Brussels, 04/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - The Bonn climate talks which ended on Friday 4 September yielded little, much to the chagrin of the NGOs.
All parties agreed on the need to accelerate efforts to make the negotiating text more concise, stated Miguel Arias Canete on 1 September. Two days later and much remains to be done if this goal is to be achieved.
“We need a text that is up to negotiation. It has to be shorter and better structured, as if it had been written by a single group, with the same terminology and a few key options. We need a proposal for the Paris agreement and for the decisions that will go along with it”, stated Sarah Blau on Friday, on behalf of the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the EU.
Among the positive points, the EU negotiators spoke of progress that had been made on differentiation of effort. “There isn't one single option but several. Differentiation will no longer be between the Annex 1 countries (Ed: the industrialised countries as determined by the Kyoto Protocol) and the others. Differentiation will be more modern, it will take account of national circumstances in the whole agreement”, they said. That discussions took place on losses and damages was also welcomed. This was “thanks to a proposal from the United States, supported by the EU, allowing the Warsaw mechanisms to be strengthened and involving immediate action before 2020”. This will be debated further in October.
However, with regard to the long-term objective, views differed. “This is a crucial point for the EU, an expression of the political will to push forward in the transition towards a low-carbon economy, a very important signal that investors are looking for”, stated the European negotiators.
Greenpeace, for its part, sees only abject failure. “While renewables boom and climate impacts - from fires to storms and forced migration - are lived realities of people all over the world, negotiators still weren't dealing with the substance of the issue. We leave Bonn today with no long-term goal to phase out coal, oil and gas by mid-century”, raged Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace international climate policy director.
As for the Green Climate Fund, the climate pledges totalling US$10 billion gathered so far (of the $100 billion promised for 2020) is “insufficient”, in the view of Greenpeace: “It is therefore essential to have a mechanism for ratcheting up those pledges every five years”. EU negotiator Elena Bardram, however, felt the contributions of the member states were “encouraging”. The joint IMF-World Bank in Lima (9-11 October) will bring progress, the EU hopes. (Aminata Niang)