New UN climate ploy: Institutionalize payments for still-unspecified 'loss and damage'

by George Russell,

Click here to read this is full @ Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/12/19/new-un-climate-ploy-institutionalize-payments-for-still-unspecified-loss-and/#ixzz2FelKtec2

The United Nations is pushing for a novel way to get billions of extra dollars from Western nations by imposing a retroactive penalty for still-unspecified losses and damages that can be laid at the doorstep of rich countries for their longstanding production of greenhouse gases.

The notion was vigorously opposed by the U.S. at the talks, which concluded in Doha on Dec. 8 -- even though the U.S. has never ratified the Protocol. But that did not stop the assembly of more than 195 nations from rolling the idea forward to their next meeting, in Warsaw next December.

In the meantime, the Kyoto parties are calling for more research “to further the understanding of and expertise on loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change.”

In other words, the Protocol nations do not yet even know how exactly to define the loss and damage concept, especially the sort associated with “slow-onset” change associated with rising seas and desertification. Yet in their final resolution on the topic they underlined that “the lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as reason for postponing action.”

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Green Activists Close To Despair After UN Climate Confab

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Doha Climate Summit Ends In Disgrace 


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. --Barbara Lewis and Alister Doyle, Reuters, 9 December 2012

The United Nations climate talks in Doha went a full extra 24 hours and ended without increased cuts in fossil fuel emissions and without financial commitments between 2013 and 2015. However, this is a "historic" agreement, insisted Qatar's Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, the COP18 president. --Inter Press Service, 10 December 2012

Climate negotiators at the most recent conference on global warming were unable to reduce expectations fast enough to match the collapse of their agenda. The only real winners here were the bureaucrats in the diplomacy industry for whom endless rounds of carbon spewing conferences with no agreement year after year mean jobs, jobs, jobs. The inexorable decline of the climate movement from its Pickett’s Charge at the Copenhagen summit continues. The global green lobby is more flummoxed than ever. These people and these methods couldn’t make a ham sandwich, much less save Planet Earth. –Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest, 9 December 2012

Ban Ki-moon needs translation...when uncle Helen speaks at Doha

Who are the main players in global climate negotiations

Click here for this story in full at philStar.com: http://www.philstar.com/breaking-news/2012/11/25/873333/main-players-global-climate-negotiations

DOHA (Xinhua) - A new round of UN climate change conference slated for Nov. 26-Dec. 7 will be held in Doha, Qatar where negotiators are expected to push ahead what was achieved in Durban last year and work out the details of the second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol.
In climate change talks, parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) mainly group under three contending forces, namely the Umbrella Group, the European Union(EU) and the G77 and China.

UMBRELLA GROUP

The umbrella group mainly consists of the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Russia, whose stance regarding climate change is less enthusiastic than most of the developed signatories to the Kyoto Protocol. Particularly, in 2001, the United States withdrew from the Protocol, and in 2011, Canada followed its step.
The Umbrella Group insists that developing countries should undertake quantified emission reduction commitments along with the developed countries, regardless of the fact that rich nations are responsible for 80 percent of the existing greenhouse gas in the atmosphere due to their unsustainable way of industrialization in the past.

EU

The EU is more active in fighting climate change than the Umbrella Group and supports a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol being negotiated.
Nevertheless, the EU sees the second commitment period only as a transition phase, following which a new treaty should be implemented in its stead to assign all major economies mandatory emission cut targets.
These economies that the EU has in mind include the United States, who has so far showed no interest in the second commitment period, as well as the emerging economies, mainly include China and India.
Again, the EU is aiming to discard the core principle of the UNFCCC, "common but differentiated responsibilities," and tries to blur the distinction between the duties of developed and developing countries.

G77 AND CHINA

The G77 and China represent the interests of the developing countries in the climate negotiations.
An important player under this bloc is the BASIC nations, which encompass China, India, Brazil and South Africa. The BASIC group often meets to coordinate their positions ahead of major climate talks.
The G77 and China advocate respecting the UNFCCC and the Bali Roadmap, which set a double-track process for climate negotiations and differentiates the duties of the rich and poor countries.
They argue that the developed countries should make greater commitment to cutting carbon emissions, citing their historical discharge, while the developing countries, aided by financial and technical support, should also make efforts to cut their emissions on a voluntary basis.

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Christiana Figueres put presure on Obama: "US better catch up with the rest of the world"

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U.N. climate-change chief getting frustrated with U.S.

