Onwards little soldiers – to Bonn – we go.
Sometimes one wonders why…
WHY?
Why is the EnvironmentaParliament mobilizing all it’s energy and membership to participate forcefully in the Bonn negotiations?
Why are all the Environmental Parliament negotiators already there?
Because we hope to get a Treaty out f this.
A legally binding treaty.
Get it?
The difficult round of the Bonn climate talks is upon us and the United Nations urges the wealthy developed economies and rich countries to live up to their promises of help for the Southern globally poor nations in the fight against global warming.
But most importantly in the elements of Adaptation and Mitigation flows…
Even the pessimistic U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said that, to make headway toward a global climate deal, industrialized nations need to come up with the $30 billion in aid they have promised in the last COP15 round of negotiations; for the next three years.
Also, negotiators need to focus on a “concrete and realistic goal” for the next major U.N. climate conference in Mexico, in December.
“Mexico can deliver if promises of help are kept and if promises to compromise are honored in the negotiations,” de Boer said.
Negotiators from around the world plan to meet May 31 in Bonn for two weeks of expert-level talks on the sketchy draft of a new international climate treaty that would take effect after 2012.
De Boer said the session could “significantly advance that text,” but stressed that “higher political guidance is required to find ways forward.”
These finite talks six months after the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen seem doomed before they even start.
Many environmental, scientific, and political leaders had hoped that summit would produce a breakthrough on fighting global warming, but it came up only with a nonbinding political declaration, the so-called Copenhagen Accord – so nothing is expected out of this round of talks in Bonn – now that the political will and global focus is completely missing.
Missing just as much as the many disappearing species and the loss of Biodiversity.
Good Luck to all of them. The Great Extinctions have become De Rigueur…
Even the Economic pledges of transfers and monetary flows including the $30 billion pledge by industrialized countries for the years 2010-2012 to help poor nations fight climate change and cope with its effects, including droughts or floods seem to have become extinc.
Either that or they have been conveniently forgotten.
Excuses abound both sides of the Atlantic for this whole lot of talk without any money to support the firmament of a Treaty.
Like we say in Business:
”Too much Flash but No cash….”
Yet, it is these very promises that need to be met to build trust and alliances to allow us to move forward.
Of course the times are harsh, especially in Europe, but $10 billion a year for three years from all industrialized countries is not difficult judging by the amounts we spend propping up errant banks and finance institutions.
It is now that if developing countries are given the ways and means to act on all aspects of mitigation and adaptation, it will establish firm ground for bigger ambitions and drive us to a binding treaty.
It is a good thing that Yves De Boer quits the job of Chief climate negotiator. His record was dismal populated by failures alone.
Happily now the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Costa Rican climate expert Christiana Figueres to succeed him.
De Boer has made it clear that he does not expect a comprehensive treaty in Cancun. Instead, he now talks only of an “operational architecture” he thinks can be finalized there. Of course he has laid his job on the line and is now ready to leave the post – So He really has got no skin in this game.
But there is a freaking sprout of Hope still here. Something of a growing consensus on what that first goal can be — namely a full, operational architecture – to implement collective climate action.
In Copenhagen, negotiators agreed that global warming must be limited to less that 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) compared to pre-industrial times. However, the individual pledges by nations around the world to cut their greenhouse gases aren’t yet ambitious enough to meet that or any other goal.
Industrialized nations also promised they would shore up their aid to poor nations from the initial $10 billion a year to an annual $100 billion by 2020 — but they have not said how they want to generate that kind of money…
Only some Flash but not any Cash out of Washington and London this far.
Forget Berlin.
It appears that Bonn is sunk before it’s maiden voyage…
Yours,
Pano
PS:
At any rate one must keep on fighting.
We are all heading to Bonn this week and in a few days will begin Negotiations afresh.
Still all the Negotiators even the most prophetic ones, are still at a loss about giving teeth to the freshly minted Copenhagen Accord.
Never mind, whether or not the new treaty should be “legally binding,” and what that would mean…
The Environmental Court maintains that any treaty that is signed upon by a majority of the nations on this Earth – is simply mandatory and binding.
Simple.
