UN Climate Treaty: Durban Platform and Youth Activism

By Tina Gerhardt

December 12, 2011

Durban, South Africa - As the sun had risen over the
COP 17 in South Africa on Sunday morning, the Durban
Platform was approved. While not a legally binding
agreement, the Durban Platform stipulates that a new
protocol shall be agreed to by 2015 and take effect by
2020.

In contrast to the Kyoto Protocol, which puts the
burden on industrialized nations for greenhouse gas
emissions (ghg) emissions reductions, since they are
historically responsible for having produced them, the
Durban Platform puts forth that developed and
developing nations must come together to take
responsibility for reducing ghgs.

The UNFCCC negotiations seek to achieve three goals: 1.
to establish greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions reductions
commitments; 2. To secure funding and technology from
developed countries for developing countries, to help
them adapt to climate change; and 3. To decide on a
method for monitoring, reporting and verifying (MRV)
the agreed upon targets.

Although the Durban Platform has been praised by many
as a major achievement, since it brings all nations -
including the US, China and India, which have been at
odds in recent years at the negotiations - together,
not everyone is convinced by it.

First, the Durban Platform is not legally binding.
Second, numerous NGOs indicate that most of the
agreement's substance is missing and that decisions
about it have been deferred, while emissions continue
to rise and the effects of climate change continue to
hit those least able to address them.

For example, the amount of emissions reductions - which
countries, how much and by when - is left open. The
Kyoto Protocol seeks to prevent temperature from
increasing above 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).
The scientific community widely agrees that temperature
increases above 2 degrees Celsius would lead to
irreversible effects of climate change.

And although a general sum of funding of $100 billion
per year up to the year 2020 to finance a technology
transfer from developed countries for developing
countries has been agreed on, it remains unclear how
much each country will contribute and by when.
Furthermore, although it was decided that the UN - not
the Global Environment Facility as wished by the US and
the EU - will oversee the funds, the details of who
will oversee it remain unclear.

The Durban Platform suggests that the first commitment
period of the Kyoto Protocol, which 37 developed
nations have signed and which extends to 2012, be
extended beyond 2012. But it remains unclear whether
they would be extended to 2017 or to 2020. This
decision will be made next year.

It was negotiated and decided that the agreement must
have "legal force." It remains to be seen exactly what
that means.

Mind the Gap

Up to 2020, nations would cut emissions based on their
own national pledges, which are voluntary and not
legally binding.

Here's the problem: According to the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report
released last fall, year, the voluntary pledges made
thus far by developed nations have led to an increase
not a decrease in the levels of greenhouse gas
emissions.
http://www.unep.org/publications/ebooks/emissionsgapreport/

In a subsequent report released last month, UNEP
outlined how to bridge the emissions gap in order to
keep temperature increase to the two degree Celsius
target.
http://www.unep.org/publications/ebooks/bridgingemissionsgap/

Aside from the issue of voluntary emissions reductions
not being enough -- on this issue, see also the Climate
Action Tracker,
http://climateactiontracker.org/news/116/Durban-Agreements-a-step-towards-a-global-agreement-but-risk-of-exceeding-3C-warming-remains-scientists.html 
2020 as the year by which a new agreement would be reached
was lambasted.

Last month, the International Energy Agency (IEA)
warned that if current emissions trends continue and
are not reined by 2017, the planet will risk suffering
irreversible climate change.

So emissions need to peak - not begin to be reined - by
2020.

We're on a Road to Nowhere: Response from NGOS

As a result of the fact that these major questions were
left unanswered and deferred, NGOs were very critical
of the Durban Platform.

"Delaying real action until 2020 is a crime of global
proportions," said Nnimmo Bassey, Chair of Friends of
the Earth International. "An increase in global
temperatures of 4 degrees Celsius, permitted under this
plan, is a death sentence for Africa, Small Island
States, and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. This
summit has amplified climate apartheid, whereby the
richest 1% of the world have decided that it is
acceptable to sacrifice the 99%."

According to Pablo Solon, former lead climate
negotiator for Bolivia, "It is false to say that a
second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol has been
adopted in Durban. The actual decision has merely been
postponed to the next COP, with no commitments for
emission reductions from rich countries. This means
that the Kyoto Protocol will be on life support until
it is replaced by a new agreement that will be even
weaker."

"What some see as inaction is in fact a demonstration
of the palpable failure of our current economic system
to address economic, social or environmental crises,"
said Janet Redman, of the Washington-based Institute
for Policy Studies. "Banks that caused the financial
crisis are now making bonanza profits speculating on
our planet's future. The financial sector, driven into
a corner, is seeking a way out by developing ever newer
commodities to prop up a failing system."

