Brussels, 22/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - The United Nations climate conference in Warsaw (COP 19) will not go down in the annals as a great conference - that much is obvious - but it should at least have been a major step towards ensuring a binding global climate agreement is reached between all countries on board by 2015 in Paris (COP 21), as the EU had hoped. On Friday 22 November, the day when the COP 19 was due to end, frustration had reached a peak and there seemed to be a strong likelihood of failure (see EUROPE 10968).
Japan had reviewed its target for 2020 downward. The G77 was furious that, because of a number of countries, like Australia, nothing is moving forward on the question of compensation for losses or damage suffered by developing countries. The developed countries had refused to open up the Pandora's box of “historic responsibility” in emissions produced, and many countries (such as China, India and Saudi Arabia) had announced that they would not be able to present targets for reducing their emissions by the conference in Paris and that one should not expect anything for the climate summit of heads of state convened by Ban Ki-moon for 23 September 2014. Furthermore, it was not known how the climate fund would be provisioned to reach $100 billion annually by 2020. Disgusted by this wait-and-see attitude and inaction and denouncing the coal lobby to which Marcin Korolec, the COP president, had given a platform by organising an alternative summit of coal industries, NGOs, civil organisations and trade unions slammed the door and published an open letter on Friday calling on the United Nations to implement new rules in order to protect the integrity of the decision-making process against major company interests. And finally, it was the UN process itself that seemed to be brought into question, to the great disappointment of Connie Hedegaard, Commissioner for Climate Action. “Voluntary cooperation action outside the UN framework for those who want to move forward more is a good thing but there must be an obligation to report to the UN”, she said (our translation).
Karl Heinz Florenz (EPP, Germany), who is a member of the parliamentary delegation headed by Matthias Groote (S&D, Germany), considers that the current decision-making process by unanimity has shown its limits. “It has once again become obvious that there can be no progress if none of the parties involved agree. This is why we need a coalition of the willing showing that the fight against climate change has its merits and can also pay off for the economy”, he said. He considers that, between now and the decisive 2015 conference in Paris, the countries that have already proven that the fight against climate change can create green jobs should unite and commitment themselves to binding and ambitious targets. “Such a group of countries should, alongside the EU, include China and the USA. The world's biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions has a vital interest in reducing them. China literally needs the 'air that it breathes' and has seen, like the US, profitable earnings from exporting green technology”, Florenz said.
In a letter addressed to the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and to Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a group of 70 civil organisations that are deeply concerned by the climate affirm: “The 19th Conference of the Parties (COP 19) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) hosted this year by the Polish government in Warsaw has taken unprecedented and damaging steps towards embracing the same corporations that profit from continued emissions while actively lobbying against effective and just climate action. (…) At risk are both our climate and the integrity of the UNFCCC as a multilateral process to tackle climate change. Therefore there is an urgent need for rules to govern the relationship between the UNFCCC and the fossil fuel industry, including obligations for COP Presidents”.
During the conference, Korolec, Poland's Environment Minister, was appointed by Donald Tusk to another post, while keeping his role as president of COP 19. (AN/transl.jl)