UN Countries Agree to Work on Post-Kyoto Climate Change Agreement
Negotiations towards a strengthened international climate change deal have been recently launched by 187 countries in Bali.
Negotiations towards a strengthened international climate change deal have been recently launched by 187 countries in Bali.
The negotiations, expected to conclude in 2009, will ensure that the new deal can enter into force by 2013, following the expiration of the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol.
While a new global deal is envisioned for 2013, countries also agreed on a number of steps that need to be taken immediately to further implement the existing commitments of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
An agenda for the key issues includes: action for adapting to the negative consequences of climate change, such as droughts and floods; ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; ways to widely deploy climate-friendly technologies and financing both adaptation and mitigation measures.
Actions agreed to in the near term include:
- IPCC. Parties agreed to recognize that the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment of climate change to date. The scientific findings will continue to inform the international climate change process.
- Carbon capture and storage. Parties considered the possible inclusion of carbon capture and storage in geological formations as CDM project activities. They agreed to do further work on this and established a workplan for 2008.
- Adaptation. Governments decided that funding for adaptation projects in developing countries, financed by the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism, would begin under the management of the Global Environment Facility. This ensures that the Adaptation Fund will become operational in an early stage of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2008-2012).
- Technology. Governments agreed to kick start strategic programs to scale up the level of investment for the transfer of both the mitigation and adaptation technologies that developing countries need. The aim of that program is to give an extra push to concrete demonstration projects, to create more attractive environments for investment, as well as to provide incentives to the private sector for technology transfer.
- Reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries. Parties affirmed the urgent need to take further meaningful action to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and adopted a work program for further methodological work.
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