Earlier this month, Bangkok played host to the UN climate change negotiations, and Australia was in the hot seat.
Almost every day I heard negotiators from all around the word whisper our country’s name in the corridors, and call it out openly on the negotiating room floors. Negotiators from Europe were openly “urging” Australia to recommit, and negotiators from Brazil, Bolivia, Barbados, the Philippines, Solomon Islands, Nauru, and the DRC have been demanding it.
Everyone was asking, “why hasn’t Australia signed up to the Kyoto protocol for second commitment period?”. And as the negotiations rolled on, it seemed that this question was the ghost haunting the halls of the UN.
The Kyoto Protocol was officially ratified by Australia in 2007, and concluded its “first commitment period” in 2012. Last year in Durban, European nations jumped on board a second commitment period as a sign of their leadership, and as a necessary compromise in order to kick start progress on a globally encompassing agreement for all nations, rich and poor, to limit their greenhouse gas emissions.
But Australia, Russia, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand weren’t so keen as the EU to show leadership.
In fact, the number one question in the back of negotiators minds in Bangkok was whether these nations were going to stop standing back in the shadows of overused excuses and jump back into the light and recommit to Kyoto.
This was especially important as negotiators in Bangkok were working out what the global deal might look like, and how ambitious it might be. But in order to do that, there are a number of loose ends they need to tie up, such as achieving the goals outlined in the Bali Action Plan, and synchronizing the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.
If anything’s going to happen this year in terms of climate change on the international level, there needs to be progress made here. As you can imagine, legally binding decisions on climate change, like Rome, aren’t built in a day. Hopefully the foundations will be laid here in Bangkok.
Only two days before the conference began, Australia announced that it had made plans with the EU to link its Carbon Price with the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme in a unified carbon market by 2018. This has offered a great deal of hope for many negotiators here in Bangkok that an international market for carbon will become a reality.
On day two of the negotiations, a roundtable discussion was called to talk about carbon markets and how they might fit into a post-2020 international climate regime. The self-confessed “carbon market nerds” in the room were euphoric about this announcement, and it has given a much-needed signal to developing nations that developed countries are doing “something” to combat climate change.
And when Kyoto came up in the discussions, this development gave negotiators hope that Australia might move on its 2nd commitment period. In Durban last year, when Australia failed to follow the EU into its 2nd commitment period, we blamed the “domestic political environment”.
But a month ago, even the liberals got behind the idea as Liberal party climate spokesman Greg Hunt, gave his “in principle” backing to signing up for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.
The domestic politics argument should no longer be an excuse. Signing onto what is now known as KP2 could bolster progress towards a global climate change deal, and alleviate feelings that we are “doing it alone” by demonstrating how our domestic commitments are feeding into the international regime.
As the Solomon Islands delegation stated, “Australia and New Zealand have both talked a lot about ‘building confidence’, but how can they ‘build confidence’ when they have not yet made any commitments under the second Kyoto Protocol”.
At the conference a delegate stressed his concern to me that “a number of parties here are making a lot of things contingent here at the negotiations instead of treating different negotiating tracks on their own merits”.
The Durban Platform last year was presented as a package that included both developing nations’ increasing ambition and the continuation of the second Kyoto Protocol. That was the promise made to developing nations that gave the “the confidence” that they could enter the Durban Platform as a globally binding agreement.
So it is understandable that developing nations feel that the KP2 is hot air from the EU, without the commitment of key nations such as New Zealand and Australia.
And in the end, in order for our carbon tax to be sustainable, we need a global deal on climate change.
So where is our commitment to Kyoto?
It’s time to move into KP2
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