitments made in principle by all major emitters at Cancun last year for the period beyond 2012 to 2020 and thus ensures a far more comprehensive international approach to combating climate change than the very partial coverage a Kyoto deal alone would have secured. At the request of the South African Government, Mr Groser facilitated these negotiations;
• Crucially, foreshadows a single new international agreement beyond 2020 (the "Durban Platform") that will bring all major emitters, developed and developing, within a legally binding framework;
• Unlocked the way forward for the $100 billion Green Climate Fund designed to assist developing countries meet the adaptation and mitigation challenges they face.
Dr Smith noted that New Zealand has a robust suite of climate change policies in place centred around the ETS, which was described by the OECD in November as the most developed and most comprehensive trading scheme in the world.
Both ministers emphasised that there were still important questions left unanswered. The date for the next Kyoto commitments still needed to be finalized; the negotiations for the long term regime beyond 2020 would be long and arduous; the Durban texts themselves, which were deep and complex agreements put together under great pressure, will unquestionably contain problems and issues which cannot be seen clearly at this stage.
"Most important, we, and no doubt Australia, will each need to make a decision in coming months whether to join Europe in inscribing our next set of international commitments within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol or to join all the developing countries, the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia and others, in making those commitments under the alternative transitional arrangements described in different texts. It is not a matter of whether we make commitments - New Zealand will - but where they are made and how ambitious we should be.
"Like all countries, we will need to take account of our national circumstances and compare our efforts to the efforts of others. We want to do our fair share, but it will not be clear for some time what exactly others will be committing to," the Ministers said.
Mr Groser said New Zealand's negotiating team worked hand in glove with its Australian counterparts, led by the Hon Greg Combet, the Australian Minister for Climate Change.
"The cooperation at Durban will be matched by cooperation in domestic policy development. In particular, we will be exploring with Australia how to link in a practical way our two schemes, once the Australian scheme switches to a trading scheme in 2015," Dr Smith said.
"We recognize that these developments, welcome though they are, still leave many important questions unanswered. We need to address the recommendations of the review of the New Zealand ETS chaired by the Hon David Caygill. Internationally, there will still be many concerned at the overall level of ambition being less than required for an adequate global response looking forward to 2050.
"Equally, we can be certain that there will be concerns, particularly in developing countries that do not have well established climate change policies, that the Durban agreements may put too much adjustment pressures on them. While these conflicting concerns are legitimate, we can all move forward with increasing confidence given this outcome," Mr Groser said.
The Durban outcome was a real turnaround, says Geneva-based Henry Derwent, president of lobby group the International Emissions Trading Association, with the only outcome expected prior to the two-week COP was the launching of the Green Climate Fund (GCF). But, he added, the deal for a second commitment period is effectively a "Kyotino", with so few parties taking part, "something which a few EU officials said not too long ago they would reject".
Canada, Russia and Japan had previously ruled out participating, but alongside the EU countries are Ukraine, Lichtenstein, Iceland, Norway, Belarus, Kazahkstan, Croatia and Monaco.
It also remains unclear what targets those participating countries will be willing to take, Derwent said.
The targets in the Kyoto agreement "are no different from what they were when we went in [to the negotiations]", said Jonathan Grant, London-based climate and energy policy specialist at consultancy PwC.
"There's still uncertainty about whether the EU will move to 30%," he said, referring to previous statements by the EU that it would up its internal 2020 reduction target from the current 20% below 1990 levels to 30%, if others made comparable efforts. There is also uncertainty about Australia and New Zealand's commitments, Grant said.
"Some people talked about these being a clear signal – these are not clear signals," Grant said, noting the extensive conditionality in the text for a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol.
Derwent said that it would be "excessively optimistic to assume this will increase ambition" by the EU.
A spokeswoman for the European Commission told Carbon Finance that the 30% target "remains the EU's conditional offer" as the bloc awaits news from India and China as to their respective efforts for the future post-2020 treaty.
The focus now is on the 2015 deal, said E3G's Tomlinson. "Looking at long-term sources of finance is going to be one of the key issues going forward," and for next year's COP in Qatar, he said. Tomlinson noted that there could be a focus on "innovative sources" of finance for the GCF, beyond "national pledge and review", now that the fund is operational.
"There are a number of things to take away from the talks," Grant said. "But there's a huge amount of ambiguity still there ... there's a lot that still needs to be agreed," such as the nature of the post-2020 targets.
"There's still a long way to go," agreed Derwent. "But it certainly looks like one of the great comebacks" in the history of UN climate talks.
Sources: NZ Government media release and Katie Kouchakji, Environmental Finance
