Andrew Allan, Ben Garside, Daniel Fineren, Stian Reklev PlanetArk 11 Dec 12;
Following are major decisions by almost 200 nations at U.N. meeting on climate change in Doha, Qatar, November 26 to December 7:
KYOTO PROTOCOL
The conference agreed to an eight-year extension to 2020 of the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding U.N. pact for combating global warming.
It now obliges about 35 industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during the period 2008-12. Nations will pick their own targets for 2020.
But backers of Kyoto will dwindle from 2013 to a group including the European Union, Australia, Ukraine, Switzerland and Norway. Together they account for less than 15 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions.
Others of the original Kyoto group -- Russia, Japan and Canada -- are pulling out, saying that it is time for big emerging economies led by China and India to join in setting targets for limiting their surging emissions.
The United States signed but never ratified Kyoto, arguing that it would cost U.S. jobs and wrongly omitted goals for developing nations. Developing nations have insisted on keeping Kyoto as a sign that rich nations are leading.
Under Saturday's extension, there will be a possibility for tightening targets in 2014. The European Union, for instance, has promised cuts of at least 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
FUTURE TALKS
Countries laid out a timetable for working on a new global deal, due to be agreed in 2015 and to enter into force from 2020 that would apply to all nations. Kyoto now only sets targets for industrialized nations.
Negotiations would be split into two "work streams" - one looking at actions to combat climate change from 2020 and another to look into how to step up ambition before 2020.
They agreed to hold a first session of talks from April 29 to May 2, 2013, in Bonn, Germany, perhaps another in September 2013, and at least two sessions in 2014 and two in 2015.
The talks are named the "Durban Platform" after the South African city that hosted talks last year where the new push for a global deal from 2020 was decided.
FINANCE
The conference stopped short of obliging developed nations, facing austerity at home, to give a timetable about how they would achieve a promised tenfold increase in aid to $100 billion a year by 2020.
The text "encourages developed country parties to further increase their efforts to provide resources of at least to the average annual level of the (2010-12) period for 2013-15." It would extend work on identifying new sources of funds by another year.
Developed nations agreed at a summit in 2009 to give developing nations $10 billion a year in aid to help them adapt to a changing climate for 2010-12. They also set a separate goal of $100 billion for 2020 but did not say what would happen from 2013-19.
LOSS AND DAMAGE
The meeting agreed ways to address rising losses for developing countries from the impacts of climate change, ranging from droughts to a gradual rise in sea levels.
It decided to set up new arrangements to address loss and damage, including perhaps a new international mechanism at a next meeting in 2013. The text includes no promise of new cash.
Delegates said that the United States was the most adamant that any new project would not be in addition to a $100 billion funds promised from 2020 to help the poor.
(With additional reporting by Andrew Allan, Ben Garside, Daniel Fineren, Stian Reklev; Editing by Stephen Powell)
Factbox: What do the Doha talks mean for the carbon market?
Nina Chestney, Barbara Lewis, Andrew Allan and Ben Garside PlanetArk 11 Dec 12;
U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, were unlikely to have any impact on depressed carbon markets, analysts said.
Extended debate gave the Kyoto Protocol, the world's only global pact on curbing climate change, a fragile lifeline.
But it did nothing to raise ambition on cutting emissions, which could have helped to reduce a surplus of offsets and emissions allowances that have crushed markets.
AAUS
After years of haggling, the European Union came up with an internal agreement on how to deal with its surplus of international allowances, known as Assigned Amount Units (AAUs).
The EU text was agreed with minor changes in the final package of agreements known as the Doha Climate Gateway.
Under the EU deal, allowances would be carried over into a second Kyoto commitment period, but buying of them would be limited to 2 percent of the purchaser's national allocation.
There was no decision on cancellation after 2020 of surplus permits -- as demanded by developing nations.
But the handful of nations likely to purchase the allowances -- Australia, the European Union, Japan, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland -- made declarations saying they would not buy them, ensuring they have limited market value.
CLEAN DEVELOPMENT MECHANISM
The $215-billion offset market allows governments and companies to invest in emission reduction projects in return for tradeable credits (Certified Emission Reductions), which they can use to meet international climate targets.
But the Clean Development Mechanism has suffered from the failure of the talks to deliver deep emissions cuts.
Prices have collapsed from above 22 euros ($28.44) in 2008, just before the failure of U.N. talks in Copenhagen to get nations to agree to binding emission caps, to about 50 cents.
A U.N.-commissioned report in September said that unless nations took on deeper cuts or a reserve bank was set up to buy surplus credits, the scheme could collapse.
