Bali Update !!

Bali Update: ‘Non Paper’ a Nonstarter for U.S.

By Andrew C. Revkin

The Japanese environment minister, Ichiro Kamoshita, cutting the birthday cake for the Kyoto Protocol’s 10-year anniversary. (Courtesy of IISD/ Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

It has taken me years to get comfortable with some of the terms thrown around during international treaty negotiations. One phrase that still jars is “non paper.” This is text that doesn’t exist, but does exist, that is designed as a starting point for discussions leading toward formal language in a final document, but doesn’t bind anyone to anything.

In the early stages of climate-treaty talks in Bali, conference leaders scurried among delegations and came up with a document called “Non-Paper by the Co-Facilitators.”

The document (with a title printed in a pale gray suitable for something nonexistent) was intended as a template for what the United Nations hopes will, by Friday night, be a two-year road map for talks leading to a meaningful update to the faltering 1992 climate treaty, the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

But late Tuesday, Bali time, the United States bluntly refused to consider language — even in the nonbinding preamble — that included any specific numbers for how much overall emissions from wealthy countries would need to be cut to have a chance of avoiding the worst climate dangers.

The numbers floated by the organizers were ambitious. They largely reflected the view held by Europe, many environmental groups and lots of scientists that a threshold exists, somewhere around 3 degrees Fahrenheit of further warming, beyond which lies true climate cataclysm.

Here’s a bit of that language to give you the idea (a pdf of the nonpaper is at the bottom of this list of agendas and documents). Farther down this post, I’ve included a few comments on a day marking the 10th anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol, the first (and also faltering) attempt to update the 1992 treaty. I was warned nearly 20 years ago when I started writing about global warming that this is a 100-year story. On days like this, it certainly feels that way.

The conference of the Parties,

Guided by the ultimate objective of the Convention and the need to ensure its achievement, as well as by the principles and commitments of the Convention,

Responding to the unequivocal scientific evidence that preventing the worst impacts of climate change will require Parties included in the Annex I to the Convention as a group to reduce emissions in a range of 25– – 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and that global emissions of greenhouse gases need to peak in the next 10 to 15 years and be reduced to very low levels, well below half of levels in 2000 by 2050,

Recognizing that current efforts in implementing the Convention will not deliver the required emission reductions and resolving to do more nationally and through international cooperative action….

1. Decides to launch a process to [Option 1: develop a comprehensive international framework for long-term cooperative action beyond 2012] [Option 2: advance long-term cooperative action to address climate change for the period beyond 2012 by enhancing the implementation of the Convention], addressing, inter alia….