Climate negotiations

IDDRI mobilises stakeholders and leads debates

In a context of highly active negotiations aimed at reaching an ambitious international climate agreement for the post-2012 period, IDDRI is leading discussions and launching debates in its drive to tackle the climate and energy challenge. It has thus organised three high-level workshops on climate challenges and issues.

* The first workshop, on 16 April, was prepared in partnership with the French government and focused on sectoral approaches. It brought together experts, NGOs, private sector representatives and delegates from the countries that took part in the Third Major Economies Meeting (MEM). This workshop was the opportunity to organise an exchange of views on the political conditions for integrating these approaches into the international climate agreement to be adopted in Copenhagen in December 2009. The following day, during the MEM, Laurence Tubiana presented the workshop’s key findings and recommendations, which laid the groundwork for a formal discussion between delegates. On this issue, the MEM found that sectoral approaches should not replace quantified emissions limitation and reduction commitments in industrialised countries; they must be complementary to measures in order to meet these commitments. Nor should they represent a disguised barrier to trade between industrialised and developing countries.
See the workshop web page.

* On 17 April, IDDRI and CCAP (Centre for Clean Air Policy) organised and led the first joint meeting of the EU and US Dialogue on Climate Change in order to identify key similarities and differences between US and EU domestic policies. This dialogue was the opportunity for a high-level meeting between the representatives of major companies, negotiators from member States, NGOs, representatives of the European Commission and of research and political analysis centres. They examined the impacts of carbon constraint on the respective competitiveness of US and EU companies on the basis of the Liebermann-Warner bill and the EU Climate and Energy Package, and compared the measures proposed to mitigate its effects, especially through border adjustment mechanisms.
See the workshop web page.

* Finally, on 18 April, IDDRI and CCAP organised the fourth meeting of the European Dialogue on Climate Change and Energy. This meeting was the opportunity to examine the coherence of the measures proposed by the European Commission on 23 January 2008 in its Climate and Energy Package, along with the package’s articulation with the key issues of international negotiations with a view to reaching a climate agreement under the UNFCCC. These include member States’ likelihood of meeting their renewable energy targets based on an analysis of the power generation sector, their capacity for financing geological carbon capture installations in order to achieve medium- and long-term objectives, and the volume of emissions credits generated by reduction projects in developing and industrialised countries to reach the emissions reduction target of 20% below 1990 levels by 2020.
See the workshop web page.

PUBLICATIONS

*Accès et partage des avantages: rétrospective et principaux enjeux d’ici 2010, by Amandine Bled.

In the run up to the Ninth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 9) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), held in Bonn from 19 to 30 May 2008, this analysis traces the history of the ABS (Access and Benefit-Sharing) negotiations in order to shed some light on the issue and to place it back within the global governance system to which it is tied. Indeed, this system defines the issues that will be at the heart of the regime’s negotiations by 2010.
Download Analyse 02/2008.

* Régime international, déforestation évitée et évolution des politiques publiques et privées affectant les forêts dans les pays du Sud, by Stéphane Guéneau, Alain Karsenty, Benjamin Singer, Jean-Luc Peyron, Doris Capistrano.

The international workshop, "International Regime, Avoided Deforestation and the Evolution of Public and Private Forest Policies in the South", took place in Paris from 21 to 23 November 2007 and was organised jointly by CIRAD, IDDRI, CIFOR and ECOFOR. It brought together 140 participants from all over the world, just before the Thirteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 13) in Bali (December 2007).
This article provides a summary of the workshop. It presents the key issues addressed during the three-day workshop and the elements of response put forward by participants.
Download Idées pour le débat 07/2008.

* Urban water crisis in Delhi, by Augustin Maria

Based on a case study of Delhi, this paper shows that potable water supply through a public network is not the only system that is likely to be set up in the long term in developing cities such as Delhi. Considering alternative scenarios, in which private mechanisms play a key role in shaping technical systems, highlights certain important policy tools in achieving the sustainability of water management in developing cities.
Download Idées pour le débat 06/2008.

* Bricolage ou innovation?, by Augustin Maria

This publication addresses the issue of water supply to the Indian population, based on a technical and economic analysis of the alternative water supply systems being set up by the residents of group housing in a district currently under development on the outskirts of Delhi.
This paper is a working document further to a thesis that received financial and scientific support from the IDDRI Foundation.
Download Idées pour le débat 05/2008.

Observatory for Sustainable Development

A selection of sustainable development highlights by IDDRI and the Courrier de la Planète, with the support of AFD as part of their partnership for the yearly edition of Regards sur la terre.

* CO₂: WWF condemns emissions credits
7 April 2008 / In a report just published, WWF attacks the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. According to the NGO, the emissions quotas allocated are so high that EU countries do not use half of them. Moreover, low carbon costs mean German power plants, which run mainly on coal, avoid paying the price of the pollution they generate.

* Trade and development: UNCTAD XII
20-25 April 2008 / UNCTAD met for its 12th session in Accra, Ghana. The final declaration insists on the importance of the trade system in fostering and consolidating development, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, which remains the region that is the furthest from meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2012. The Accra Declaration also notes the role played by the emerging countries in world growth and determines to afford them more room in governance processes, within both UNCTAD and the WTO.

* UNEP, CBD and IUCN publication: the challenge of conservation
24 April 2008 / UNEP, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and IUCN published Sustaining Life, a joint study demonstrating the threats that the constant loss of biodiversity poses to medical research. The authors stress that the latest developments in pain relief, blindness or cancer have all been made using living aquatic or terrestrial organisms.

* A global moratorium on agrofuels?
28 April 2008 / In the context of the food crisis, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food called for a worldwide moratorium on agrofuels, saying this measure was needed to curb the hike in food prices and to encourage the use of land for food production. In 2007, one third of all maize grown in the US was used to produce fuels.

All the highlights of the last few months