The key issue is not defining equity but determining whether climate change is a sustainable development or an environmental challenge

A workshop on ‘Equitable access to Sustainable Development’ is to be held in Bonn in May as part of the negotiating process for a new arrangement on global climate change. The treatment of equity in a global approach continues to be an unresolved and divisive issue, because the approach of all counties seeks to define an elusive concept, equity, and tweak a failing system arrived at in 1992 rather than develop a vision for 2032.

Preparations for the Rio+20 United Nations conference on sustainable development have begun, but the first round of preparatory meetings did not address important issues such as sustainable resource use, production and consumption.

As the Durban COP enters the homestretch it is worth stepping back a few years – to COP-13 at Bali in 2007. For it is the Bali COP that led to the creation of the Ad-hoc working groups for Long-term Cooperative Action (AWGLCA) and for the Kyoto Protocol (AWGKP), which have been the main arenas for negotiation since then.

The time has come to develop a national consensus, define the national position and determine red lines for future negotiations, otherwise we risk endangering our future growth prospects.

I have reached Cancun few hours’ back to attend the 16th Conference of Parties (CoP-16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and have been greeted with news that can only be characterised as bad or worse.

It is in the interest of developing countries to agree to legally binding national emission limits alone to secure their fair share of the global carbon budget.

Monday, December 14, 2009: Standing in line in the freezing cold, waiting to be registered to the conference of parties to the climate change convention being held in Copenhagen, I have strange sense of foreboding that this will be an eventful but disappointing week.

For two years the world has negotiated for an equitable, ambitious and legally binding climate agreement on basis of the Bali Action Plan. And now we are being told that a legally binding agreement is not possible and that we should be happy with a political agreement/ statement at Copenhagen.

 

“And the riot squad they’re restless

Obama will grace COP15. And that is the biggest story out here. The story is so big that negotiators are forced to take this fact into their negotiating account. Why? It is because Obama cannot afford to lose a game. It does not really matter if the atmosphere or the planet goes to hell. Bottom line is that Obama must be able to claim a victory.