Mandate emerges for new climate regime after marathon negotiations in Durban

An extra day of negotiations Dec. 11 at the United Nations climate change summit in Durban, South produced a statement called the “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action.” (PHOTO BY FRANK TESTER)

MIKE DE SOUZA
Postmedia News

DURBAN, South Africa — International climate change talks emerged from a standoff Sunday, Dec. 11, as a Europe-led alliance of countries used a weakened Kyoto Protocol as a bargaining chip to get the rest of the parties to accept a mandate for a successor to that agreement in 2015.

That future agreement would come into force in 2020.

In a statement, called the “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action,” countries also agreed to make a multibillion-dollar Green Climate Fund operational.

This fund is to help developing nations cope with the impacts of global warming, but it must still build sources for its funding.

“We know when you have a very big problem, when you have a global problem, an international problem, then voluntary means will not be enough to address that problem,” said European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard in the midst of the marathon, record-breaking United Nations negotiating session.

“We have seen that many times in history — I could mention the Cold War, I could also take the present economic crisis . . . that government structure is of very big importance. It is necessary in order to get the necessary done.”

The statement adopted in Durban recognized “that climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet and thus requires to be urgently addressed” and acknowledged that “the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, with a view to accelerating the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.”

On the positive side, all nations agreed to act, but some critics said that 2020 is too late to act and that the “Durban Platform” is too weak to stop global temperature rise from remaining within two degrees C.

The Europe-led block, including small-island states and the least-developed nations, had urged the conference to require a binding protocol or legal instrument, to be negotiated within four years and taking effect in 2018.

But they rejected adding a third choice that would allow countries instead to choose another “legal option” in the future to address global warming — an option they believed would be too weak to be binding.

Both China and India, the world’s first and third largest annual sources of greenhouse gases, were skeptical, suggesting that industrialized countries, which have historically produced more than half of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, were trying to avoid paying their fair share.

But the countries later brokered a compromise.

This toughened the wording an ensure that the eventual solution would have legal force but fall under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

That international agreement was founded based on the principle that developed nations should pay for their historic, greenhouse gas emissions that remain in the atmosphere.

The marathon session was supposed to wrap up on Friday, Dec. 9, but instead ended Sunday morning as the longest UN climate summit in 20 years.

with files from Nunatsiaq News