Launch of Green Fund and a Climate Technology Centre and Network
The outcome from the Durban Climate Conference appears to have moved a step ahead in what is a difficult struggle to reach an international deal with which to handle the issue of climate change. The positive of it all is that all participating governments are committed to what could be regarded as a new platform for negotiations.
In short, it was agreed that:
a)the Kyoto Protocol should be extended for a number of years (2018)
b)a new agreement should be concluded by 2015 and to be enforced by 2020
c)a Green Fund and a Climate Technology Centre and Network should be launched.
However, the tasks ahead are still challenging as all these projected agreements would need to be defined and agreed upon.
The prolonging of the Kyoto Protocol is not a simple formality. Parties, including the 35 industrialised countries which also decided to be parties to this second period, will have to turn their economy-wide targets into quantified emission limitation or reduction objectives and submit them for review by May 1, 2012.
There seems to be another challenge, too, namely that some of the current parties to the Kyoto Protocol, particularly Canada, indicate they may not be a party to the second period; the reason being the lack of commitment by other countries which emit huge quantities of GHG emissions.
The Durban Platform indicates that developed and developing countries will for the first time work on a new agreement that should be legally binding to all parties. It has to be drawn up, negotiated and approved by 2015 which is another difficult task and much of the detail would need to be agreed upon with US, China, Europe, India, Brazil and many other developed and developing countries, and will be dependent on them reaching an agreement.
Any new agreement will resort to targets, namely the extent to which each country will have to cut its emissions. Governments must agree country-by-country on targets for emissions cuts, taking into consideration historic emissions for which each is responsible, the efforts on reducing emissions that each country has made, their populations and how countries can continue to develop.
The package includes the Green Climate Fund which was agreed on at COP 16 in Copenhagen in 2009, and which is intended to provide $100bn each year by 2020 to help the mitigation and adaptation activities of the world’s poorest countries. An Adaptation Committee is designed to improve the co-ordination of adaptation actions on a global scale, and a technology mechanism, which is to become fully operational in 2012.
The legal framework of such a mechanism is yet to be defined, negotiated and agreed. There is no specific mention that this agreement will have an impact on shipping. The final document does not state from where the money will come, or who the trustees will be.
In addition to the Green Climate Fund, the nations agreed to launch a Climate Technology Centre and Network in 2012, which will ensure that developing nations have access to the latest technology required in order to deploy low-carbon energy sources. The nations present also agreed on a procedure for selecting the next host.
Source : INTERTANKO
