COP17 Negotiations update – one week to go!
One week to finalise text, bring consultations to a conclusion and hammer out compromises.
One week to secure the integrity of the multilateral climate regime. As negotiations in Durban enter the last week and ministers start to arrive, we can expect long nights waiting for news from behind closed doors. As well as negotiations on text in the two AWGs, we can expect ministers to be engaged on the difficult political question – what to do with the text? The final days of COP 17 should first and foremost focus on establishing a coalition of countries willing to show the ambition needed to move forward with a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.
This process is fully dependent on whether or not it is possible to get big emitters like the US, China and others to commit to a roadmap for new negotiations, with the aim of legally binding commitments for all at a later stage. This necessitates that countries admit that the current mandate for the negotiations – the Bali Road Map – has failed (hence there is need for a new one). It will be interesting to see what parts of the Bali Action Plan will be dropped under the new mandate. Look out for intense attempts to play down the importance of equity, ambition and the legal nature of the (still delayed) agreed outcome.
Categories: News, UN Talks