Hopenhagen

11th December 2009 by Madlen King

On day three of the COP 15, Madlen King, LRQA’s Global Climate Change Manager, joined Sean Cuthbert and Dr Anne-Marie Warris at the conference.

Below is the Blog from Madlen King:

On arrival in Copenhagen it’s very clear that the locals remain hopeful. It appears that for the duration of COP 15, Copenhagen has been renamed ‘Hopenhagen’, and rightly so. Whilst I think we all knew that an agreement with binding targets wasn’t going to happen here, from developments so far, glimmers of hope are appearing (in relation to some subjects at least).

So how are the outputs possibly going to affect the LR group and our clients?

With regard to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), despite the results of the 51st Executive Board meeting last week rejecting 10 further Chinese wind projects for registration, efforts continue to push for reform to ensure that projects can be registered more smoothly and efficiently. The much awaited report on the independent analysis of CDM administration, conducted by McKinsey, has finally been presented, and when I read the Point Carbon article on this subject, it is clear that opinion has been voiced regarding the secretariat taking on responsibilities that were meant for the DOE’s and the report clearly recommends that decisions on project paperwork should be handed back to the DOE’s. This is good news for the continued success of the CDM.

In addition to this development, 2 working groups have been set up by the UN to look at CDM reform both pre and post 2012 – further good news!

From the international perspective however, the glimmers are a little less bright, with clear disagreements between the developed and developing countries. This Guardian article and picture of a member of the Haitian article with ‘head in hands’ says it all. A draft text was unfortunately leaked this week which proposes to hand the control of finance for climate change to the World Bank and would make available money for developing countries to act on climate change dependant on their actions. This is a very clear departure from the principles of Kyoto. In addition, the Chinese, UK and US delegations are publicly criticising each others proposals and today the developing countries were attempting to limit certain discussions to include only the countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol (i.e. not the US).

All that being said; I remain positive. It’s early days yet and there’s time left for tempers to ease.

Read Dr. Anne-Marie Warris’s Blog

Read Sean Cuthbert’s Blog

Read the entire Blog Series at http://copenhagencountdown.blogspot.com