Government delegated from all parties to the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change met last week in Tianjin, China to pave the way for the upcoming Conference of Parties in Cancun, Mexico. According to Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate chief, the parties have moved forward and closer to identifying what can be agreed in Cancun, preparing a draft text that could be presented in Mexico.

Figueres has steered the negotiations in order to aim at agreeing on a “balanced package” in which also adaptation and technology transfer are included. Nevertheless, during the week, the increasing China-US divide regarding mitigation opportunities has confirmed that mitigation remains the one most contentious issue in climate negotiations.
In Tianjin, the focus has been on how to translate the emission reduction pledges made in Copenhagen into a new deal and how to monitor emission reductions.

Observers confirmed that a renewed positive spirit of negotiations characterised this round of talks and that significant progress into developing a comprehensive binding agreement to deal with climate change by South Africa, 2011 – the next conference of parties.

On the shorter run, different views remain on several issues, starting from the possibility to agree on a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol, supported by the EU, Australia, Norway, Switzerland and the Association of Small Island States, but opposed by Japan and the US. A north-south divide persists beyond mitigation commitments: in particular, developing countries are called upon to agree on the details on the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) procedures for emission reductions, but are wary of the proposals presented so far.

Climate Policy News

• This news is extracted from the Climate Policy News : a CMCC weekly column that summarises the latest news on international climate change agreements, the updates on the carbon market and the energy and technology updates in the realm of climate change. Go to the web page and see all previous issues since March 2007.
• This week: Reshare: increasing acceptability of renewable
  energy projects; The Tianjin UN climate conference; Japanese climate bill gets a second shot; the carbon market this week – Download the October 4-10, 2010, 2010 Newsletter [116kb]