Benjamin Sporton, WCA Policy Director

We are now at the beginning of the second and final week of negotiations here in Durban. At this point it is difficult to see where we will end up by Friday. That’s not unusual for this stage of the conference however as many delegations are still finalising their positions ahead of the arrival of their Ministers for the beginning of the High-Level Segment tomorrow. There is a noticeable change in the atmosphere here as we get to the point where there myriad of issues talked through last week need to be brought together to get an outcome from Durban.

There are a number of big unresolved issues left to be addressed. Most significant among those is the role of the Kyoto Protocol and whether there will be a second commitment period. Clearly the European Union is interested in seeing a second commitment period agreed but it’s unclear whether their pre-conditions for that are being met and it’s not clear how many other developed countries might be willing to sign on.

There has been good progress on another major issue, the Green Climate Fund. Agreed in Cancun last year, it’s essential that the framework for this Fund is finalised here in Durban so that the money can start following to support climate financing in the developing world – it’s seems like that could happen here. Likewise there has been good progress on issues relating to technology and technology transfer, though it’s not yet clear if an agreement can be reached to move forward with the Climate Technology Centre and Network.

There continues to be a lot of talk about the potential for a road map towards a comprehensive future agreement, possibly to be in place by 2020. It seems that there is some sort of understanding beginning to emerge as to how that future agreement might come about, and this is being helped by the Presidency’s informal discussion process being held alongside the formal negotiations. This process, known as Indaba, has helped negotiators express their ideas in a more free and open way with a view to moving the process forward. It will be important for these discussions to move forward to address the pre-conditions many parties have so there can be an agreement to work towards a more comprehensive future treaty.

On a more specific issue, There has been good progress in the last week on CCS in CDM. Negotiators have been working very hard on this issue with five meetings being held in one day and one meeting lasting until 4.00am on Saturday morning! A text has now been agreed by the SBSTA that deals with most of the issues and concerns that were outlined in last year’s decision in Cancun. In fact there is only one issue left to be addressed, which is how to deal with climate liabilities should there be leakage at a storage site. This issue is being left to Ministers and it is important for a compromise on that to be reached here in Durban. A mechanism for financing this essential mitigation technology in developing countries being agreed in Durban will be a major achievement.