10:43 AM Jul 22, 1996

SERIOUS NEGOTIATIONS ON CLIMATE IN DECEMBER

Geneva 20 July (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- When the nations of the world were trying in the early 1990s to negotiate an international treaty on climate change, one of the officials described it as perhaps "the most important economic negotiations" for the future, and in the long-run perhaps more important even than the (then stalled) Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations.

For, the international agreement through negotiated commitments to return modern industrial civilizations to a path of convergence and stabilisation and prevent irreversible changes to nature that would be inimical to life, whether through 'market instruments' or 'regulatory mechanisms' or both, would require increased state and governmental roles, for the common benefit.

The Climate Change negotiations did not achieve what many had hoped, namely, binding commitments of countries towards a different path.

Ultimately, to get everyone on board, and particularly the United States, the nations of the world, decided and signed at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro 'Earth Summit', a framework convention, with some loosely worded commitments to promote the objectives and leaving some of the more difficult issues for future negotiations.

The second session of the Conference of Parties (COP2) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) which ended Friday, after taking a number of decisions that could lead to international and national actions to stabilise and cutback greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, showed how difficult and complex these negotiations are going to be in the future too.

Since Rio, and the original assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientific knowledge about the climate change has both advanced, to enable scientists, or atleast the overwhelming majority of them, to point with greater confidence to humans and their industrial activities as the source of the adverse changes already taking place, even as scientists have also clawn back from some of the earlier predictions and scenarios about the likely rise in global temperatures, sea levels etc.

The COP2 decisions, and the statements and declarations from Ministers during the two-day Ministerial segment, and a declaration which the COP2 took note of, did not produce any breakthrough or impart any new momentum to the task of negotiating a protocol or amendment to the FCCC to ensure that the industrial countries live up to their earlier political commitments to return their GHG, and particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to their 1990 levels by year 2000.

But the Ministerial Declaration, and the various decisions, made what the Executive Secretary of the FCCC secretariat, Mr. Michael Zamit-Cutajar called 'incremental progress' over COP1 and the Berlin Mandate.

The negotiations towards a protocol or legal instrument, binding signatories to achieve significant cutbacks in their GHG emissions will resume, after the US elections, in December in Geneva, and an outline protocol (which though could be amended in many details) has to be readied and in hands of the COP and its members six months before COP3 to be held 1-12 December 1997 in Japan.

In terms of decisions, the COP2 adopted a decision providing guidance to the World Bank administered Global Environment Facility (GEF), the interim financial mechanism of the FCCC, for providing funds to the developing countries to enable them to comply with their commitments under the FCCC -- collecting data and providing information to the FCCC in terms of the guidelines approved at COP2.

But COP2 put off any action on a memorandum of understanding between FCCC and the World Bank administered GEF. The GEF board had approved a MOU, and the GEF secretariat and the major industrial nations like the US and France, tried to get the COP to rubber-stamp that MOU, and endorse the GEF as the permanent mechanism. The GEF-MOU would have effectively added on 'conditions' for developing countries to get recourse to its help -- conditions that would add on to the FCCC commitments of the developing countries which currently requires no more than collecting data about the sources and sinks for GHG.

This attempt to change the FCCC by the backdoor through the financial handle did not succeed.

The G77 and China though refused -- as one of them put it privately, to let the tail wag the dog. While the COP has to be partially held responsible for not having been able to formulate the guidelines for the interim funding mechanism to allocate funds, the GEF can't go beyond the terms of the FCCC in putting in criteria that would force developing countries to formulate policies to stabilise or cut their GHG emissions and GEF to monitor their implementation.

The COP2 also agreed on the guidelines for the non-Annex I parties to the FCCC (developing countries and China) to prepare their national data and provide information on the sources and sinks for their GHG emissions and other relevant factors.

Such collection of data, on an internationally agreed and comparable basis, would enable governments of these countries to undertake their own assessments and take any measures on a voluntary basis that could contribute to prevention or atleast mitigation of adverse climate change, but within their priorities of development.

As the FCCC envisages, as also the Earth Summit declarations and statements, further steps by the developing countries would very much depend on new and additional funding and transfer of technology -- a point that several of the major developing countries made clear again during the two-week session in statements at the plenary, as also in the meetings of the subsidiary bodies and during negotiations.

The two-week meeting, and the two-day high-level ministerial segment saw a reversal of the earlier US position, and its call for legally binding international targets for GHG emissions and cutbacks.

But the US position, marking a U-turn from that of the Bush administration at Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, however did not spell out the levels from which the emissions have to be cut back, and insisted on national flexibilities on the policies to be adopted.

At the other end of the spectrum was Australia was asked for national flexibilities on the targets, but harmonized and legally binding commitments on policies and measures.

The European Union for its part favours internationally agreed and legally binding policies and measures.

Behind these positions though are serious economic issues and decisions which, either way, would have implications for countries, the competitiveness of their industries and economies, and the costs of adjustment in the future.

The levels from which cutbacks (1990 levels as envisaged at Rio, or later levels) have to be made are crucial. Also, for those nations which undertook some painful adjustment in the 1970s and early 1980s to achieve energy efficiency, also had the benefit of improving their economic efficiency and competitiveness. But further measures to cutback would mean greater costs, and hence their emphasis on agreed policy measures.

For those who have been profligate, reducing emissions at this stage would be cheaper and economically more advantageous and would truly imply a "no regrets" action. Hence their emphasis on agreed targets, but flexible policies and measures.

Given these, it is perhaps not so surprising that the Second Assessment Report of the IPCC and the view of the IPCC scientists that policies and measures to reverse the global trends need to be undertaken now, did not receive an endorsement from the COP2, and the Ministerial Declaration was merely taken note of.

But even if the IPCC findings did not receive the ringing endorsement of the COP2, but merely as "the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment now available" of the scientific and technical information regarding global climate change, the IPCC perhaps was the gainer. Its future role and contribution, and the cooperation between the IPCC and the Convention bodies has been assured.

When the COP2 began, the FCCC had 155 States and the EEC as contracting parties. By the time the COP2 had ended there were 157 and another was due to be a member by August. There were 147 FCCC contracting parties at the session, and including the observer states, 161, besides intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations (public interest NGOs, industrial, business and energy lobbies and other interests) attended the two-week meeting.