Climate change is a global challenge and requires a global solution. In late 2007, governments adopted the Bali Roadmap, launching negotiations toward a new global climate agreement. Through analysis and dialogue, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change is working with governments and stakeholders to identify practical and effective options for the post-2012 international climate framework. Read More
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World leaders struck a new political accord at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen that provides for explicit national greenhouse gas emissions mitigation pledges by all the major economies - including, for the first time, China and other major developing countries. Now, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has received submissions of these pledges to cut and limit emissions by 2020.
It’s off to Bonn again, this time for the first substantive negotiations under the UN Climate Convention since Copenhagen. That’s the hope, at least.
Climate negotiators last gathered in Bonn (home base for the UN climate secretariat) for a few days back in April. That time the agenda was strictly “procedural,” although in truth the main issue – whether the Copenhagen Accord could enter into the formal negotiations going forward – had rather broad substantive implications.
The...
If there was going to be a fall guy for the chaos that was Copenhagen, Yvo de Boer was the natural choice.
As the executive secretary of the U.N. climate secretariat – one whose own profile has risen along with that of the climate issue – Yvo is closely associated in many minds with the perceived failure of Copenhagen. With parties’ confidence in him at an all-time low, it was no surprise that he ...
The fuller significance of the Copenhagen Accord became a little clearer this week – and a little murkier too.
The nonbinding deal struck six weeks ago by a couple dozen world leaders left open two immediate questions: exactly which countries would be signing on to it, and just what targets or actions they would be promising. The parties gave themselves until January 31 to fill in those...
Only time will tell whether the deal struck in Copenhagen proves a true turning point in the effort against climate change. Flying home after two chaotic and exhausting weeks, I find I’m of two minds.
The deadline of December 18, 2009, in fact drove many governments further than before. In the weeks preceding, the United States, China, India and others felt compelled to come forward with explicit emission pledges. Under the...
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Amid the distracting dramas of purloined emails and...
“Verifiable.” That is arguably the most important word in the Bali Action Plan, the agreement two years ago that launched the global climate negotiations about to culminate in Copenhagen. Our future climate commitments and actions, governments agreed, must be “measurable, reportable and verifiable.”
This construct is critical because, done right, “MRV” offers the promise of a global climate agreement in which countries can confidently ascertain whether others are doing what they promised.
Yet many governments now seem decidedly uncomfortable with the concept. ...
BARCELONA -- Will the U.S. bring numbers to Copenhagen?
That is the question most on the minds of negotiators here in Barcelona as they struggle to chart a path toward success at the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen. And with good reason – what can be achieved next month in the Danish capital will depend in large measure on what the United States brings to the table.
Every developed country except the U.S. already has formally adopted or proposed emission targets for 2020. (According to a compilation by the U.N. climate secretariat, these...
BARCELONA -- The two men perhaps best qualified to judge have now openly declared that they do not expect next month’s Copenhagen climate summit to produce a legally binding agreement.
That is the sober assessment offered in separate briefings over the past couple of days by Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. climate secretariat, and Michael Zammit Cutajar of Malta, who for the past year has chaired the negotiations leading up to Copenhagen. (There are two negotiating tracks: one under the Kyoto Protocol, the other under the UN Framework Convention on...
BANGKOK -- It’s no surprise, in the pre-Copenhagen posturing, that the United States is once again seen by many as the single greatest obstacle to an effective global climate effort. The truth, though, is that the U.S. is hardly alone. On all the key issues – emission targets, developing country commitments, and finance – other key players aren’t ready to strike a final deal either.
In his address last week to a high-level UN climate summit, President Obama offered an impressive list of early accomplishments. Yet as was painfully evident, absent...
Whenever the UN climate change negotiations convene these days, as they will again later this month in Bangkok, an oversized digital timer glares at delegates from the front of the hall, methodically counting down the days, hours, minutes, even seconds until the upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen. (The online version at the website of the UN climate secretariat reads at this writing 81:13:02:28.)
This staged countdown is a stark, if superfluous, reminder of the expectations looming...
