Dr Danilo MolliconeDr Danilo MolliconeInvestigador Ramón y CajalDepartamento de GeografíaColaborador del IPCC

Cambio Climático y Liderazgo AmbientalCursos de Verano Aranjuez 2008

Fundación Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

La convención marco de Naciones Unidas sobre cambio climático:desarrollo actual y tendencias futuras

Human induced emissions

Global CO2 emissions in 2003

Human induced emissions per Countries

“Our Common Future” or “Brundtland Report” UN World Commission on Environment and Development - 1987

1979 - 1st World Climate Conference

1988 – IPCC established

1990 – IPCC and WCC call for global treaty on climate change

United Nation Framework Convention on

Climate Change

Convention onBiological Diversity

United Nation Convention to

Combat Desertification

United Nation Forest Forum

1992 Earth Summit

- Agenda 21

- Rio Declaration

Sustainabledevelopment

The beginning

UNFCCC PRINCIPLES

EquityThe Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future

generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Accordingly, the developed country Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.

Precautionary The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost. To achieve this, such policies and measures should take into account different socio-economic contexts, be comprehensive, cover all relevant sources, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases and adaptation, and comprise all economic sectors.

The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.

UNFCCC OBJECTIVE

Convention on Climate Change

- text on 09 May1992

- entered into force on 21 March 1994

Kyoto Protocol

- text on 11 December 1997

- entered into force on 16 Febr. 2005

Domestic

actions

Clean Development Mechanism

Joint Implementation

Emission Trading

“flexibility mechanisms”

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2UNFCCC process

UNFCCC Structure

The Kyoto Protocol:

"The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement under which industrialized countries will reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2% compared to the year 1990 (but note that, compared to the emissions levels that would be expected by 2010 without the Protocol, this limitation represents a 29% cut). The goal is to lower overall emissions of six greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, and perfluorocarbons - averaged over the period of 2008-2012. National limitations range from 8% reductions for the European Union and some others to 7% for the US, 6% for Japan, 0% for Russia, and permitted increases of 8% for Australia and 10% for Iceland

UNFCCC process Participation in the Kyoto Protocol

UNFCCC process

Kyoto Protocol main principles:

- Mandatory targets: Any Annex I country that fails to meet its Kyoto obligation will be penalized by having to submit 1.3 emission allowances in a second commitment period for every ton of greenhouse gas emissions they exceed their cap in the first commitment period (i.e., 2008-2012)

- Additionality: actions to mitigate climate change should be supported through new funds (e.g. ordinary fund for international cooperation should not be used to develop CDM projects)

- “right to emit”: developed countries will receive “carbon credit” (the Assigned Allocation Units, AAUs or “allowances”) at the beginning of the commitment period but they will have to demonstrate that they are in compliance with their emission reduction targets, while the share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs.

The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement negotiated as an amendment to UNFCCC, its provisions apply mainly to developed countries

The Climate Change Convention and its Kyoto Protocol are land based agreement

Technical arrangements

• All Parties have to submit to UNFCCC Secretariat national communications on policies and measures adopted to mitigate climate change

• All Annex-1 Parties have to submit annually to UNFCCC Secretariat a GHGs inventory

• Inventories should be transparent, consistent, comparable, complete and accurate

• Inventories should be prepared using comparable methodologies agreed upon by COP (COP/MOP) i.e. IPCC guidelines & guidance

Technical arrangements

At the present stage the Kyoto Protocol

is unable to stabilize the climate change

but the KP is a fundamental step in order to recognize new “property” rights and limits, and new framework rules on common use of the natural resources.

Anyway the Kyoto Protocol is only a first step as requirements to meet the UNFCCC will be modified until the objective is met, as required by UNFCCC Article 4.2

UNFCCC process

“Dialogue on long-term cooperative actions to enhance implementation of the Convention”

Negotiation on future actions are already going

-Large target on emission reduction- Inclusion of developing countries trough positive incentives- Reducing emission from deforestation in developing countries

Future actions

Forests in Carbon Markets

How to reduce emissions

„Alle reden von Deutschland. Wir reden vom Klima.“

"Everyone is talking about Germany; we're talking about climate!"

The Political background

With this slogan the German green party loose the general political election in 1990 but prepared German society to climate change

negotiations

The Political background

Clinton immediately after the agreement in Kyoto: "No nation is more committed to this effort than the United States. In Kyoto, our mission was to persuade other nations to find common ground so we could make realistic and achievable commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That mission was accomplished. The United States delegation, at the direction of Vice President [Al] Gore, and with the skilled leadership of Undersecretary Stuart Eizenstat, showed the way. The momentum generated by Vice President Gore's visit helped move the negotiation to a successful conclusion and I thank him.The Kyoto Protocol strongly reflects the commitment of the United States to use the tools of the free market to tackle this difficult problem"

What about USA?

The Political background

Carbon tax VS 'cap and trade' ----

Environmental integrity VS flexibility / low cost

The negotiation for the Kyoto Protocol where mainly a discussionbetween Europe and the Umbrella Group

The Political background

In 2000 during COP6 in the Hauge in Netherland, technical negotiations on Kyoto Protocol failed. The COP was closed without an agreement. The main breaking point between EU and the Umbrella Group was “how to account for removals” (forest ang agriculture sink)

failing

Eucaliptus plantations

The Political background

During COP6 in the Hauge a new actor took the leadership in negotiation, John Prescott UK Head of Delegation and UK Deputy Prime Minister broken the EU protocol defining Mrs. Voynet, Head of EU Delegation and French Ministry of Environment, as “too tired to reach an agreement”. UK guided UE in COP6 bis and brought everybody to the Marrakesh Agreement

Winter landscape with ice skaters, c. 1608, Hendrick Avercamp.

Probably English people remember better than any other the effects of the Little Ice Age(an interesting description of life in London during the little ice age could be find in the Virginia Woolf romance “Orlando”)

Mitigation vs Adaptation

The Stern Review (a UK government sponsored report into the economic impacts of climate change) concluded that one percent of global GDP is required to be invested in order to mitigate the effects of climate change, and that failure to do so could risk a recession worth up to twenty percent of global GDP.

The Political background

The Political background

Although Kyoto created a framework and a set of rules for a global carbon market, there are in practice several distinct schemes or markets in operation today, with varying degrees of linkages among them. The KP enables a group of several Annex I countries to join together to create a market-within-a-market:

- EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)- UK ETS- also voluntary markets are developing like: New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and Western Climate Initiative in the United States, the Chicago Climate Exchange and the State of California’s recent initiative to reduce emissions

The Kyoto Protocol market valued at about $60 billion in 2007

To obtain the new “Copenhagen Protocol”,it is necessary a consensus among all Parties

New actors

The Political background

During last COP in December 2007 there were two main agenda items:the calendar to the next protocol and the inclusion of reducing emission from deforestation as one activities in the future actions.

Now let go in the real negotiation world…..http://www.un.org/webcast/unfccc/2007/index.asp?go=071215

The Bali Action Plan

The Political background

All UNFCCC document are available on internet.Other important information source are the “Earth Negotiation Bulletin” at www.iisd.org or the ECO and the Fossil of the Day of Climate Action Network

Floating bicycle park in Malmo railway station, Sweden

Gracias por su

atención