True seriousness began...?

After peaceful and joyful holiday, we restarted following negotiation at COP15. However, our enthusiasm was killed in the morning. The Bella Center station and outside of the venue were too crowed to enter the Bella Center easily(when I was waiting, I found Pachauri, the president of IPCC came and was embarrassed by throng in front of the station). Each member was forced to wait for about an hour. Recognizing the attention of COP15 around the world, we could not help intuiting the hardness og the second week in COP15.

Due to starting meeting by cabinet ministers from this Wednesday, AWGs are becoming busy. However, there are so many options and brackets in KP draft text and they are still increasing despite the end of COP15 is coming near. Japan still requires to keep constructing each AnnexⅠcountry's emission reduction goals. In other words, he seeks to put the Annex about the goals in bracket. Also, Grenada mentioned to add the wording so that developed countries take effort to reduce green house gas emissions in their countries without using emission reduction credits.

About LCA, the meeting is being closed from first day. Then, we can not get information how the negotiation are being carried and what's kind of options are declared from countries. Only we could realize that the negotiation of today in LCA hardly advenced according to comment from soem Japanese governmental agent. It is possible for the world to conclude LCA & KP draft text until tomorrow? We'd like to expect chairs and each government staffs for the future and the world.

Makoto.T

In mood or not?, anyway I lost my way.

Written by Yasuaki

We had two AWG's plenary meetings and both of the SBs' closing session. I attended both AWG's meetings, but there was no big progress. Just getting to know each other or over interpreting that some countries do not want any progress in the negotiation, inter alia AWG-KP on the emission reduction target. However, even in such a "boring" negotiation, there were a few interesting speeches or outputs. Connie Hedegaard mentioned to keep the two tracks and ongoing consultations on how to proceed with the proposed Protocol amendments.
After the AWG meetings, they had consultations on the SB closing. But instead I decided to attend a side event about indigenous people held at the national museum. Sadly, it was too far and we got lost on the way, so we could not attend this event.

I will recall not just the happenings of the Saturday, but also for the whole week. What struck me the most was that TOO many people are interested the climate change negotiation event and came to Copenhagen. I attended COP 10 and 13, but the number of people in the Bella Center in the first week is perhaps same as the final day of Bali COP 13. One thing that I feel similar to COP 13 is the momentum for the agreement. Before COP 15 the momentum for the agreement were not so good. Everyone thought it would be a political deal or catastrophe, but now everything has somehow changed a little bit and we can think and hope for a possible mandate or a legally binded conclusion.

Copenhagen is cold and dark in the evenings and mornings. A very first experience that we do not see the sunlight for a whole day and always walking in the darkness. This COP negotiations are as always providing me with some new interesting experiences. We hope for some good inputs, so we could obtain a thorough tracking of the negotiation.

Blowing wind to the negotiations

Written by Takako

Agenda for the Word by Word Negotiations

Wind farms off shore in Copenhagen

After having the harsh discussion over the "Danish text" and "BASIC draft" in plenary sessions, the whole negotiation seems to go into behind the sight of observers. Some meetings are postponed and others closed without remarkable progress.

Leaving behind all the closed negotiation in Bella Center,we went out to the off shore in Copenhagen to see the beautiful wind farm. The tour was organized by Danish governmental department and business entities in the wind power generation. There we discover the lined wind farms which supply 16% of whole electricity in Denmark. It aimed at promoting the exportation of their wind farm related technologies and know how. Some foreign delegate were participating there and seems to be interested in introducing the wind farm in their home countries.

Getting back to the Bella Center, we find out that the almost all the meetings were closed to NGO. However, behind the closed doors, negotiations were mainly focused on the two newly suited draft by both chairs of AWG-KP and AWG-LCA.

As far as I concerned, the draft text of AWG-KP has some controversial points: the emission reduction target by developing countries, application of MRV criteria to developing countries and the ambitious emission reduction target by developed countries. This KP draft seems to be appreciated rather by developing countries than developed countries. Developed countries including Japan partly agreed on further discussion to be held in respect of that draft text while expressing their concerns about the specific topics.

The word by word negotiation on Ad Hoc Working groups will be starting from next day with so many uncertainty left. The long winding way to the agreement is now just arrived at the starting points.

At the mercy of “Texts”

Report by Akira Hiraishi

Four days passed since the conference started, and a lot of observers (including me) are twisted around by flipping schedule of meetings, and two texts, “Danish Text” and “BASIC draft”, which came out suddenly for us, leaked to medias. Although the texts were prepared by particular parties and invalid at this moment, we are keen to read and take hints of the final output of COP15.

