The officials, representing the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China), insisted that Kyoto is a cornerstone of the multilateral efforts to combat climate change and that failure to agree to a second commitment period would undermine the UN Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process.
“Agreeing on the second commitment period is the central priority for Durban, as failure in this regard would generate a challenge to multilateralism and would undermine the rules based multilateral response to climate change under the UNFCCC," ministers attending the 26-27 August meeting in Brazil said in a joint statement.
The move comes at a time when a handful of crucial countries - Canada, Japan, and Russia - have openly rejected the idea of signing on to a second commitment period. But with Kyoto's first commitment period set to expire in 2012, developing countries appear poised to make the Durban Conference of the Parties (COP) a battleground for preserving the only legally-binding climate change agreement.
The EU, representing some 13 percent of global emissions, is the only representative of major developed countries that has signalled its tentative intention to negotiate a second commitment period. But the absence of major economies - particularly the US, which never signed Kyoto in the first place - calls the usefulness of exercise into question.
In a pessimistic editorial, the Economist opined last Thursday, “never has the UN's Kyoto protocol looked sorrier." The article goes on to stress that not only does Durban appear poised to determine little due to the question of Kyoto, but suggests that rich countries have also done little to ensure they are able to meet their commitments agreed to last December in Cancun (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 14 December 2010). Read the full report here.
Source: International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development.
