The current state of the climate negotiations

While the real momentum (and power) for change is on the streets, we have been tracking the status of the COP 15 negotiations as best as we can.

CLIMATE FINANCING AND EMISSION CUTS
Reuters reports that, "Delegates said there were deep splits on issues such as raising funds for poor nations and sharing out the burden of greenhouse gas emissions curbs."

The CBC adds that, "A new draft proposal released Friday at the Copenhagen climate summit calls for developed countries to make deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions than current commitments."

"The six-page draft document, authored by Michael Zammit Cutajar, the chair of the UN's ad-hoc working group on long-term cooperative action, doesn't specify a solid emission reduction target for developed countries such as Canada, but instead offers a range of options."

"The draft calls for emission reductions of 25 to 45 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020 for developed countries, and reductions of 15 and 30 per cent by 2020 for developing countries. Both these targets are more ambitious than the current climate targets outlined by both industrialized and emerging economies."

Canada's top climate change negotiator Michael Martin has already said that Canada has "significant problems" with this draft agreement.

That is likely because the Harper government is committing to just a 3 percent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels by 2020.

REDD
Reuters also reports that, "Delegates said negotiators had advanced on texts such as defining how new green technologies such as wind and solar power can be supplied to developing nations and in promoting use of forests to soak up greenhouse gases."

This may refer to the destructive Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation initiative.

As explained in the New Internationalist, "Deforestation is responsible for about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. But REDD assumes that this is because intact forests have no dollar value attached to them; they're worth less than forests that are cut down. So the solution is to put a price tag on standing forests, and allow countries and companies to trade in the amorphous concept of avoided emissions."

"Forest communities and indigenous peoples are deeply opposed (and) warn that treating forests merely as carbon stores, the rights to which can be bought and sold on the international markets, will further erode their land rights..."

And as noted in our Copenhagen background paper, "The World Bank and the Kyoto Protocol's definition of a forest allows for the potential of replacing natural forests with plantations," which, according to Friends of the Earth, store as little as 20 percent of the carbon that intact natural forests do.

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