AD HOC GROUP ON CLIMATE CHANGE NEGOTIATIONS CONCLUDES SESSION IN BONN
Press Release
ENV/DEV/450
UNEP/15*
AD HOC GROUP ON CLIMATE CHANGE NEGOTIATIONS CONCLUDES SESSION IN BONN
19971103 BONN, 31 October (UNEP) -- Delegates from 142 countries completed two weeks of negotiations today, having revised the draft text of a new emissions- reduction agreement to be adopted at the Kyoto Climate Change Conference. The final preparatory meeting will be resumed on 30 November in Kyoto, just in advance of the 1 to 10 December Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."The text that I brought to this meeting was conceived as a compromise text, but now many of the views on all sides of the issue have been re-introduced", said Raúl Estrada-Oyuela (Argentina), who has chaired the talks. "As a result, we now have a text that is complete, but that still contains a mosaic of different positions."
The Kyoto agreement will contain legally binding commitments by developed countries to reduce their emissions by around the year 2010. During the meeting's early days last week, the United States and the "Group of 77" the developing countries and China for the first time introduced their proposed targets and timetables.
The United States proposal, announced by President Bill Clinton, calls for developed countries to return their emissions of all greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2008-2012 (taken as an average over these years) and to reduce emissions below 1990 levels in the five years following. The Group of 77 proposes that developed countries reduce emissions below 1990 levels of 7.5 per cent by 2005, 15 per cent by 2010 and 35 per cent by 2020; it also provides for a compensation fund that would benefit developing countries harmed by climate change or by the economic actions taken by developed countries to combat it.
These new proposals join others that were already on the table. The European Union has called for 7.5 per cent cuts in carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide by the year 2005, and 15 per cent cuts by 2010. Japan -- which as host government of the Kyoto Conference has a central role to play in finding a consensus -- proposes a reduction of 5 per cent by 2008-2012; however, it would also allow individual national targets to be lower than
* Press Release ENV/DEV/449-UNEP/12 of 21 October 1997 should have been numbered ENV/DEV/449-UNEP/13.
this. Members of the Alliance of Small Island States, threatened by sea-level rise, want to see a 20 per cent rollback by 2005. The baseline for all of these reductions would be the year 1990.
"Over the next few weeks, the key players must review their options so that they can come to Kyoto with more flexible positions, even if this means that we end up with an agreement based not on a single target, but on different targets for each country", said Michael Zammit Cutajar, the Convention's Executive Secretary.
Over the past two weeks, negotiators have discussed these differing proposals, as well as a number of closely linked issues, that would determine just how any targets and timetables will be achieved. These include the questions of:
-- Differentiation. The issue of whether all developed countries should have the same target or individual targets that reflect national circumstances moved to the fore again after the submission of the United States and the Group of 77 proposals with their widely divergent targets; the Russian Federation has proposed that each country commit to its own target proposal, leading to an overall reduction of some 3 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010. The European Union's "bubble", allowing European Union members to differentiate internally, was also discussed.
-- Flexibility. The question remains open as to whether countries should be allowed to trade emissions quotas with one another, receive credit for reducing emissions from other countries, "bank" reductions for future credit if they exceed their current target, or "borrow" from the future if they miss their target.
-- Policies and measures. The European Union prefers mandatory policies and measures with consultations to coordinate their implementation. Other developed countries oppose mandatory requirements, and developing countries are concerned that their economies not be negatively affected by developed country actions.
The Ad Hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate will pass its findings and a draft text to its parent body, the Conference of the Parties, which holds its third session in Kyoto from 1 to 10 December. The current meeting was attended by 700 delegates and 570 observers; at least several thousand participants are expected in Kyoto.
Under the Climate Change Convention, developed countries have agreed to take measures aimed at returning their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. At the first session of the treaty's Conference of the Parties in 1995, the international community recognized that stronger measures
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were needed to minimize the risk of climate change. The Ad Hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate was established to negotiate new developed-country commitments for the post-2000 period. While these negotiations explicitly exclude discussing new commitments for developing countries, the Group is also tasked with advancing the implementation of existing commitments by both developed and developing countries.
The Convention was opened for signature at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It entered into force on 21 March 1994 and has been ratified by almost 170 countries. The treaty negotiations were inspired in large part by the scientific findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international network of thousands of scientific and technical experts sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
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