INCREMENTAL PROGRESS AT CLIMATE CHANGE COP2

10:35 AM Jul 19, 1996

INCREMENTAL PROGRESS AT CLIMATE CHANGE COP2
Geneva 19 July (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The Second Session of the Conference of Parties (COP2) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) was set to end Friday, making what the Executive Secretary of the Climate Change secretariat, Mr. Michael Zamit-Cutajar called "incremental progress" for global actions for stabilising and reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.

On Thursday, the COP2 "took note" of a Ministerial Declaration presented to the Conference which instructed negotiators to accelerate negotiations on a legally-binding protocol or legal instrument with "quantified legally-binding objectives for emission limitations and significant overall reductions within specific time-frames".

The COP action of taking note, rather than adoption by consensus, of the Ministerial Declaration, despite the 'reservations' from some oil-exporting countries, Australia, New Zealand, and Russia (to one or the other part of the Declaration), was a political statement that marked some incremental progress over the COP1 and the Berlin mandate, Zamnit-Cutajar told a news conference.

The President of COP2, Zimbabwe Minister Mr. Chen Chimutengwende, said the Declaration was a very important political impetus to the process. Climate change was not a mere technical matter, but had impacts of an economic, political and other aspects of life.

At the COP2 plenary on Thursday, when Chimutengwende presented the draft Declaration and it was taken note of consensus, a statement was presented on behalf of 14 countries, most of them oil-exporters, and including Russia, who took exception not only to the process but also to some of the contents in relation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The statement found the characterisation of the IPCC assessment in the Declaration was biased and misleading.

The statement of the 14, implied that the IPCC Second Assessment Report and its endorsement by the Declaration had the support of the rest of the COP2 -- something that was challenged by some of the Gulf countries.

Australia and New Zealand also took the floor to express their reservations which seemed to relate to the idea of legally-binding emission limitations and overall reductions within specified timeframes.

The United States too made a statement, which was largely supportive of the Declaration as a whole, but seemed to be dissenting from the fact of no reference to the US position of "flexibility" to governments on policy measures to be taken to achieve the objectives.

Zamit-Cutajar told the news conference that the OPEC countries were concerned over the economic impact on their exports and export earnings as a result of any measures that affect energy consumption. The Russian objection, he said, seemed to relate to the view of the Russian delegate (himself a distinguished climatologist) that the IPCC assessment does not pronounce itself on what is a dangerous level of atmospheric concentrations of the GHG, and that the definition of the dangerous level would be needed before deciding what to do about it. However, the IPCC view was that the definition of danger level was subjective, and essentially political and not a scientific one.

The FCCC Secretariat's top official said that before adjourning COP2 would be taking a number of important decisions for further work, including adoption of guidelines for reporting of inventories by the non-Annex I countries to the FCCC (developing countries), as also over the GEF and the interim financial mechanism.

COP2, on Friday, put off any decision on the GEF's Memorandum of Understanding and Guidelines till COP3. Both the GEF approved Guidelines and the G77 and China draft for the COP guidelines to the GEF for funding (as envisaged by the FCCC) have been annexed to the report of the COP2 and remitted for further negotiations.

Asked to comment on the pace of the process of the climate change convention as compared to the pace of the process of climate change, Chimutengwende said while the problem of climate change was moving very fast, the solution was moving forward very slowly. But this was the problem taking place for a century or more, while the focus on solution is very recent, and has some serious consequences for millions of people whichever way one acted. Nevertheless, he remained optimistic, "simply because we have no choice except to act."