THE EU is to begin work immediately on implementing its pledge to renew the Kyoto Protocol, which is due to expire at the end of next year, with a view to submitting new “economy-wide” targets for review by May 1st next, as a result of the deal in Durban.
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said all parties agreeing to enter a Kyoto “second commitment period” from January 1st, 2013, needed to meet this deadline for turning the targets into “quantified emission limitation or reduction objectives . . . to achieve rapid clarity”.
This will have serious implications for Ireland, as it will be expected to raise the level of its ambition to show seriousness of purpose.
In the current Kyoto round, Ireland only needed to cap the rise in emissions at 13 per cent above 1990 levels between 2008 and 2011.
EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard told the final plenary session of the UN conference: “We need clarity. We need to commit . . . We are almost ready to be alone in a second commitment period” – but after that, it expected “all countries will be legally bound”.
Later, at a 6am press briefing yesterday, she said Kyoto would be renewed for a second period of five years (running until 2017) or perhaps for eight years (to 2020) depending on when a wider international agreement “with legal force” enters into effect.
Ms Hedegaard said “a lot of technical stuff will take months to sort out”, including the impact of new accounting rules for land use and forestry agreed in Durban and what happens to carbon credits built up by countries like Poland following the collapse of the Soviet system. Polish environment minister Marcin Korolec said agreement on the Durban Platform was a “historical moment, comparable to the first conference of the parties in Berlin in 1995” that produced the mandate to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol, and adopt it just two years later.
“We have proved that the Kyoto Protocol is alive and that its rules-based system is still relevant,” Mr Korolec said, speaking on behalf of the EU’s Polish presidency. “Closing the emissions gap will continue to be our prime objective, so a lot of work remains to be done.”
Although Poland is more heavily reliant on coal than any other EU country, Mr Korolec expressed “truly great satisfaction at the outcome we achieved” in Durban and said the EU looked forward to “continued engagement” with its allies in small island states and poor countries.
Ms Hedegaard said the EU strategy of engaging with them had worked.
And while conceding that an “agreed outcome with legal force” in 2015 was “the weakest of three options” in terms of legal form, she said Durban had made “a very significant step forward”.
She also pointed out that it was not just an issue of bringing other major economies – such as the US, China and India – into the loop, but was “also about what we do in our respective countries to develop a greener economy”, thereby helping to reduce global emissions.
Asked if the new Green Climate Fund, officially launched in Durban, was now an “empty vault”, as critics claimed, Mr Korolec said it was “one of the big achievements” and he understood it had already won pledges from Denmark, Britain and Germany among others.