The six-day session of ADP, United Nation’s subsidiary body on climate change, has concluded here with nearly 200 member countries adopting the 86-page text as the basis for negotiation on reaching a climate agreement in Paris scheduled to be held in December.
The Geneva text “contains all options and options within options and all levels of options which reflects the diversity of opinion of parties,” said Elina Bardram, head of the European Commission Delegation of the Ad Hoc Working Group of the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP).
It has not been decided what the final form of the text is going to be nor has there been any streamlining of the text during this round of talks. During the session, India’s demand for funds from the Green Climate Fund (GEF) to meet the full cost of IPR of environmentally-sound technologies to address climate change was supported by many other groups including the Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) and the Africa Group.
India stated during the talks that “the pressing question before us is that are we in suspended animation in the pre-2020 period or have we suspended ambition till the post-2020 arrangements are in place?”
Through multilateral assessments, part of the newly-established international assessment and review (IAR) process for developed country parties, “it was learnt that only a few countries have met their target under the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol,” India added.
Apart from technology transfer and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), finance and loss and damage issues were strongly contested during the week. “While IPR is very important for developing countries to protect endogenous technologies, perhaps, more often than we care to admit IPR does constitute a barrier to technology transfer,” said Gary Theseira of Malaysia who represented the LMDCs in the ADP.
“The first step for developed countries would be admitting to any degree that IPR might impede the flow of environmentally sound technologies. Cost effectiveness should extend to access to these technologies,” Mr. Theseira added.
“It is not just a mitigation gap but a finance gap as well. We have to revisit existing commitments and there is also the challenge of ratification because a number of countries yet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Meeting pre-2020 conditions is a stepping stone for an ambitious post-2020 deal,” said Tasneem Essop of WWF.
“Mitigation does not happen in a vacuum but it is important to understand the context in which developing countries deliver. Countries are jumping out of the [Kyoto] Protocol or not joining the Protocol. We have to have confidence that the developed countries are ready to deliver on their historical responsibilities. If we have to achieve the 2 degrees goal then we need trillions not billions for that. How do we do that on our own. It is important how you concretize mitigation,” said Seyni Nafo, spokesperson for the Africa Group at United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
European Union (EU) maintained that it was committed to supporting technology transfer and financing. “The first initial capitalisation of GEF was quite successful and delivered 10 billion in a relatively short time and that 10 billion was not the only climate fund that was available,” said Ms. Badram. “June will be a little more difficult,” said Ms. Badram, referring to the process of deciding the core and the operational elements of the Paris text and eliminating redundancies. The Geneva text will be negotiated only three times — in June, September and October — before Paris.
