Climate meeting warms up with money talks
No commentsClimate negotiations in the cold city of Poznan in Poland got warmer this week with hints of progress on a climate adaptation fund and on a mechanism to compensate forest countries that halt deforestation in order to help bring down emissions.
In the capital, Warsaw, finance ministers met Tuesday to discuss climate change issues. Indonesia was represented by Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar.
A member of the delegation, Fitrian Ardiansyah, said the minister was highlighting the fact that climate change is a development issue, not merely an environmental issue.
He said the meeting was timely, considering that there is fear the global financial crisis will undermine the ongoing climate negotiations.
“The finance ministers are expected to send a signal that if left unattended, climate change will cause much bigger impacts on people and ecosystems than the financial crisis,” Fitrian, who is WWF Indonesia’s program director on climate and energy, said Tuesday.
In Poznan, negotiations were back into full swing and enter high-level sessions on Thursday and Friday.
Head of secretariat of Indonesia’s National Council of Climate Change, Agus Purnomo, said that two teams were already set up, one representing big groups including the European Union and developing countries, known as G-77 and China. The other group is made up of lawyers discussing legal issues of the climate adaptation fund.
The EU Adaptation Fund is a pot of money designed to help developing countries protect themselves against the impacts of climate change.
“So it looks like there will be a decision on the adaptation fund … hopefully to make it operational,“Agus told the Post.”And I see strong commitments. The informal consultations were even held three times a day and lasted until late.”
In adapting to climate change, developing countries require funding and technology transfers. Currently, funding is channeled through four funding streams, three of which are operated by the Washington, DC-based Global Environment Facility. These are relatively small funds based on voluntary pledges and contributions from donors.
The Adaptation Fund under debate in Poznan could mean a significant increase in funding, and many developing countries are setting their sights on it. This source of funding is not yet operational, but will be managed by an Adaptation Fund Board set up at the Bali climate conference last year.
The mechanism being debated to compensate forest countries to stop deforestation to help bring down emissions is known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). Agus said the countries were still negotiating on, among other things, its methodology. This is not expected to be resolved in Poznan, with many controversial issues still under debate.
“But since the target (in Poznan) is to make the mechanism operational post-2012, what we’re seeing now is progress,” Agus said.
“And I think REDD will be included in the post-2012 treaty to be agreed on in Copenhagen next year, but just in general, not comprehensively.”
The Poznan conference serves as a bridge to the next conference in Copenhagen in 2009, where it is hoped that a comprehensive climate deal will be clinched as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty.
The REDD scheme is backed by forest-rich countries including Indonesia but criticized by many environment groups as simply an effort to “sell” forests.
The International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change even called for the suspension of all REDD initiatives in indigenous territories until indigenous rights are fully recognized.
The scheme aims to stop deforestation, which causes around 20 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, more than the entire global transport sector, according to the Little REDD Book, a newly launched guide to UN negotiations on the issue distributed to heads of states, negotiators and delegates in Poznan.
The book argues that REDD has the potential to address climate change while also helping to fight poverty, conserving biodiversity and sustaining vital ecosystem services.
“We need to achieve greater consensus on REDD or there is a real danger that the world community will exclude an essential part of the solution from the emerging global deal on climate change,” said Andrew Mitchell, director of the Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of scientific organizations that has compiled the book. “We can’t afford to let that happen, so real progress at Poznan is critical.”
REDD has evolved rapidly since it was introduced to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2005.
According to the book, with just over a year to go until the landmark meeting in Copenhagen where agreement must be reached, dozens of governmental and nongovernmental proposals are on the table for REDD initiatives.
A recent report by leading forestry scientists from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), which includes contributions from 20 scientists, also offers alternative designs to implement the scheme.
One of the debates around REDD is whether forest degradation — as opposed to deforestation — should be included in any deal. CIFOR notes that countries where deforestation is the main concern may have little interest in investing in the monitoring necessary to measure carbon released through forest degradation.
In fact, the definitions of terms like “deforestation”and “degradation”are controversial in their own right and part of the debate.
“If you incorporate forest degradation into the REDD mechanism, it might be more difficult to implement but it would more effectively account for forest-related carbon emissions,” said Daniel Murdiyarso, CIFOR scientist and member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“It also would be more equitable because it would encourage many more developing countries — for which degradation is the main culprit — to participate.”
