Chile gives the reins to Minister Ribera to avoid the failure of the climate summit

The president of the Madrid climate conference, the Chilean Carolina Schmidt, appeared after midnight from Saturday to Sunday before an informal plenary to communicate that the negotiations would continue at dawn.

The Madrid summit entered on Saturday a phase of vertigo and fear of failure, which would be attributable, among other reasons, to deep disagreements but also to the incompetence of the Chilean presidency to channel and lead the negotiation between the different parties.

After two early mornings of negotiation, since seven in the morning of this Sunday it has become the longest climate summit in its 25 years of history. Dubious honor.

The dubious honor of being the longest climate summit in its 25-year history

The low ambition in climate action and the little regulation of future carbon markets – included in the first draft agreement of the Chilean presidency – kept the negotiations aground all day on Saturday.

Long faces, delegates who had already left, signs of disappointment, irritation of social organizations… It was a Saturday of disappointment.

The conference was supposed to conclude on Friday, but will last until this Sunday, with a plenary session that begins at 9 in the morning.

Key inquiries from the acting minister

The Chilean president of the COP has asked the acting Spanish Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, to carry out consultations on three transcendental issues on which there is no agreement (climate ambition, Warsaw mechanism on “loss and damage” and financing to developing countries).

It is as if Chile relinquished much of its leadership and gave the baton to the acting Spanish minister to save this conference.

The Chilean minister said she would negotiate issues related to carbon markets, the other large bloc subject to discord.

Warsaw “Loss and Damage” mechanism, also under discussion

The Spanish minister will have to consult to try to find a text that satisfies everyone on a neuralgic issue: future climate ambition; that is, it should start some kind of call or commitment to action that countries assume from 2020. The EU has been insisting that it is crucial that all states that have joined the Paris agreement revise upwards next year their commitments to reduce emissions.

The other “hot potato” that the acting Spanish minister must deal with is the treatment of the “loss and damage” mechanism approved in Warsaw in 2013, through which the poorest nations and those that suffer the most from the climatic ravages claim to be compensated to adapt to this gloomy scenario.

It is claimed above all by the Pacific and Caribbean island states. There is reluctance on this point on the part of industrialized nations (given the complex quantification of the impacts and the multiple factors involved, including Huano displacements), so the progress may lie in strengthening the new work plan.

Criticism of President Schmitd for not knowing how to channel the dialogue

Schmidt has been harshly criticized for showing little transparency and not facilitating the participation of all groups of countries.

Shortly before the plenary (which began at 00:05 on Sunday), observers and the Alliance of Small Islands denounced that they had been sidelined in negotiations related to carbon markets and the Warsaw international mechanism of “loss and damage”.

For this reason, the representative of Guinea Papua has asked him to open the process so that there is transparency and that all countries are involved in the same process.

Harsh criticism of the Chilean presidency of COP25 by NGOs

What is clear is that the results of the Madrid conference will be far from the demands of scientists and the climate emergency proclaimed. The pressure of the Alliance for Climate Ambition has hit a wall against immobility.

The big emitting countries (China, India, Japan, Brazil…) have flatly refused to promise an upward update next year of their national climate action plans promised in Paris.

Only the EU has shown climate ambition; is prepared to increase its emissions cuts from 30% to 40/45% by 20030 (compared to 1990); and makes the commitment to climate neutrality by 2050 (with the exception of Poland, which is 80% dependent on coal).

The EU prefers no deal to a bad deal on the carbon markets chapter

The other bone of contention has been the controversial definition of the rules of future carbon markets. China, USA and Brazil want all emission reduction certificates (CERs) generated from the Kyoto protocol to be transferred to the new stage of the Paris agreement.

They want these rights to be dragged without any control or hindrance to the new stage.

But that entails two risks: one that there is a double accounting of gas reductions (which is recorded in the inventory of the country of destination and in the country of origin of the transfer) and that the market is flooded by low-priced credits with very pernicious effects.

It would be a perverse stimulus for companies, which could go to the market to offset their emissions at low cost, but without taking real measures of internal decarbonization (renewables, efficiency …). The EU wants strict rules to prevent it, but these three countries want wide sleeves. The EU has repeated actively and passively that it prefers no deal to a bad deal.

Meanwhile a group of 28 countries led by Costa Rica have come together during negotiations to incorporate the so-called San José Principles, to ensure that carbon markets are truly fair and robust.

In this initiative are, in addition to Spain, Switzerland, Belize, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, Marshall Islands or Vanuatu.

The San José principles (in reference to the Costa Rican capital, where they were established) include eleven conditions ranging from ensuring environmental integrity to avoiding double counting, vetoing the transfer of credits prior to 2020 to the new system or blocking technologies incompatible with the reduction of emissions.

Growing refusal to create carbon markets without very strict rules

The discontent and frustration were noticeable among NGOs on Saturday, as the Chilean presidency’s inability to put together a consensus text was recorded.

“The proposal of the presidency seems to us completely unacceptable, unfair and immoral. It does not call for an increase in the ambition of countries to improve their emission reduction plans,” said Alden Meyer, chief strategist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The planet is burning and it is becoming more and more difficult to reach the escape window,” he blurted out. Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, was very harsh, accusing Chile’s presidency of “listening more to the private stakeholders of polluting companies than to the people.”

Morgan asked him to stand firm against the United States, Brazil and Japan, countries he accused of “wanting to destroy the negotiations by supporting a scam in the emissions trade that puts a price on the environment and human rights.”

Faced with the responses of the draft agreement, the Chilean facilitator, Andrés Landerretche, had an intervention that sounded like self-defense and promised that the document would have greater ambition, although he did not specify how or what he understood with these words.

“Can we say that this will end up like the rosary of the dawn?” a journalist asked him.

“I can’t assess something that hasn’t been agreed. We will only evaluate the final document when it is firm,” Landerretche said, pulling some diplomatic manual at the head.

Source: The Vanguard