This is the second meeting of the Contact Group on Further Annex I Emission Reductions today. At the first meeting, further meetings of the Kyoto Protocol contact groups were postponed for about 5-6 hours, in response to Africa and the G77 postponing negotiations on the LCA text.
A non-paper was distributed, containing the various options suggested by parties at the Dec 12 meeting. There were:
- A: 3 options for tables for Annex B;
- B: four options for article 3, paragraph 1 and paragraph 1 bis;
- C: article 3, paragraph 1 ter;
- D: article 3, paragraph 1 quater;
- E: article 3, paragraph 1 quinquies;
- F: article 3, paragraph 7 bis;
- G: article 3, paragraph 9 bis;
- H: article 4, paragraph 2 bis;
- I: article 4, paragraph 3.
The text of the non-paper was put up on the screen, like with many of these contact groups, there is likely to be quite a bit of editing of the text during the meeting. Lots of squealing noises coming from the microphones…
Chair: option 2 is bolivias proposal. invite comments
Australia: thankyou for non-paper. notes Kasahkstan and United States included. We asked about other countries. cyprus taking QELRO? malta? expect explanation from Turkey? what is role of footnotes, would they be added? dropped? in which case are mental notes? what does EU mean? implications of compliance from EC becoming EU?
Chair: malta, cyprus do not want to be added
Sweden (EU): I think Malta can be included. compliance issues taken over by EU from EC. Suggest putting a footnote about EC then having 15 member states, now EU has 27 member states. The 15 member states have joint fulfillment commitment will meet their Kyoto target as set out in 1997, so no change. Hope this answers Australias question.
Maria (UNFCCC?): European Community still in some UN thingy.
Australia: but not adding Cyprus brings EU to 26, how does this affect compliance?
Sweden: President of council of EU and commission of EC has notified Ban Ki Moon on November 30. On Cyprus, lets say that Cyprus is in the process of becoming an Annex I party, but not as far in the process as Malta. But its going to happen.
Japan: provisions concerning developed countries commitments need to be addressed, so put bracket in whole text, depending on LCA stuff. Problems with just two reference years. Issues with base years being different countries base years. blah blah
Chair: seek opinion on columns
Japan: in option 1, only 2 additional reference years. Want a third column. something about option 2.
Croatia: croatia negotiating its target itself, but probably will be an EU party at beginning of agreement (2013). Add a footnote saying this is a “temporary target, including decision 7/Cp.12. Upon accession to EU, the croation target will be in line with EU effort.”
Australia: I understamd from EU explanation that its bubble will be 26 initially, still not sure how to reflect cyprus. we know how hard to add countries. thankyou very much to croatia for this footnote to this list. Not sure about macedonia and turkey.
turkey: object to inclusion of our name in chairs text. turkey recognises action on climate change at a global level. we have a rapidly growing economy woih high aspirations. it would be incorrect to characterise turkey as a developed annex I country – looking at per capita income etc. have promoted renewable energy and energy efficiency, have switch from coal to gas, and public transportation. but our reductions can only be expressed as a deviation from BAU. notes marrakesh where turkey removed from Annex II. Turkey acceded to KP in August 2009. Not major emitter and do not have historical responsibility. this is why we oppose being listed in annex B
bolivia: noted japan stating wanting reference for COP decision. we find this totally unacceptable. we really have to focus on our mandate if we want to deliver anything from this group. note time constraint.
??: please dont repeat yourselves
South Africa: one of the key issues that we want to resppond to is that t he base year is already determined in KP and that base year is 1990. wrt other reference years, the g77 has indicated some flexibility wrt allowing reference years, in particular considering domestic needs of annex I parties, ie in the form of footnotes. just record that there are other options than 6 or 7 columns. our preference is in terms of footnotes
Micronesia; wants base year of 1990. fewest number of alternatives better. on croatia, how does temporary target work with legally binding agreement.
NZ: on building annex B, all parties are prepared to take their commitment as percentage rather than absolute amount. on base year, I don’t recall any particular agreement on that subject. KP sets 1990 for first commitment period, but silent for future periods. create a column listing base years
Chair: put NZs first question to group on percentages?
Canada: on the base year, we should be clear that at no point did canada agree that there would be a single common legally binding base year. if there were ref years, if, at a minimum that would include 1990. support japans request to either amend annex b so that includes alternate base years as well as reference years. something about absolute term as well as percentage term was something that japan proposed
Sweden: question in coming years for countries that join EU. So for that reason EU has proposed changing adjustment procedure in article 21.
Chair: is it same?
Eu: awg/2009/10/??/p.11 – 3paragraphs. in spirit of expanding coverage of KP.
