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FERN has produced a special report on the UN negotiations in Copenhagen, as part of the January 2010 issue of Forest Watch. The report concludes that “While references to safeguards and indigenous peoples rights undoubtedly have improved the negotiating text, such changes could be undermined if the underlying assumption remains that funding for REDD will come from offsetting carbon emissions.”
Después de dos semanas de pleitos, el único resultado de la COP-15 fue el “Acuerdo de Copenhagen.” En una conferencia de prensa el 19 de diciembre de 2009, el agotado Secretario Ejecutivo de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre Cambio Climático Yvo de Boer describió el Acuerdo de Copenhagen como “un acuerdo impresionante”. Luego enumeró sus problemas: no es jurídicamente vinculante; no establece metas de reducciones de emisiones para los países industrializados; no indica qué harán los grandes países en desarrollo; menciona un financiamiento de $30 mil millones de dólares pero no dice nada sobre quien asumirá la responsabilidad de recaudar el dinero. “Tenemos mucho trabajo que hacer en el camino a México,” dijo de Boer.
After two weeks of wrangling all that came out of COP-15 was the “Copenhagen Accord“. In a press conference on 19 December 2009, a clearly exhausted Yvo de Boer, described the Copenhagen Accord as “an impressive accord”. Then he listed the problems: it is not legally binding, it doesn’t pin down industrialised countries to targets, it doesn’t specify what major developing countries will do, it mentions US$30 billion funding but says nothing about the responsibility for raising the money. “We have a lot of work to do on the road to Mexico,” de Boer said.
Discussions late into the night on Monday (14 December 2009) in Copenhagen made the REDD text worse. The main culprits were the US and Colombia. The US won two prizes in Climate Action Network International’s Fossil of the Day on Day 8 of Copenhagen: first prize for blocking the inclusion of emissions from aviation and shipping in the negotiations; and joint third prize with Colombia for “moving the process backwards on the REDD text”.
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.
Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono likes to make promises. Particularly at international meetings. At last year’s G-8 summit in Japan, Yudhoyono committed to reducing carbon emissions from deforestation by 50 per cent by the end of this year, 74 per cent by 2012 and 95 per cent by 2025. This year, at the G-20 summit in the USA, he said, “I do believe that it is much better for all of us to have our own targets, timeline and action plan which we can constantly update and improve.” Yudhoyono updated his targets on reducing deforestation, but he certainly did not improve them.
The Guardian reports that after only two days, “The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray.” The problem is a leaked document that Denmark hoped that world leaders would sign at the end of next week. The text “hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations,” John Vidal writes in The Guardian. The text was developed by a small group of countries, including the UK, US, Australia and Denmark, and was shown only to a handful of countries after being completed last week. The Guardian has posted the “Danish text” on its website.
Below are some links to more REDD documents (to read during those quiet moments during the negotiations in Copenhagen). Meanwhile, the debate on Cap and Trade is heating up. There’s a great short film that came out last week by Annie Leonard called the Story of Cap and Trade. If you’re in Copenhagen, go and watch it at the Klimaforum this evening. If you’re not in Copenhagen, it’s on YouTube. James Hansen joined in the debate today with a piece in the New York Times: “Because cap and trade is enforced through the selling and trading of permits, it actually perpetuates the pollution it is supposed to eliminate. If every polluter’s emissions fell below the incrementally lowered cap, then the price of pollution credits would collapse and the economic rationale to keep reducing pollution would disappear.” Exactly.
“It seems increasingly likely that no binding deal will come out of Copenhagen and that the North will attempt to scrap the Kyoto Protocol. It also seems likely that some sort of deal will be pushed through on reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). There is a serious danger that REDD will act as greenwash for the North’s failure to reduce emissions dramatically. REDD could generate a massive land grab, it could pour money into some of the most corrupt governments and forestry ministries in the world, it could trample on indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ rights, it could accelerate conversion of forests to plantations and it could create a massive loophole allowing pollution in the North to continue. All the while allowing deforestation to continue.”
In the lead up to Copenhagen, letters, articles and reports about REDD are coming out thick and fast. Before looking at them, here’s some bad news. In 2005, a drought meant that in that year the Amazon rainforest did not sequester its usual 2 billion metric tons of CO2. It also released 3 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere from dying trees. The total 5 billion additional tons of CO2 is greater than the combined emissions of Europe and Japan. This year there is another drought in the Amazon. The photograph on the right was taken last weekend by Paulo Whitaker. It shows a fisherman paddling through dead fish that died because of lower water levels on the on the Manaquiri River, a tributary of the Amazon River. |
 
 
 
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