Climate Dilemma was an observer today to a meeting of the AWG-KP contact group on further emission reductions under the Kyoto Protocol. These meetings are important because they discuss that size of the emissions reductions for developed countries (except the US), which are a big factor in climate change. These meetings also discuss things like the length of the next commitment period, and the base year to refer to in emissions accounts.

From a game theory perspective, it was interesting to observe the meeting to understand the role of the sequential nature of strategic behaviour, which is something that can be modelled with an extensive form game. Also of interest is the role of conditional commitments. This process is sometimes known as ‘pledge and review’. A country can make a commitment to reduce its emissions by an extra amount, based on what other countries do. But is this really a commitment? And what if other countries do what is required, but the country that makes a commitment to increase its ambition then reneges on its commitment? Because this process is repeated, there could be an opportunity to punish such a country – commitments are more likely to be meaningful than if this process was not repeated.

Below is a summary of the meeting. It is quite possible that there are mistakes, it was a little difficult to hear everything going on, and sometimes hard to identify who was speaking.

The chair outlined the process for the meeting, and mentioned that things that were not decided at Barcelona include:

  1. level of ambition
  2. mechanisms/LULUCF
  3. whether to have a 5 year (2013-17) or 8 year (2013-20) commitment period
  4. the base year (usually 1990)
  5. something else?

He also mentioned that an important question is process can raise the level of ambition for annex 1 parties (developed countries). Smaller groups will later meet to discuss some of these issues.

Australia then mentioned that the Umbrella Group wants to avoid clashes between the LCA-mitigation meetings and the numbers meetings, which the chair agreed to.

The UNFCCC then distributed an ‘informal note by the secretariat’ which contained a summary of the annex 1 commitments; they add up to between -16% and -23% excluding LULUCF; or -16% and -22% including LULUCF. The secretariat mentioned that there were changes/adjustments for Kazakhstan, Belarus, Japan, Switzerland.

Canada then got the chair (or secretariat?) to fix a typo in the main table.

Sweden(?) then had a question about Kasakhstan’s base year, which is 1992 instead of 1990.

Russia then announced that its reduction would be -20% to -25% instead of between -10% and -15% in the document. This was based on an official announcement from the Russian Presidency recently in Stockholm. Japan had a question for Russia, what would be the condition for the -25% commitment. Russia responded that the head of the delegation would have to explain. My estimate s that the impact of the Russians emission reduction would take the maximum Annex I emissions target up to -25%.

Micronesia stated the Annex 1 commitments were inadequate – that there was a gap between the current figure aand what the IPCC recommends. They also raised the issue of AAU carryover, which could significantly dilute ambition.

Brazil said something to the effect that countries should have a minimum percentage reduction.

Thailand would like to see a table with countries’ 2006 emissions compared to 2000 emissions (as a percentage??).

The chair suggested that 1990 could still be the base year but there could be other reference years, there would be a separate smaller meeting to discuss this issue. Another contact group meeting would occur tomorrow which would discuss the scale of ambition, and LULUCF mechanisms.

Bolivia called for a large amount of transparancy.

The meeting was then closed.