Nairobi results
EU too timid to push climate talks forward in Nairobi
The EU was not able to show the necessary leadership to set a firm timetable for the post 2012 climate policy in Nairobi. Even in cases where EU countries internally agreed to fairly ambitious positions they failed to communicate effectively to the rest of the world. The next COP/MOP conference end of 2007 seems to become a make or break meeting for the success of the UN process to ensure continuity of the carbon market.
More detailed feedback regarding the main topics during this conference:
Post-2012 discussions
The principle disappointment with the Nairobi meeting was the lack of progress to move forward on the post 2012 agenda. Under even very optimistic assumptions on the time needed for agreeing the commitments for post 2012 and the time needed for ratification, agreement would need to be found by 2008, by 2009 at the very latest. To achieve this, in principle Nairobi should have set the timetable, and at the very least agreed on deciding on a mandate in next years COPMOP3 meeting. The "good news" was that the timetable agreed for the review of the whole Protocol, which is to be finished by 2008, does not impede a no-gap timetable on post 2012 commitment period.
The discussions under the Dialogue process proved it to be a forum for debate and bringing forward new ideas. A further piece of evidence that the Kyoto Protocol is "the only game in town" to achieve results with any guaranted environmental outcomes.
Adaptation
Some steps ahead were taken as regards adaptation, a crucial concern for many developing countries and Africa and one of the areas where progress was expected to happen in this first UNFCCC/KP meeting in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although the Adaptation Fund is still not operationalised, important decisions were made to agree on the modalities of its governance, i.e. that it will be managed under the COPMOP authority, decisions will be taken by one-country-one-vote rules and developing countries will have a majority in the decision-making body. It has been agreed that the Adaptation Fund will be financed through a 2% levy on CDM projects, and thus has an independent source of funding instead of relying on donors as other funds under the Convention. Linking adaptation funding to the market mechanisms further reinforce the role of the Kyoto Protocol framework for future climate policy.
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), deforestation and technology transfer
There is a very uneven distribution of CDM projects in the pipeline with very few projects in Africa. Nairobi meeting made some progress on agreeing support for capacity building for African countries and consideration of programmatic CDM, but in principle the most important part of the CDM decisions were the ones that were not taken. The EU was strongly advocating for allowing for Carbon Capture and Storage projects to be eligible under CDM and Columbia, Bolivia and Brazil tried to reopen the rules of afforestation and reforestation CDM, but both proposals were referred to further technical analysis.
On technology transfer, developing countries are frustrated with lack of progress in what they see as unwillingness to tackle the real obstacle of deploying clean technologies, i.e. intellectual property rights. One of the main topics of discussion during the conference, and especially in the side-events, has been ways to address tropical deforestation, which currently accounts for equivalent of 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The parties agreed to hold another workshop to follow up the Rome meeting which took place in May 2006, which will report to the next Conference of Parties.
Byelorussian proposal
The Parties to the Kyoto Protocol agreed a "reduction target" for Belorussia which is about 30% above its current emissions. This could lead to 200-250 million tonnes of hot air into the Kyoto first commitment period, an equivalent of roughly more than 10% of the EU reduction target compared to 1990 emission levels. The EU MS said that they agreed not to buy JI or hot air from Belorussia, but seems that one or two MS are somewhat shaky on this declaration. In any case, the amendment will need the ratification of 3/4 of the Parties, and therefore might never enter into force.
