UN Climate Conference continues - delegates from Russia to Cyprus...

Thursday 4th December 2008


The first event I went to was a side event on 'innovative financial mechanisms' presented by Poland. It was a 'debt-for-environment' mechanism whereby Poland undertook afforestation and land management in return for debt cancellation. The figures seemed a bit optimistic; the cost of the the programme was £75M and had apparently reduced 12,000M tonnes of CO2 (thus a cost of 0.03Zl per tonne or less than 1p). I was dubious about whether that much had really been acheived for that cost.

Today, I spoke to an interesting Russian delegate for about half an hour. We originally stopped him in the corridor to interview him but he did not wish to be videotaped. Instead, he provided his "off-the-record" views that; 1) He did not believe the IPCC Reports that humans have any role in climate change. 2) We "need to keep the lights on". 3) No technology is safe, even wind energy could be harmful.


I was shocked to hear these views from an official Russian delegate, and quickly wrote them all down. Among his gems of wisdom, he tried to persuade me that the IPCC is "political and can't be trusted". The climate had begun warming in the "middle ages" and then got colder until the 1970's, when the recent warming began. I mentioned Russian's oil and gas economy, and he argued that we "need to keep the lights on". When I mentioned renewable energy, he said with conviction the wind energy caused a dangerous "ultrasound" of 7dB and apparently I should look it up. It shocked me that a Russian delegate at a climate conference was denying the IPCC Reports... Is this their official position or just the personal views of their representative? Either way, very worrying.


I attended a meeting at which Yvo de Boer (chair of the UNFCCC) spoke to civil society. He hoped there will be a draft text by June 2009. He said we are "not entirely operating in a vacuum" and we are "pretty close to having a floor for action in Annex I countries". He argued that the "Kyoto Protocol can be a time saver for Copenhagen". However this implies that an agreement will take longer if we want to fundamentally change the Kyoto Protocol. The CDM would need to be "streamlined and improved". De Boer was cautiously optimistic, but his words did imply that the agreement at Copenhagen would be based on the Kyoto Protocol. Based on the ineffectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol, I only hope that this does not mean a continuation of the status quo.


De Boer joked he himself had been labelled a 'watermelon'; (green on the outside, red on the inside!) He pointed out that the 2 reasons the US rejected the Kyoto Protocol were just as important today. The financial crisis was mentioned, including the need for a green recovery, and the need to make the Copenhagen agreement "self-financing" via auctioning emission rights etc. If there is no auctioning, how do we get money? He made the frank comment that "business wants predictability, as long as it doesn't apply to me". Responding to a question on risk of a speculative binge in deregulated carbon markets, De Boer said we must "use a binge to sober up". He also said the "sectoral approaches" were another way for business to say "I do what I feel I can do and you guys leave me alone". De Boer's honest answers reminded me that he is not a politician, restrained by the party line. Yet he did say at the beginning that he didn't wish to be re-quoted; since sometimes his honest comments come back to bite him!


Following the mention of 'sectoral approaches', which I knew little about, I caught the end of an EU Side Event on Sectoral Approaches, presented by the European Commission. The South Korean representative made several interesting comments. There is a gap between perception and reality. Annex I (developed countries) have the perception that non Annex-I have a lower efficiency; that is not true with regards to South Korea, which is highly efficient. Annex I also have the perception that increasing energy efficiency will be uncompetitive; that is not true either.


Later that evening, along with Savvas, we spoke to a Cypriot delegate after a meeting on emissions from shipping. However the delegate did not wish to answer any questions on the climate change negotiations, and would only answer questions on shipping. Again, a politician with their hands apparently tied. The civil servant from Cyprus was more open with us, briefly answering our questions about how the EU negotiations were going (not well, she said). Altogether, it was a packed day. I was excited about the possibility of arranging a meeting with the EU Chief Negotiator tomorrow.