The UNFCCC has been discussing REDD in two fora at its meetings in Durban: the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA).
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In the film Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a weatherman who finds himself living the same day over and over again. The UN climate negotiators have developed a variation on this theme. Once a year they meet and fail to agree on a binding deal that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The variation on Groundhog Day is that they meet in a different city each time.
A new report by the Accra Caucus “proposes an alternative vision for achieving the objective of reducing deforestation, arguing for policies and actions that would tackle the drivers of deforestation, rather than focusing exclusively on carbon.” Download the report here: in English; Spanish and French.
On 11 December 2009, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and UK’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a joint statement. “We believe around 20% of early finance should be allocated to forest protection,” the statement said. The two leaders called for a “reduction in deforestation of 25% by 2015, leading to a 50% reduction in 2020 and a halt in 2030.” They also mentioned another target: “EU to reduce its emissions by 30% by 2020″. On the same day, Lumumba Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping, Chair of the G-77/China, spoke to NGOs in Copenhagen. In a moving speech, he called for rich countries to cut emissions 52% by 2017, 65% by 2020, 80% by 2030 and well above 100 by 2050, with the goal of limiting temperature increases to 1.5°C. “2 degrees Celsius is certain death for Africa, is certain devastation of island states,” he said.
On the final day of the UN climate change negotiations in Barcelona, two climate activists walked to the front of the main plenary and held up a banner reading “End CO2lonialism”. “They shouted about the dangers of carbon trading and were met with thunderous applause. They were immediately dragged out by police,” Rainforest Action Network’s Joshua Kahn Russell writes. The protest was one of the highlights of the meeting.
Another week, another series of UN climate talks. This time in Barcelona. This is the last week of negotiations before COP-15 in Copenhagen. Perhaps not surprisingly, things are not looking good. Rich countries ground the negotiations to a halt by refusing to agree to targets under the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.
The negotiations on REDD are heating up. After a week of mindnumbingly slow progress on REDD, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are now opposing the inclusion of references to the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the COP14 decision text on REDD. Needless to say, Indigenous Peoples, local communities and NGO representatives are outraged at this development.
The Accra Caucus on Forests and Climate Change, a group of civil society and Indigenous Peoples organisations, has released the following statement. The statement sets out 10 principles and an approach to financing that Accra Caucus considers to be crucial for the REDD negotiations and subsequent agreements. The statement is available in French here, and in Spanish here. |
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