UNITED NATIONS
NATIONS UNIES

INTERGOVERNMENTAL NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE
FOR A FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE (INC/FCCC)

COMITÉ INTERGOUVERNEMENTAL DE NÉGOCIATION
D'UNE CONVENTION-CADRE SUR LES CHANGEMENTS CLIMATIQUES (CIN/CCCC)

Decision Time for the Climate Change Treaty

Geneva, February 1994 -- A few weeks ago, on 21 December 1993, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change received its 50th ratification. This started the clock ticking for a series of critical dates. The first is 21 March 1994, when the treaty will enter into force and become international law for its Parties (i.e. the countries that have ratified). The next occurs six months later on 21 September 1994. This is the deadline for developed country Parties to make their first submission of information on national strategies for controlling greenhouse gas emissions and for funding Convention-related activities of developing countries.

Then the countdown begins for the first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP), the body responsible for implementing the treaty. This session is scheduled for 28 March - 7 April 1995 in Berlin. "Although over a year away, the first session has to finalise such a complex set of issues that Governments must prepare much of the work in advance to ensure its success," says Michael Zammit Cutajar, the Convention's Executive Secretary.

This is why the negotiators have continued to meet on a regular basis even though the treaty text was finalised and signed by over 150 countries at the Rio Earth Summit back in June 1992. Their next meeting, the Ninth Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC-9), starts this Monday in Geneva and lasts for the two weeks of 7 - 18 February.

At this meeting delegates must reach a number of critical decisions to ensure that the implementation of the Convention can proceed smoothly. First, the review process and the format for the information that developed countries must soon provide on their progress in limiting emissions need to be agreed. So too does the choice of methodologies for ensuring that national data on greenhouse gas emissions and "sinks" (i.e. forests and other ecosystems that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere) are comparable from country to country. Unless the meeting produces at least provisional agreement on these matters, the information on national strategies that developed countries will provide by 21 September may not be comparable.

Second, delegates must address the commitment by developed countries to finance efforts by developing countries to implement the treaty. They need to start finalising the policy guidelines for funding to ensure that developing countries are fully involved in mitigating climate change -- essential to the long-term control of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, the estimated funding level for the Global Environment Facility (GEF), which is the interim source of funding for Convention-related projects in developing countries, is now some US$2 billion for a three-year period. Around half of this amount should be earmarked for climate change, with the rest going to biodiversity and other projects.

Other key items on the agenda relate to longer-term issues. One such is the review of the adequacy of developing countries' commitments. In particular, the Berlin meeting must assess the effectiveness of efforts by developed countries to bring their greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by the year 2000. It may be called upon to consider whether a clear and firm commitment for developed countries to reduce emissions should replace the current vaguely worded call for stabilising them. This assessment would be influenced by the Convention's objective of stabilising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at a safe level and by the inevitable increase in greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries.

Delegates must start detailing the procedures for making this critical but possibly contentious assessment. The stage would then be set for the real debate next year.

Another long-term issue is joint implementation. Mentioned but briefly in the Convention, joint implementation would allow one country to fulfil part of its commitment to mitigate climate change by making financial or technological transfers to limit emissions in another country. An energy-efficient developed country, for example, may calculate that it could reduce more emissions in a country that is energy-inefficient than it could by spending the same sum of money domestically.

Joint implementation has spawned much debate. Its supporters (including business interests) view it as an economically efficient way to reduce global emissions and as a potential new source of financing for developing countries. Others, however, are concerned that wealthy countries with high per-capita emissions could use it to evade their responsibility to control domestic emissions. Their fear is that developed countries will find it easier to pay poorer countries to limit their already low emissions. Discussions are focusing on how the benefits of joint implementation can be realised without weakening the responsibility of developed countries to take the lead in responding to climate change.

"The discussions that will take place during INC-9 are vital to the Convention's future", concludes Mr. Zammit Cutajar. "In addition to finalising some technical and financial issues, the meeting will help to lay the foundations for implementing the Convention up to the year 2000 and beyond."

INC-9 will take place in Conference Rooms 19 and 20 in the Palais des Nations under the chairmanship of Ambassador Raul Estrada-Oyuela, Plenipotentiary Minister for Argentina's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The final two meetings of the INC are scheduled in Geneva on 22-31 August 1994 and in New York on 6-17 February 1995.