UN climate change negotiations get under way in Bonn

Global climate change talks, leading up to the Copenhagen conference in December, started in Bonn, Germany, this week, and South Africa was represented at these informal talks by Department of Environmental Affairs negotiators.The aim of the talks was to pave the way to fair agreement, which could be finalised at the Copenhagen conference, and would be the framework for climate change action beyond 2012, which is when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends.Following the current United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks in Bonn, there were two more informal negotiating sessions scheduled before December.The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said that without steps forward during the UNFCCC meetings, it would be much harder to achieve results and make financial commitments during the upcoming series of high-level political meetings at the United Nation’s General Assembly (UNGA), and Group of 20 summit in the US in September.“In order to see real progress, the UNFCCC meetings need to gain speed and help the political process,” said WWF Global Climate Initiative leader Kim Carstensen.There were numerous political dynamics and political conditionalities framing the negotiations. South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs previously explained that the European Union would not make any further commitment beyond its decision to reduce emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, unless the US made similar commitments in line with the science.Scientists have indicated that global temperature change needs to be kept below a 2 ºC increase. A change of 0,7 ºC has already been recorded. Even at a 2 ºC level, it was expected that severe changes in the climate would be experienced, and even though the average increase would be 2 ºC, some regions, like Africa, could experience average temperature increases of up to 5 ºC.Continuing with politics, the US has said it would not make commitments unless China took on emission reductions targets, and in turn, China would not take on such targets unless the rest of the developing world (the Group of 77 (G77) countries) took on targets. Yet, for the G77 nations, political priorities were development and poverty eradication, as well as adaptation to the effects of climate change that were already being experienced – rather than mitigation of emissions.According to the WWF, the Bonn meeting should be used to minimise the level of mistrust between rich and poor. It should also focus on unifying the draft texts and erasing those parts, which do not have the right level of ambition.“If delegates decided where ambitious options have to be placed and consolidate the proposed negotiation texts, it would be progress and a good base,” Carstensen said.At the recent Group of Eight and Major Economies Forum summits in L’Aquila, Italy, politicians accepted the science stating that global warming should be kept below 2 ºC.WWF welcomed this, but emphasised that warming levels would have to be even kept far below 2 ºC to give small island countries and ecosystems a chance to survive.“The self-proclaimed climate leaders from the group of industrialised countries must commit to emission cuts of 40% by 2020 from 1990 levels to back up their 2 ºC vision with real action,” said Carstensen.The WWF, in collaboration with a number of other nongovernmental organisations worldwide, has drawn up a draft first version Copenhagen Climate Treaty, to show what it felt a deal should look like, as well as to show that it was possible. The treaty took some eight months to draw up, and was considered a “work in progress”.