COP15 Day 8

To make sense of all the information coming out of the COP15 conference in Copenhagen, Flow will be running a series of daily blog entries to keep you up-to-date on the latest news from the largest climate change event in the world. Today is day eight of the 12-day conference.

Weekend roundup: COP 15 Days 6 and 7

• Mexico announced voluntary emissions cuts (reducing CO2 emissions by 50 million tons a year starting in 2012).
• India rejected the idea of a “peaking” year, instead offering to reduce carbon intensity (reductions relative to productivity or economic output.
• Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the chief negotiator for the Group of 77, called the EU’s recently announced annual climate change funding “insignificant.”
• More than 200 protesters were detained on Sunday, held under a Danish law that allows preventative arrests. This followed the detention of 968 protestors on Saturday.

At a conference dealing with deadlines that stretch into the world’s foreseeable future, it’s no surprise that all the news coming out of COP15 hasn’t been good.

The biggest news at today’s meetings was likely the suspension of COP15’s main session before noon after a walk-out protest by African nations. There were fears that the dissent, already seen in earlier sessions that highlighted the gap between developed and developing nations, could have led to some national leaders refusing to join their negotiators at the end of the week. By the evening, however, the boycott (by then backed by 135 developing countries including China) had ended.

From dissent to deforestation, an earlier proposal to fund efforts to save tropical rainforests suffered a setback today with language specifying funding being struck from the draft agreement. Meanwhile, the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity released a report outlining the potentially disastrous implications of CO2 emissions on ocean acidification.

But there has to be good news too. In consensus news, Norway and Mexico launched a joint model for climate change funding. The so-called Green Fund could start around 10 billion dollars per year by 2013 and increase to 30 – 40 billion dollars by 2020

Today was also the first day of the Copenhagen Climate Summit for Mayors. As the largest single contributor to the world’s primary energy use, cities will play an essential role in any global climate change action plan, and Canadian mayors will be at the table. Canadian cities represented include Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto.

COP15 Day 9