Bali Conference, Day 2: And they’re off!

Day 2 of the UN climate conference in Bali, and things are already heating up.

By about the fourth time I’d handed over my bag to be searched, emptied my pockets, gone through the metal detector, and held out my arms to be “wanded,” my spring of pleasant banter with the security staff had pretty much run dry. Unfortunately, the conference is set up such that the main events occur in one area (the entrance of which is shown at right), and most side events plus the NGO offices are located in another center, perhaps a kilometer away.

A measly kilometer. Big deal, right? Wrong. Take a 1-kilometer stroll in 90-degree heat and 90 percent humidity, and trust me, you’re hardly presentable for a meeting. Top that off with having to pass through security at the end of the ordeal, and it turns into quite a challenge to get from one place to another, much less to see all the events that you’d like to. Maybe it’s time to bite the bullet and follow my colleagues toward that siren song—“Taxi? You need taxi?”

Getting down to business: Remember how I said that yesterday focused on a lot of housekeeping? Well, I stand corrected. Turns out that while I was attending a side event, the Japanese delegation alarmed everyone with a reference to moving “beyond the Kyoto Protocol to a new framework…”

It sounds innocent enough—after all, we’re here to establish a new global climate deal. But especially with Australia now on board, endorsement of the Kyoto Protocol is emblematic of commitment to effective, binding emissions reductions. In this context, speaking out against the Protocol is something of a heresy in many delegates’ and observers’ eyes.

I tell this story mainly to give you an impression of just how sensitive these negotiations are, even to what might casually sound like an inoffensive or even dull comment. Interpretation here goes far beyond the various languages being spoken. In the end, subsequent information from the Japanese delegation indicates that the meaning of their statement may have been misinterpreted. We’ll see if they address this confusion in the days ahead.

In fact, now that the United States is the only major industrial-country emitter that has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, support for anything else sounds a bit like supporting the U.S.’s foot-dragging. A struggle is beginning to emerge here to see how the U.S. will be wedged into the negotiations ahead. This struggle has both legal and political dimensions. The legal obstacle is that Kyoto Protocol countries have that agreement as a foundation for their discussions, and the U.S. can’t (or won’t) contribute there. Perhaps more importantly, the political challenge is that allowing the U.S. to drive a parallel negotiation track doesn’t sit well with countries already on their way to mitigating climate change.

Today, the first proposal on how to deal with these challenges appeared. China proposed that a special task force be convened to deal only with those countries that haven’t ratified the Kyoto Protocol—i.e., the U.S. and a few smaller emitters. The statement further called on those countries (read the United States) to look at the same language of 25 to 40 percent emissions reductions below a 1990 baseline by 2020 that industrial-country participants in the Kyoto Protocol are working with. In a briefing today, the U.S. delegation suggested that this was a position that presented some “difficulty.” More proposals are sure to be presented in the days ahead.

I seem to have gone back on my promise yesterday to focus more on the less-reported side of the event. I apologize. As well as trying to follow the thread of the major issue here, I also spent several hours in a meeting of the technical body, the SBSTA (Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice) that reports to the principal conference bodies, and in a side event focused on carbon-offsetting projects.

Some of the most interesting discussion in the technical group related to how the implementation of the Clean Development Mechanism would be modified in the future, with discussion focusing on forestation, carbon sequestration, and fluorine gas destruction projects. I’ll just provide that no-doubt enticing teaser now, and return to this subject as I follow it through the conference.

At the side event on carbon offset projects, the opportunity for climate change mitigation via these projects was demonstrated in two ways: first, explicitly by some of the panelists, and second, by the solid attendance, even at 9 p.m. (see photo). On the other hand, one panelist gave a sobering presentation of the challenge of “additionality” that continues to plague these types of projects—essentially, many projects would have proceeded even without receiving the benefits of carbon finance, so the offsets may not really be providing “new” carbon mitigation services.