Durban Climate Talks: Much at Stake, Race Against Clock

Much is at stake at the upcoming UN climate change conference in Durban, South Africa, which was described as a race against the clock to salvage the Kyoto Protocol.

Twists, Turns On The Road

For years, talks on the Kyoto Protocol have been traveling a bumpy road.

After the US quit the protocol, participating countries adopted the Bali Roadmap in 2007 which started a two-year process toward the goal of finalizing a binding agreement at the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009.

Under the roadmap, Kyoto Protocol participants should remain committed to the accord while the US should, together with the developing countries, make efforts to reduce emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

In Copenhagen, although talks on the protocol failed to finish on time, the conference allowed the concerned parties to continue negotiations and reached a new agreement known as the "Copenhagen Accord".

The "Copenhagen Accord" stipulates that the developed countries should provide the developing countries with new, extra funds to support the latter's efforts in adapting to global climate change.

The first step is to provide US$30 billion before 2012, and 100 billion dollars each year between 2012 and 2020.

The Cancun conference in 2010 went even further. The Cancun Accord, reached at the conference, laid the foundation for the largest-ever international cooperative operation on emissions reductions.

Under the UNFCCC framework, all developed countries and some of the developing countries have set emissions reduction targets.

They also set a long-term target of limiting the global temperature rise to 2 degrees centigrade, and established the Green Development Foundation to help developing countries in their environmental protection efforts.

The Cancun conference turned the climate negotiations process around, putting it on a smoother track.

The biggest achievement of the Cancun conference, in the view of UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres, was that it restored international confidence in climate negotiations.

Problems Remain

From Bali to Cancun, some headway was made in the climate negotiations. However, the talks failed to get to the core issues concerning the developed nations' emissions cut targets in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and their promises to provide capital and technology to support developing countries in tackling climate change.

Over the past four years, there have been twists and turns in solving the two problems.

The US exit from the Kyoto Protocol inevitably undermined the accord. Some developed countries wavered and even backed away from their positions under the excuse of "environmental integrity."

The Umbrella Group, which includes Japan, Canada, Australia, the US, and other developed countries, has repeatedly rejected the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

At the 2010 Cancun summit, Japan declared bluntly that it would not agree to any extension of the Kyoto Protocol, drawing criticism from the international community, especially from the developing countries.

The UNFCCC clearly states that developed countries should help the developing ones in terms of capital and technology. However, in the years that followed, the promises remained mere lip service.

It was not until the 2009 Copenhagen conference that rich nations grudgingly agreed to provide US$30 billion in "fast-start" finance to combat climate change between 2010 and 2012, with the bulk of the amount not in place yet.