Doha talks reached no agreement on a solution.
"As with Durban (climate talks) last year, the outcome will not surprise the market and so is unlikely to affect the price of EU allowances or CDM credits," said Jonathan Grant, director of sustainability and climate change at PwC.
(Reporting by Nina Chestney in London and Barbara Lewis, Andrew Allan and Ben Garside in Doha; Editing by Stephen Powell)
Poor to seek U.N. climate change compensation scheme in 2013
Alister Doyle PlanetArk 10 Dec 12;
Developing nations will push next year for a radical U.N. mechanism to compensate them for the impact of climate change, such as droughts or rising sea levels, despite reluctance among wealthy states which would have to foot the bill.
A meeting of almost 200 countries in Qatar in the past week agreed steps towards addressing losses and damage from global warming in what some analysts called a big shift for the United Nations-led talks.
Developed nations fear such a system could be hugely costly for Western governments, most of which are struggling now to cut huge budget deficits. The United States insists any money would have to come from $100 billion in aid already promised from 2020 to help poor countries cope with global warming, delegates said.
Helen Clark, head of the U.N. Development Programme, warned developing nations against expecting too much of "pretty stressed Western economies".
"In the end, you can't squeeze blood from a stone," she told Reuters at the November 26-December 8 conference in Doha.
Developing nations are nevertheless signaling a big push in 2013. "We look forward to the establishment of the international mechanism next year," Nauru's Foreign Minister Kieren Keke said at the end of the meeting, speaking for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).
If set up, the new system could help nations to recover from storms that may become more powerful due to climate change. In the Philippines, typhoon Bopha has killed 540 people in the past week.
Many experts point to one of the worst extremes in Grenada, where Hurricane Ivan caused damage in 2004 costing twice the Caribbean island's entire annual economic output.
"Of course it won't ever be big enough to satisfy everyone who comes along and cries," George Prime, Grenada's Environment Minister, said of the likely funds.
"It's not just the cost. An event like that raises your debts and you can't get loans," he told Reuters. "It also takes money away from other spending, like on health and education." Ivan killed 39 people in Grenada.
A FUNDAMENTAL SHIFT
Until a few years ago, the focus in U.N. talks on climate change was on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from factories, cars and power plants. That shifted in the mid-2000s to include ways to adapt to floods, heatwaves and rising seas.
Now, the push to set up ways to compensate for loss and damage is an admission that there will be changes - such as sea level rise or ocean acidification - that can't be adapted to.
"If an island is gone you can't just adapt to that. It's a complete transformation. With a disappearance of glaciers the water supply is gone. This is going far beyond traditional management," said Juan Pablo Hoffmaister of Bolivia.
"It's a fundamental shift in the way we talk about climate change," said Nick Mabey, chief executive of the London-based E3G think-tank.
AOSIS has proposed a three-part mechanism based on insurance against extreme weather, compensation for creeping problems such as sea-level rise and new efforts to assess risks.
The agreement in Doha, where the main decision was to extend the U.N.'s existing Kyoto Protocol for slowing global warming, is vague. It speaks of setting up new "institutional arrangements, such as an international mechanism" in 2013.
It does not mention any new money; delegates say developed nations insisted on leaving that out.
Some advances have been made. Hurricane Ivan led to creation of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, offering insurance of up to $100 million per weather event.
(editing by David Stamp)
Despair after climate conference, but U.N. still offers hope
Barbara Lewis and Alister Doyle PlanetArk 11 Dec 12;
At the end of another lavishly-funded U.N. conference that yielded no progress on curbing greenhouse emissions, many of those most concerned about climate change are close to despair.
As thousands of delegates checked out of their air-conditioned hotel rooms in Doha to board their jets for home, some asked whether the U.N. system even made matters worse by providing cover for leaders to take no meaningful action.
Supporters say the U.N. process is still the only framework for global action. The United Nations also plays an essential role as the "central bank" for carbon trading schemes, such as the one set up by the European Union.
But unless rich and poor countries can inject urgency into their negotiations, they are heading for a diplomatic fiasco in 2015 - their next deadline for a new global deal.
"Much much more is needed if we are to save this process from being simply a process for the sake of process, a process that simply provides for talk and no action, a process that locks in the death of our nations, our people, and our children," said Kieren Keke, foreign minister of Nauru, who fears his Pacific island state could become uninhabitable.
The conference held in Qatar - the country that produces the largest per-capita volume of greenhouse gases in the world - agreed to extend the emissions-limiting Kyoto Protocol, which would have run out within weeks.
