Monday, December 14, 2009

December 11th

Hi Everyone,

I should mention that I found out about IETA (The International Emissions Trading Association) through one of the Chinese Youth from Duke University. He told me this was a side event of the COP15 (UNCCC - UN Climate Change Conference) that didn't check whether you are accredited or not. The only prerequisite is to dress the part, business formal, and act as an official delegate like you belong there. This morning I went online, I looked up IETA and the address. It was one subway station from the Bella Center, which was very convenient for me. It was at the Crown Plaza. The name alone sounds like an up 5 star, up-scale hotel. When I walked in to the lobby, there was an arrow point downstairs. The elegance of the business lounge felt like walking down the staircase in Titanic to the dinning room. I know that sounds a cheesy, but that is the best metaphor I can come up with. There were two rooms - Everest 1 and Everest 2. Once I went through coat check, I took a seat near the fireplace where 3 professions were siting typing on their laptop computers. In matter of minutes, I introduced myself to Mr. Chang. He is the communications officer and managing editor of LowestC blog for Delta Eletronics Foundation in Taiwan. It turned out he was unable to get into the Bella Center as an observer and was sent here to the IETA. It seemed he was disappointed because that is where all the negotiations were taking place. However, he had a very engaging conversation. I told him about the Chinese NGO I was representing and what I did with this summer in southwest China. He was very interested in the Biogas Carbon Offset (BCO), one of the big projects the Yunnan EcoNetwork is trying to promote. BCO simply is trying to create a market based system by connecting investors with farmers in Yunnan Province rather than a top-down, subsidized system through the government. I gave him the link to the website and the director of the organization's e-mail. He was also interested in the China-US Youth Workshop that I attended the prior night, which I forwarded the organizers of the event's e-mail to him. It was a great discussion and lifted my confidence that I had a strong purpose being here at Copenhagen.

Shortly afterwards, I went to the other side of the lounge to meet some other professionals. However, something else caught me attention. There was a live broadcast on a television of the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei on 'stern' irresponsibility on the part of the US and their emission targets. I'll save the time paraphrasing, so I have listed the two web links for more information.

http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=2942
http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=2907

In addition, I went to two events. They were 'Africa GHG Market - Attracting Finance into Africa' and 'Development Opportunities for African Countries under a Post-2012 Climate Change Regime'. I found the second much more interesting because the first presentation I had entered late and I didn't understand the terminology being used.

The following is some of my notes from the second presentation that consisted of two sub-topics.
1. Development Opportunities for African Countries under a Post-2012 Climate Change Regime
2. NAMAs for Climate and development Potential and Challenges

1. Development Opportunities for African Countries under a Post-2012 Climate Change Regime

A joint UNCTAD – African Union Commission side events
Towards Copenhagen:
• An analysis of the Bonn negotiations
• Arguments and guidance aimed at ensuring that Africans’ perspectives are adequately involved.
Methodology
• Review fothe African posilfians paper
• Review of the convention
• Analysis of the born II text vias=a=bis the African position
Goals
• Successful negotiation
• Take futeher action
• Preserving African Development objectives
Key Issues:
• Adaptation
• Food securyi and povery allevuation
• Drastic reduction of emmisions in short term
• ECOMIC competitiveness
• Little gaisn exisiting inadequent, complext and fragmented financial mechanisms
Mitigation
• Mobilize and strengthen existing mitigation capacities
• Identify opportunities and mitation potentials
• Propose simplified metholdogies for sectors with high potential for Africa
Adaptation
• NAPAs
• Elements of adapation to be clarified
• Costing of adapation
• Anticipatory and proactive adaptation programs
o Early warning signs
o Surveillance or observation systems
• Determine baseline for Adaptation because adaptation and development are inextricably linked
• Mainstreaming of adaption into institutional and policy framework
Technology Transfer
• More support for development, diffusion and transfer oftechnology for both adaptation and mitigation
• Technology needs assessment is to be conducted on regular basis and complemented with concrete
Capacity mobilization and or bulidng
• Conceive capacity building as a process
• Mobilize, develop and strength African scientific and technical capacities and expertise
• Moblize and strengthen existing adaptation and mitiatoin capacities
• Capacity mobilization and capacity building at all levels
• Enhance systematic observation, research modeling, disaster preparedness and knowledge management
• CB in the prepariotn of REDD
Finance
• Demand driven for dunign to be channeled through national frameworks
• Low carbon development strategies
• TNA to be used in challenging support and assistance IIPRs and large-scale deployment or readily available technologies)
• Need to improve national coomunications
Conclusion
• There is a need to pay attention to process (tact) and arguments (substance)
• There is need to carve out a special niche with the attached benefits from well informed and document cases
• Ther si need to take a lead (more proactive on the negatations side and long term thinking) on adaption in defining methodolofies, the costing

2. NAMAs for Climate and development Potential and Challenges

Context
Bali Action Plan
Nationally appropriate mitation actions by developing country Parties in the context of sustainable development, supported …
What are Namas
• Unilateral: no-regrets policies, strongly aligned with domestic develpemnt goals, cheaper to implement
• Supported: similar to above, both mor expensive, technilially difficult to implemtn
• CreditedL more expensive and esily quantified fired GEG reductions, provleay sectoral industrial
What Are Namas
• Part of low-emission developentn strategy
o (spelling out pathway to 2050, actions, obstacles, result, MRV)
• Internally supported
o (support should be MRV – finance, technology, capacity building)
• Faciliated by registry or mechamism
o (Links pledges and commitments, technical reviews, records achievements)
Nama Principles
• Not equaivalent to Annes I Targets
• Voluntary
• Recipient country driven
• Focused on sustainable development
• Guided by principles of equity, common but differentiated
What are the potentials?
• Achieving both sustainable development (economic development) and climate change goals (mitigation)
• New modaility of international cooperation
Clean Energy in Developing Countries
Energy supply is the biggest single contributor to GHG emissionat 25%.
Energy is also fundamentally linked to development
Clean Energy: Co-benefits
• Energy efficiency, clean supply
• Energy security
• Balance of payments
• Human health (local air quality)
• Energy access
• Reduced workload (biofuels gathering), quality of life
• Human health (indoor air quality)
• Education, commerce potential
Clean Urban Transporation
• Almost all of global growth between now and 2030 will be in urban centers
• Co-benefits
• 2030, India will be almost 100% import-dependent, China now 2nd biggest importer (was exporter in 1992)
• Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform
• Fossil fuels are over 80% of primary energy
• $310 billion per annum (consumer subsidie) - conservative estimate
Indonesia Case Study
1. 2008 20% subsidies to electricity and fuel
2008 reform increased prices by almost 30% sustained because of direct transfer to 19 million poorest families.
Concluding observations
• Huge need for NAMAs
• Elaborating LEDS
• African is the greated victim of Climate Change
• Africa has only contributed 2% of GHG worldwide.

I was one of the few Caucasians in the room but this was interesting subject matter because Africa has only contributed about 2% of the total amount of greenhouse gases and will be the biggest victim of Climate Change. In addition, the developed countries including the EU and the United States who are the big players that plan to establish a fund with an annual injection of USD 10 billion to help developing countries mitigate the effects of climate change. In my view this is pennies. When I asked one of the speakers as we was walking out the door about what he thought of the financial aid being currently be negotiated to help develop clean, low-carbon economies, he emphasized to me that the issues between the developing world and developed world is one of morality, right and wrong. Obvious $10 billion won't serve the needs at any capacity on a global scale. Perhaps those numbers should be considered as high as in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

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