Danish Text is a proposal for final COP decision, Copenhagen Agreement, prepared by US, UK and Denmark. As Marcos mentioned in the previous post, it has set a big impact on the conference in terms of reminding us of the fact that some block walls left for achieving an effective and comprehensive output.
In two days or so, the new leaked text came to an issue. This is called “BASIC draft” since it was developed by 5 emerging country parties, Brazil (B), South Africa (A), China(C), Sudan (S), India (I), and China (C). It is, as you expect, demanding for ambitious commitments of reduction of GHG and also for financial source and technology to support mitigation and adaptation action in developing countries. On the other hand, we can say it contains points of compromise such as national action on developing countries by themselves, though it is not regally binding commitment.

Of course these two texts are no more and no less the draft by few countries, but indeed we do not see any intimation of what is going on behind the curtain besides those copies. More over, we are concerned about the restriction of entrance for observers from the next week. I wish we could see the pivotal moment towards the next stage of climate change talks.

Who stands with Tuvalu

Marcos Ikegame from Copenhagen

Demonstration in support of Tuvalu seen from inside the Plenary Room. Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark

All of you who follow the series of COP/Conferences on Climate change might be aware that the first week is lukewarm at best. For you who are not familiar with the proceedings of a U.N. meeting on Climate Change, it may be worth to take a brief detour.

It is usually in the second week that top brass (politicians, officials, and industry leaders) join the Conference. It is when they fly in from far flung corners of every continent, deliver their speeches and sign the deals that have been so laboriously (or not so) hammered out in the first week by bureaucrats and representatives of the respective countries. Thus, what some of us might perceive as the deciding moments, have already been agreed upon in the preceding days. In other words, the first week is one of closed-(and let's be fair, also opened-) doors meetings, and drafting.

In this first week, we have been saved from the apathy of marasmus by two rather unlikely events. The first one regards the leaking of a proposal, allegedly drafted by the U.S., the U.K. and Denmark, our host country. This leaked document has spurred indignation among (some groups of) developing nations and put the COP in disarray. Were I to summarize their concern, I would do so by firstly identifying three guiding axes of the leaked draft.

The first one raises a rather thorny issue: what shall we call developing countries? This so-called "Danish Text" establishes a clear distinction between least developed countries (LDC) and“other” developing nations (emerging economies), and posits most of the resources in the way of financing and technology-transfer are to be directed towards the LDC. Well, is this fair? Are advanced economies (a.k.a. Annex I Parties, in the COP lingo) ducking their responsibility? Maybe a more fruitful inquire would be: can they do so and get away with it? Will they amass the necessary support? Do they have the political muscle to do so? The next days might shed some light on these questions. As some say, the devil is in the detail.

The second buzz lies in the way countries are to reduce their GHG emissions. The text would obligate all parties (countries) to peak their global emissions as soon as possible and no later than 2020. Now, what is all the fuss about you might ask? Opposition rises from how business and negotiations have been conducted so far. This echoes another issue well discussed in the third day of the convention: some of the poorest countries in Africa - as one would expect – are stepping to the fore and demanding a more just and equitable distribution of financial resources for climate change mitigation (i.e. India and China are not to be given the larger share of the funds).

Least, but by no means last, comes the target in global temperature increase. The text sets a 2 degrees Celsius as the ceiling to Global Warming. It goes without saying that some countries that have been shouting at the top of their lungs that a 1.5 degree increase is the maximum acceptable limit. You guessed it, groups such as SICA (Sistema de Integracción Latinoamericano) and AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) were far from content.

Now how has this impacted the Conference? I wouldn’t doubt it for a second. Tuvalu, a Pacific island-nation has (once again) made itself clearly heard and said that anything beyond 1.5 degree Celsius and a concentration of GHG higher than 350 parts per million is utterly nonsensical. And later in the day they have also called for the suspension of the convention! This has led to massive manifestations in support of Tuvalu which indeed has caused the COP to be suspended (at least for a few hours).

The final question here is: if it is crucial solutions be commensurate with the challenges one faces and challenges are defined by the power to address them, who stands with Tuvalu?

2009/12/8(Tue.) Todai-UC Workshop

Presentation of proposals


Voting for the best 5!


Comments given by Professors


Souvenir from UC counterparts!!Yummy!!


