Thai stand on CDM

By: Kamol Sukin on December 8th, 2007

Kamol Sukin The Nation, Bali

“Thailand might not seek financial benefits from Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for the forestry sector but shall limit negotiations to the energy sector,” said a senior delegate.

The main reason for such a limited stand is the absence of support information to take a clearly delineated postion in Bali, Aree Wattana Tummakird, director of Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning’s (ONEP) Division of Measures Analysis, revealed to The Nation yesterday.

The senior official explained that such poor readiness is due to lapses by the Thai authorities involved in the forestry sector. “We repeatedly asked them to prepare the required data, but have got few reactions so far. In stead, they keeping blaming us for not supporting the forestry CDM proposal. They do not realize that supporting data is important and necessary for negotiations.” she said. Meanwhile negotiations in the energy sector would include biogas, biomass and landfill projects.

However, an official from Forestry Industry Organisation, Dr Suphavit Piampongsant, said that preparations for this controversial issue were still underway process are going on and still far from conclusion.

CDM is the mechanism provided by the Kyoto Protocol that aims to provide room for industrialized countries to pay developing countries to reduce offset excess emissions at a certain price. Energy and forestry are two among the core sectors that CDM is implementing.

The process of consultation at Bali shall conclude during the last three days (Dec 12-14) when high level meetings shall take place. Before that, the first two days (Dec 3-4)of the conference consisted of a plenary meeting of UNFCCC’s member to raise all issues that are going to be discussed before allowing each group to work out details of specific issues selected in the following four days, followed by three days of the adoption process.

As for the adaptation fund issue, debates shall focus on who will manage this huge global fund. The adaptation fund has been set up to help the world, especially vulnerable countries, to adapt themselves to face global warming, with funds derived from a 2 percent levy on CDM, expected to be worth as high as US$1 billion initially, and perhaps rising much higher in the future.

“Developed countries from the Annex I list are pushing for the Global Environment Fund to administer this new fund. But the developing countries alliance supports other institutions like the UN Environment Programme for reasons of flexibility,” Aree Wattana said. “From experience with the GEF, we found its mechanism very rigid and inefficient.” GEF is the previous fund established to improve world environment under UNFCCC.

Thailand’s stand on this sensitive issue is that we will accept any institution if it is transparent and accountable, Aree Wattana said.

In the debate on long-term dialogue, the debate is on whether the dialogue should develop into negotiation, for more efficient results.

“There are supporters and opponents of the idea and we decided to reject the proposal. We are not sure of the impact of moving from dialogue into negotiation. So we thought it best to say no at this point,” said Aree Wattana.

The current dialogue is focused on four main topics; Adaptation, Mitigation, technology transfer and Finance Mechanisms under the frame of UNFCCC.