But Canada, Russia and Japan - where the protocol was signed 15 years ago - all abandoned the agreement. The United States never ratified it in the first place, and it excludes developing countries where emissions are growing most quickly.
Delegates flew home from Doha without securing a single new pledge to cut pollution from a major emitter.
So far, U.N. climate talks have missed just about every deadline. The rich nations of the world promised two decades ago to halt their rise in greenhouse gases. They failed. Next, they promised a sequel to Kyoto by 2009. They failed again.
Now they have a 2015 deadline to get a new global, binding deal in place, to enter into force after the extension of Kyoto expires in 2020. For the first time, it would apply to rich and poor countries alike. But with the world's nations divided over who must pay the cost, the task of reaching accord seems beyond the capabilities of the vast corps of international delegates.
Meanwhile, the world's weather is only getting more unstable. As the Doha talks dragged on, Typhoon Bopha in the Philippines left nearly 1,000 people dead or missing.
Hurricane Sandy last month was a reminder that even rich countries are not safe from extreme weather, which scientists say will become ever more common as the world heats up.
PROGRESS AT GROUND LEVEL
A series of reports released during the Doha talks said the world faced the prospect of 4 degrees Celsius (7.2F) of warming, rather than the 2 degree (3.6F) limit that nations adopted in 2010 as a maximum to avoid dangerous changes.
According to the World Bank, that would mean food and water shortages, habitats wiped out, coastal communities wrecked by rising seas, deserts spreading, and droughts both more frequent and severe. Most impact would be borne by the world's poorest.
"The alarm bells are going off all over the place," Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said. "We are in a crisis and treating it like a process where we can dither away forever."
Action at ground level has had a positive impact, even as the U.N. dithers. Investment in carbon-free renewable energy hit a record $260 billion in 2011.
In the United States, the discovery of techniques to produce natural gas from shale has cut the cost of gas, which has reduced emissions from the world's biggest polluter by replacing coal, a bigger carbon emitter, for power generation.
But although U.S. emissions - nearly a quarter of the world's total - have fallen, for the world as a whole this year they are expected to rise by 2.6 percent, up by 58 percent since 1990. Emerging economies led by China and India account for most of the growth.
Although frustrated by days and nights of haggling, ministers still back the United Nations as part of the solution.
"It's clear to me that this process is the only global framework we have and since this is a global problem, it has to be addressed globally," Denmark's Energy Minister Martin Lidegaard told Reuters.
"But obviously, this can't stand alone. Nations can't continue to hide behind the process. There's a direct link between what we deliver at home and here. We desperately need to combine action by regions, municipalities, citizens with this global approach. That is becoming more and more evident."
Negotiators say ultimately politicians - distracted by other events - need to become engaged.
"It (the environment) is no longer on the front page with the political and financial crisis. That is the reason why heads of state have to turn to this," the European Union's chief negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger said.
CONVERTS
The conference is an easy target for cynics - not least because it was held in Qatar, a desert kingdom that exports carbon-producing fossil fuel and uses the proceeds to fund a lavish lifestyle for many of its 2.5 million people.
A country that burns fuel to desalinate water and build golf courses in the desert seems like an odd place to talk about curtailing consumption. But supporters say bringing producers like Qatar into the consensus for change is a step forward.
Business leaders are also getting involved.
"A lot of CEOs from the region have turned up. A lot of them are talking about sustainability and resource efficiency. That's no longer a dirty word," said Russel Mills, global director for energy and climate policy at Dow Chemical Co.
Dow, like many other big industrial firms, keeps a close eye on U.N. carbon policy because of the United Nations' role as "a kind of central bank" for pollution allowances.
The most developed carbon trading scheme is the European Union's, which has lurched from crisis to crisis. The value of EU Emissions Trading Scheme permits sank to a record low this month under the burden of surplus allowances during a recession.
But other jurisdictions such as Australia, California, South Korea and even China believe they can learn from Europe's mistakes and are developing their own emissions trading. Such schemes could be the planet's best hope of survival, and the United Nations is likely to play a role.
"Economy-wide carbon pricing, whether carbon taxes or cap and trade, is the only approach that can conceivably achieve the targets scientists advocate," Robert Stavins, a professor of business and government at Harvard in the United States, said.
"Also, it will be most the cost-effective and therefore in the long run the most politically-viable approach."
Still, even with the best of intentions, U.N. diplomats are unlikely ever to deliver change at the pace scientists seek.
"Science is demanding immediate and drastic action," Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters. "Policy, economics and financing cannot move in drastic fashion."
(Editing by Peter Graff)
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