Awarding ceremony held in the afternoon

2009/12/8 (Tue.)

Today’s Activity-Student Session in University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Life Science

We 7 members all joined an event titled”UC-Todai/ IR3S Workshop: Designing a Sustainable Society under Impacts of Climate Change in a Post COP15 World,” organized by the University of Copenhagen (UC) and IR3S, Todai on the 8th of December. In the morning, there was a pre-workshop organized by students, titled “a Long-term Cooperation InitiativeS towards a Law Carbon Society, abbreviated by “LCS towards LCS.” We had more than 30 students from Todai, UC, Australia National University, National University of Singapore, ATH, Austria Technology University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology coming to participate the morning session.

The main purpose of creating this student session is to stimulate young generations’ ideas about how to achieve an eco-society, say a “low-carbon society”. Since October, students from Todai and UC had contributed much efforts in order to organize the event and to figure out our suggestions to the LCS towards LCS. Through the workshop, we not only completed our mission, facilitated the discussion successfully, shared those thoughtful proposals based on various cultural and social backgrounds, but also exchanged the critics and comments on each other’s ideas in order to achieve a better suggestion.

During the morning student session, students are divided into 6 groups and each provides 2 proposals for nomination. All the nominated proposals were briefly explained by its advocator, then each participants voted for its “most innovative,” “most feasible,” “most cost-efficient,” “most creative,” and “off-beat.” The selections of 5 proposals are listed as following:

Most innovative--- "Integrated Agricultural management"
Most feasible ---"Transport – Energy Integration"
Most cost-efficient--- "Low Carbon UniversitiesPromoting low carbon universities around the world"
Most creative--- "Less Meat Diet"
Off-beat--- "Walk Walk Campaign"

During the afternoon session, we students revealed the results that we achieved in the morning session. There was an awarding ceremony held in the historical beautiful lecture auditorium hall. Each award-receiver was gave a short period of time to appeal his/her proposal and to receive questions from the chair.

Being one the staffs who organized this student session, I felt that we have done a pretty good job to facilitate the discussion in such a limited time and successfully acquired the results that we have expected. Last but not least, we students coming from various countries and academic backgrounds have established the network among us, thus open a door for further and future cooperation!

Reported by Ellen, CHENG Fang-Ting from University of Kobanhavn

2009/12/09

First day of COP15(2009/12/7)

・At last
At 9:30, CCWG(Climate Change Working Group) members from University of Tokyo reached a venue for COP15, Bella centre in Copenhagen. Between the nearest station and Bella centre, the way was so crowded that it was hard to get there. Before, opening the COP, about 14,000 NGO members had been registered in COP15 and so many people were already in the venue.

・Opening Ceremony
Around 10;00, opening ceremony started by some musical ceremony. Also, opening greetings ware so impressive. Lars Locke Rasmussen, president of Denmark said the world would change and needed to change, the Party needed to take action and ambitious goals at Copenhagen.
UNFCCCExective Secretary Yvo de Boer said the time came two years after COOP13 and discussion included mitigation, adaptation, technology, capacity-ceremony, financing and REDD. Then, he mentioned it was time to get empathy between developed and developing countries.

・At the side of negotiation
It's important to follow the negotiation, but, we needed to prepare for student group session tomorrow consutructing with Australia National University and University of Copenhagen.
After opening ceremony, each we CCWG members contacted other University's students, tried to share information and decided details of the session. Everyone looked so busy and tired!(the result will be shown in daily blog on 8th December).

・Plenary Session
For long term cooperative action, AWG-LCA 8th was opened after opening ceremony. As Yvo said in opening ceremony, various subjects would be negotiated in the LCA like mitigation, adaptation, technology, capacity-building, financing and REDD for the agreement. The time to start crucial an concrete negotiation came finally. In a whole, each country and group re-mentioned thier consistent insistence from previous AWG meetings. In exception, today's opinion from China was different from before. China kept insisting his responsibility, especially of future, about climate change with mention of his emission reduction goal. This would be first time that China showed his stance of responsibility in the future. If the Party continues such activity like China, it is sure we can expect more ambitious agreement in COP15.

・Dinner with University of Copenhagen
After first day of COP15, CCWG members and student in University of Copenhagen got together and had dinner with consultation about tomorrow student session. We would do the final confimation and discussion. Surely, the session would be successful.

Makoto T.

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this blog will be posted by students of University of Tokyo who attend COP15.