Chair: when discussed on sat evening, said we would get guidance from KP chair. guidance is we should not do so.
EU: bit surprised, thought it was a party driven process, have we changed approach to chair driven process?
chair: of course not.
micronesia: bracket right columns, the proposals take us backwards, parties reluctant to commit to single base year. keep the text as clean as possible
saudio arabia: supports just one single year
Australia: would like to support the objective of EUs additions concerning article 21. its important to defione ways to bring parties in. note we have four footnotes in the chairs text, note some could be including amendments, while some are mental notes. should be rearranged.
China: seems that parties are being contradictory. this is the number group. don’t waste time discussing everything except the numbers. focus on chairs text and mocve forward, dont be busy for the sake of being busy. dont repeat these old lines.
Japan: concerning our chinese friends comments, yes it is late of time, and we are exhausted. but still the number issue is related to many years such as base year, commitment period and so on. just focussing on numbers is not so simple. ?reference years are to neutralise the problems with separate base years?? we would like to analyse the NZ proposals. do not want to discourage developing country participation because of different proposals.
Chair: not going to produce non-paper for tomorrow
India: we are all feeling very virtuous, it is 11.30, go for an hour, and new variations, new refinements will be found, and tomorrow we will be where we started from.
Gambia: Gambia on behalf of African group, would like to have -45% reduction reflected in document. if we don’t move on numbers issue, there will be no outcome in copenhagen. would like single reference year of 1990. If we continue like this, no progress, and no outcome.
Australia: slightly perplexed, we recieved chairs yext, just had ministerial consultation. asked if we were prepared to accept second period. We are prepared to work all night, and all tomorrow night, to refine this text to something that will be adopted. these are serious matters, not idle matters, e.g. EUs proposal, where we once stayed up all night looking at this suggestion. we have spent many many hours talking about generalities of policy to do with numbers, but we are going through text tonight, and thios is a serious matter.
??EU??: we had the intention to start this morning at 10am, but work flow was interrupted during the day. which we very much regret. encourage parties to work through para by para. but we are serious here, we want to move forward.
Nigeria: ask non-annex I countries not to disturb annex I countries.
Bolivia: work plan needed, e.g. on base year etc. then makes sense to go through the nigt, but not if we just make up new issues to work on
China: also would like to engage seriously. happy to work day and night until the 18th. want meaningful negotiation.
Chair: a few parties have expressed the view that the way we are going now doens not get us nearer to an agreement I must say that I share that feeling. perhaps we should go to a smaller group in the understading we get agreement on the chairs text without enlarging the text.
Australia: very happy to go to small group but I dont think we can rule out adding things to the text.
Venezuela: have doubts about how things are going. issues with parties
NZ: had a productive ministerial consutation. meeting again tomorrow at 11am. numbers above my pay rate. I don’t have capacity to change my instructions, that is what the ministers do. so we need to clarify the chairs next so the ministers know what theya re talking about.
Sweden: some things were not discussed sufficiently while always being on the table. for a long time seen this coming because things were excluded from discussion for some time. So important additions to be made.
Micronesia: there are a number of issues that need to be resolved, perhaps by technical group, talked about number of issues such as surplus AAUs, LULUCF, have data on technical assumptions to distribute.
Chair: stay in this setting.
Algeria: support proposal to move to smaller setting
Sweden: willing to move to smaller setting
CHair: thats what we will do. Move to room Kai mooc?
US: note inclusion in table. micronesia notes US proposal as put to AWG-KP. dont have intention to ratify, so correct use of “yet”.
BOlivia: clarification on whether staying in contact group.
Chair: move to a friends of the chair setting.
??: clarification, after small group will we be coming back here?
Switzerland: don’t see relevance for us for the discussion for the base year into the commitment period. worried about what happens when going into smaller group what it will do such as fill in the table.
Chair: intention is to go through the text, and see where we can come to agreement, but not to fill in the table.
Canada: what text do we want to go through?
Chair: the non-paper
Canada: whole thing? sorry.
Chair: hope we do not need to stay up through night, need to work tomorrow
Chair: if new proposals, we add them in brackets, but not our job to tackle them tonight. ministers filling in tomorrow.
Chair: contact group depends on hat 10am on lulucf; 11 informal ministerial consultations; 11-12 potential consequences; 12 mechansisms; stocktaking plenary for reporting of ministerial consultations (informal ministerial plenary) at 3pm-4.30pm; 4.30pm-6pm awg-kp plenary stocktaking in plenary 2; then plan to launch contact group on the report at 6.
Update: The Center for Ocean Solutions has also blogged about this meeting.