US Obstructionism

What emerged starkly at this year's COP, as in previous
years, was US obstructionism. 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kumi-naidoo/obama-get-your-climate-th_b_1131456.html

What was new is that the mainstream media reported on
it and to such an extent that US lead climate
negotiator Todd Stern felt obliged to address it in a
press conference.

Added pressure came from Abigail Borah, a 21-year old
junior at Middlebury College, who on Thursday disrupted
Mr. Stern's statement to 194 nations at the UN summit.

Borah, who was attending the UN negotiations as part of
the International Youth Climate Movement, stated "I am
speaking on behalf of the United States of America
because my negotiators cannot. The obstructionist
Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition far
too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late
to wait."

Addressing the accusations, Stern stated "I've heard
this from everywhere from ministers to press reports to
the very sincere and passionate young woman who was in
the hall when I was giving my remarks." Despite the
plethora of statements accusing him of obstructionism,
he denied the charges.

Yet the pressure seemed to have an effect. At a press
conference on Thursday afternoon, Stern indicated his
support for the EU roadmap, stating "If we get the kind
of roadmap that countries have called for - the EU has
called for, that the US supports - we are strongly
committed ... to move forward on that."

Stern was left backpedaling, however, after U.S. State
Department spokeswoman Emily Cain released a statement
the same day clarifying that the U.S. would not sign on
to a "legally binding" treaty: "Todd Stern said in his
press conference today that the United States could
support a process to negotiate a new climate accord. He
did not say that the United States supports a legally
binding agreement."

In his closing remarks at the president's plenary,
Stern shied away from the words "legally binding,"
"treaty" or agreement" and said instead that road map
proposed by Europe had "the potential to become [pause]
an historic document."

Michael Dorsey, Professor of Environmental Sciences at
Dartmouth College said, "The lack of a vision from the
US is astounding." "If anyone knows the science
backwards and forwards," Dorsey continued, "it's
[climate negotiator] Jonathan [Pershing]. So for him to
push this out to 2015 is dangerous. And it's dangerous
to come out of the diplomacy department."

Deputy Special for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing,
second in command after Stern, served as the director
of the Climate, Energy and Pollution at the World
Resources Institute (WRI), prior to joining the State
Department. "Pershing," Dorsey said, "knows the science
well and knows what game of roulette he is playing.
It's diplomatic brinkmanship.

"The UN stats are saying we're going see 150 to 200
million climate refugees," Dorsey said, "When you have
that kind of data up front, when you have fact after
fact of data, when you know that reality of the science
of what this is based on, that should cause alarm."

Civil Society: "It Always Seems Impossible Until It's
Done"

Civil society, weary of the delays in these annual
negotiations, are not standing down. Aside from the
interruption of Stern's address, on Wednesday six
Canadians stood and turned their back on Canada's
Environment Minister Peter Kent, as he addressed the
UNFCCC.

On Thursday, Anjali Appaduria, a college student at
College of the Atlantic in Maine and a member of the
Youth Delegation, delivered a succinct speech that
summed up the science regarding global warming and the
status of the UNFCCC negotiations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3e6G_7GY4
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/10-0

Opening, she stated, "I speak for more than half the
world's population. We are the silent majority ... You
have given us a seat at the table. But our interests
are not represented. What does it take to get a stake
in this game? Lobbyists? Corporate influence? Money?"

"You have been negotiating all my life. In that time,
you have failed to meet pledges, you have missed
targets."

"But you've heard this all before. We're in Africa,
home to communities at the frontlines of climate
change. The world's poorest countries need funding for
adaptation. Now. The horn of Africa ...  needed it,
yesterday. But as 2012 dawns our Green Climate Fund
remains empty."

"The International Energy Agency tells us we have five
years until the window to avoid irreversible
consequences of climate change closes. The science
tells us that we have five years maximum. You are
saying, give us ten. The most stark betrayal of your
generation's responsibility to ours is that you call
this ambition."

Citing Nelson Mandela, Appaduria said, "It Always Seems
Impossible Until It's Done."

The next Conference of the Parties 18 is scheduled to
take place in Qatar, from November 26 to December 7,
2012.

---

Tina Gerhardt is an independent journalist and
academic, who covers international climate
negotiations, domestic energy policy, and related
direct actions. Her work has appeared in Alternet,
Earth Island Journal, Grist, In These Times, The Nation
and the Progressive.

She has appeared on GRIT tv's Laura Flanders' Show;
KPFA's Against the Grain, KPFK's Sojourner Truth and
WBAI's Wake Up Call; and the National Radio Project. > >

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