Bonn, 6 August (Hilary Chiew and Meena Raman)  – The UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing (AGF) came under fire during its briefing to Parties to the UNFCCC on the sidelines of the ongoing climate talks in Bonn.

Venezuela’s Special Envoy on Climate Change, Claudia Salerno Caldera, questioned the status of the AGF as Parties of the UNFCCC did not ask for its advice. Speaking to representatives of the AGF on 8 August during the briefing, Caldera said that the Group “was born out of the Copenhagen Accord which was not adopted by the Conference of Parties and was started by the UN Secretary-General in his own capacity in New York.”

Bonn, 5 August (Hilary Chiew, Dale Wen and Meena Raman) - A workshop on the scale of emission reductions to be achieved by Annex 1 Parties under the working group of the Kyoto Protocol in Bonn, revealed the low level of ambition in the pledges of developed countries which are compounded even further by ‘loopholes’ that could potentially lead to an increase in emissions by 2020, based on 1990 levels.

Several presenters showed that the nominal aggregate of the pledges of Annex 1 Parties (including the United States) amount to only a 12-18% reduction in emissions compared to 1990 levels, when developing countries have called for more than 40% reductions by 2020.  The loopholes alone could account for around 21% of emissions, thus effectively neutralizing Annex I Parties emission pledges, and potentially allowing emissions to rise above 1990 levels by 2020.

Bonn, 3 August (Meena Raman) – Parties at the opening session of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) expressed their willingness to engage in negotiations on the basis of the “text to facilitate negotiations among Parties” that was produced on the 9th of July 2010 by the Chair of the working group.

The Chair of the AWG-LCA, Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe of Zimbabwe had on July 9 prepared a new text to “facilitate negotiations among Parties”. (See TWN Bonn News Update 1 on highlights of the new text.) The AWG-LCA’s 11^th session commenced in Bonn on 2 August and will conclude on 6 August.

Bonn, 2 August (Hilary Chiew) – Developing countries urged developed country Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to reaffirm their commitment to its supplementary treaty, the Kyoto Protocol.

Groups representing developing nations or non-Annex I Parties also expressed concern that the slow progress in the Ad hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) would result in a gap between the first (2008-2012) and second commitment periods.

Bonn, 2 August (Martin Khor) - The adoption of water as a human right by the UN General Assembly and the issuing of a new report on climate change kept environmental issues in the news last week, while the UN climate talks resume this week.   Thus, the environment continues to be in the news spotlight in these weeks.

The General Assembly on 28 July at last recognised the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights.

The resolution was adopted by a vote of 122 countries in favour, none objecting and 42 abstaining.

Introducing the resolution and urging for a "yes" vote, Bolivia's Ambassador, Pablo Solon, said:  "I ask all delegations to bear in mind the fact that, according to the 2009 report of the World Health Organization and UNICEF entitled "Diarrhoea: Why children are still dying and what can be done," 24,000 children die in developing countries every day from preventable causes like diarrhea contracted from unclean water.

Bonn, 2 August (Meena Raman) – A new text to “facilitate negotiations among Parties” has been issued by the Chair of the UNFCCC's working group following up on the Bali Action Plan.

The text dated 9 July 2010 will be discussed at the 11^th session in Bonn on 2-6 August of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA).  At the same time, the Ad-hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex 1 Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) will also be meeting.

We need you to act now. This petition contains a statement on water and climate that is important for our collective work on these issues.

The reason we are asking you to sign this now is that This week in Bonn, the Climate meetings are preparing for COP 16 in Cancun Mexico.

26 APRIL 2010

We, the representatives of the Governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, Member States of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America  Peoples Trade Treaty (ALBA  PTT), in the Caracas Bicentennial Manifesto, signed on April 19, 2010, welcomed the initiative of the President of the Pluri-national State of Bolivia, Evo Morales, to call the First People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, held in Cochabamba, on April 19-22, 2010.

From Thirty Thousand Feet Above Mother Earth
by Jeff Conant

En route to Bolivia - that is, somewhere 30,000 feet above Mother  Earth -
I crossed paths with Alberto Saldamando, the legal council  for the
International Indian Treaty Council, and a member of the
Indigenous Environmental Network delegation to the Cochabamba climate
summit. As we stood in the aisle of the airplane, raising the hackles  of
the flight crew, I asked him his vision of the week ahead. Alberto  is a
friend, someone I've worked with in the past, so he may have  been more
candid with me than he might be in public; when I asked his  opinion on
the state of the climate negotiations and his hopes for  Cochabamba, he
said, "I'm pessimistic. You know, greed has no bounds."

This policy brief reviews the dismal (albeit unofficial) results of the 2009 climate summit

contained in the Copenhagen Accord, and raises questions about the Accord’s implications to the multilateral climate process going forward. The paper finds that the unequal, growth-/profit-centered economic model—and the intractable commitment by major polluting economies and their elites thereto—as the main ecological and political obstacle to securing strong and just action towards climate stability. To address this, it proposes that, instead of being abandoned, the international climate effort under the UNFCCC must be upheld and broadened to include a transition to an alternative model of development based both on equity and sustainability.

Download here

There is only one Earth. It is embarked on the heaven’s seas and Earth’s creatures are its only sailors. If the ship is damaged beyond repair, all is lost.

Humankind’s wisest leaders and most knowledgeable experts agree that climate change is today’s most serious global environmental problem. For that reason, how we respond to climate change has become an ethical benchmark that defines our responsibilities toward each other as human beings, toward future generations, and toward all of Creation.

To read the full statement, please click here.

Déclaration du réseau Climate Justice Now! sur les résultats de la COP15

L’accord indigne de Copenhague révèle un gouffre entre les revendications des peuples et les intérêts des élites

La très attendue Conférence des Nations Unies sur le Changement Climatique de Copenhague a débouché sur un accord de dupe, manigancé par les USA et parachuté au dernier moment. «L’accord» n’a pas été adopté, mais a été «pris en note», une invention législative absurde conçue pour convenir aux USA et permettre à Ban Ki-moon de prononcer la ridicule déclaration «nous avons un accord». [télécharger, pdf].

Declaración de ¡Justicia Climática Ahora! Sobre los resultados de la COP15

El corrupto “acuerdo” de Copenhague muestra la gran brecha existente entre las demandas de los pueblos y los intereses de las élites

La tan esperada Conferencia de la ONU sobre Cambio Climático en Copenhague terminó con un acuerdo fraudulento, diseñado por los Estados Unidos y presentado ante la Conferencia en el último momento. El “acuerdo” no fue adoptado por la conferencia. En lugar de eso, la decisión fue “tomar nota” utilizando una nueva y absurda estrategia parlamentaria, diseñada para acomodar el resultado a los intereses de los Estados Unidos y permitir a Ban Ki-moon pronunciar la ridícula frase “Tenemos un trato". [descargar, pdf]

Statement of Climate Justice Now! on the COP 15

Corrupt Copenhagen ‘accord’ exposes gulf between peoples demands and elite interests

The highly anticipated UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen ended with a fraudulent agreement, engineered by the United States and dropped into the conference at the last moment. The "agreement" was not adopted. Instead, it was "noted" in an absurd parliamentary invention designed to accommodate the United States and permit Ban Ki-moon to utter the ridiculous pronouncement "We have a deal." [download, pdf]

Millions of people across the planet had hoped that governments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would walk away from Copenhagen with a strong, just, and timely climate deal. Predictably, the summit failed to deliver. Copenhagen is the latest, and – with runaway climate change looming large on the horizon – perhaps the costliest, of the UNFCCC’s long list of failures. [download statement]