'There is going to be increasing pressure to catch up with the rest of the world'

(Washington Examiner) Christiana Figueres, who leads the United Nations negotiations to get governments to reduce carbon emissions in the world, regards Hurricane Sandy as “yet another wake-up call” for Americans to get on board with her climate change policy.

“Yes, I certainly do think that this is yet another wake-up call,” Figueres said of Hurricane Sandy to Yale Environment 360 in an interview published by The Guardian.”I did hear President Obama say quite categorically in his acceptance speech that he is not going to have a future that is threatened by increasing warming . . . I do think that this mirrors the growing awareness in the United States. So I do think that Sandy has contributed to this. Is it the tipping point? That remains to be seen.”

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BBC: UN says carbon cuts too slow to curb dangerous warming

Click here to read the full report on BBC NEWS: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20414596

 

The report is meant to inform climate negotiators who will gather in the Qatari capital next week

A report by the UN says global attempts to curb emissions of CO2 are falling well short of what is needed to stem dangerous climate change. 

The UN's Environment Programme says greenhouse gases are 14% above where they need to be in 2020 for temperature rises this century to remain below 2C.

The authors say this target is still technically achievable.

But the opportunity is likely to be lost without swift action by governments, they argue.

Negotiators will meet in Doha, Qatar for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP18) next week to resume talks aimed at securing a global deal on climate by 2015...

Click here to read the full report on BBC NEWS: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20414596

URGENT: Will the Obama administration, undermine U.N. role in Doha?

US considers shifting climate negotiations away from UN track

US reportedly looking to move policy debates from the UN's Doha climate conference and towards Major Economies Forum

Click here to read this story in full at The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/16/us-considers-climate-negotiations-un

New offices and hotels in the West Bay and Oneiza district in Doha, Qatar, where climate talks resume in November. Photograph: Nadine Rupp/Getty Images

 

The US is considering a funnel of substantive elements of the Doha Climate Summit away from the UN framework and into the Major Economies Forum (MEF), a platform of the world's largest CO2 emitters, EurActiv has learned.

Since 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has provided an umbrella for talks to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, and on 26 November, will host the COP18 Climate Summit in Qatar.

But it has been confirmed to EurActiv that Washington is increasingly looking to shift policy action to the MEF whose members account for some 85% of global emissions, and which the US views as a more comfortable venue for agreeing climate goals.

If the idea gains traction, it could demote the UNFCCC to a forum for discussing the monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions reductions projects, sources say.

Michael Starbæk Christensen, the deputy head of cabinet for EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, said he expected the US to convene another MEF forum soon which could be fruitful for discussing raised climate ambitions.

"We need to broaden the group to work together on this and whether it is inside our outside the UNFCCC, by all means do it outside," he told a Green Party conference in the European Parliament on 15 November.

"Ideally we would like to see as much happening inside the UNFCCC as possible," he continued, "but if we can engage with the US in other forums, it is the action that counts".
Brussels sees the MEF as a complement - rather than an alternative - to the UNFCCC, and is mindful of giving the newly-elected President Obama time to finesse his climate agenda.

It would be considered a "provocation" if the US was to unilaterally leave the UNFCCC process itself, sources say, and could potentially split the world into rival climate blocks led by Washington and Beijing.

The MEF is a successor to the Major Economies Meetings set up by President Bush, and criticised by several governments for undermining the UN process.

Its participants include: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States...

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SCANDAL: United Nations internal wars over CO Certificates have the first casualty: "Rajendra K Pachauri" !

The United Nations denies access to the conference for Al Gore's other half

ONLY AT THE U.N.

Click here for this story in full at Gulf Times: http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=544308&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16

Dr Rajendra K Pachauri

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will not be attending the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18/CMP8) in Doha, chairman Dr Rajendra K Pachauri has said.
“For the first time in the 18 years of COP, the IPCC will not be attending, because we have not been invited,” he told Gulf Times in Doha.

COP18 is to be held from November 26 to December 7.

The IPCC, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, former vice president of the US and environmental activist, is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. Currently 195 countries are members.

Dr Pachauri first hinted about his ‘anticipated absence’ at COP18, while speaking at the opening session of the International Conference on Food Security in Dry Lands (FSDL) on Wednesday at Qatar University.

Later, he told Gulf Times he did not know why the IPCC has not been invited to COP18, something that has happened never before.

“I don’t know what it is. The executive secretary of the climate change secretariat has to decide. I have attended every COP and the chairman of the IPCC addresses the COP in the opening session,” he explained.