Reality check on the Bali promises after Bonn II: Where is climate heading to in Copenhagen? In mid-December 2007, the US delegation finally stopped blocking the way towards reaching agreement and the Bali Action Plan was approved late at night. After two weeks of tough negotiations, which included booing in the room, the approval was a “real breakthrough and a real opportunity” as Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, put it.
"Eastern Partnership: Towards Civil Society Forum" The EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative is off to a bad start. Presented by Sweden and Poland with much fanfare in 2008 as a new forum for the EU to engage the eastern neighbourhood, its recent launch in Prague proved, on the contrary, to be a major disappointment. The list of EU leaders that decided the summit wasn’t worth their time was embarrassingly long interest and political will are clearly lacking in this new initiative. As such, the chances that the European Union will sooner or later consign the EaP to the same historical dustbin as its predecessors are high. But so are the EU’s stakes in the region.
Beyond zero-sum thinking in the EU’s Eastern Partnership The European Union’s energy security has been severely tested over the past year. August’s Georgian conflict underlined the possible dangers of diversification into the post-Soviet space, with bombs landing in the vicinity of several crucial gas and oil pipelines including South Caucasus and Baku-Supsa, while the Russian-Ukrainian gas stand-off sent shivers across Europe in January.
Fairness in Global Climate Change Finance It is now well established that action to avoid dangerous climate change must take place according to the principles of ‘responsibility and capability’, and the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) subscribes to this view. Morally and in political terms developed countries should lead global mitigation by making significant domestic emissions reductions. But in a world of limited finance, reductions arguably be undertaken wherever they can be made for the lowest cost. Since emissions reductions in developed countries are insufficient to resolve the climate problem and are often more expensive to make than in developing countries, the principles of responsibility and capability might more productively be applied to the financing of global reductions: this would mean that the higher a country’s level of responsibility and capability, the greater its share of global climate finance. Technically, developed countries are already obliged to transfer finance to developing countries, under the UNFCCC, which states that ‘agreed full incremental’ costs in developing countries should be met by finance and technology from developed countries (Article 4.3).
Bonn conference starts final phase of climate negotiations The last Sunday in March will see the start of a two-week meeting of the UNFCCC in Bonn. This is the negotiators’ first meeting this year, meant to present a final agreement on establishing a global regime to replace the Kyoto Protocol. If everything goes smoothly, the many weeks of marathon negotiations will end in Copenhagen this December.
Dealing with the Financial and Climate Crises The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis has, together with other factors, plunged the world into financial chaos. Bank lending has dropped to a minimum as financial institutions scramble to procure desperately needed liquidity. Western governments have swiftly responded, turning taxpayers’ monies into ‘rescue packages’ that amount to several hundred billion euros.
Member State ministers want to assist developing countries with climate protection – but are waiting for the USA before they say how Long-term aims are important for the consistency of policies in the area of climate protection, but the absence of medium-range aims is now holding back progress in the international negotiations on a new post-Kyoto agreement. Had Barack Obama made it to the White House just a few months earlier than he did, the negotiations as a whole might be much further along. On Monday, Czech Environment Minister Martin Bursík told a meeting of the European Council of Member State environment ministers that the impassiveness of the American position is preventing forward movement. Climate change and the EU position on the Copenhagen conference were the main topics of the meeting.