Last week, another round of the UN's climate change talks was completed in Bonn with deadlock and pessimisms. Officials from around the world who gathered to negotiate new climate treaty as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which is to expire in 2012, voiced growing concern that the negotiations was falling dangerously behind schedule. To me, this is hardly a surprise. The new climate change treaty will, in a way, fundamentally change way governments around the world their do businesses. That cannot come easy. The process is meant to be difficult. Then comes an important question, which I also ask myself; what kind of deal can we really expect from Copenhagen?

The new climate treaty replacing Kyoto is aimed to come out at the end of this year at the all-important meeting in Copenhagen, the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). However, with the result so far, many observers around the world start to cast doubt whether Copenhagen can succeed; whether it will be completed at all, whether the final deal will be good enough to limit global warming to a 2 Celsius, compared to 1990, by 2050 as scientist suggested, whether the world agree to cut its emissions by 80% compared with 1990 levels by the end of this year.

But if we look back, the Kyoto negotiation was not an easy task either. It nearly did not succeed, taking a last-minute fix to get the agreement. Copenhagen should be expected to be much more difficult for countries to agree to than Kyoto, as far more countries are involved and much more are at stake now. According to Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, the four key political points that needed to be answers for the new international climate agreement to come into existence are:

1) How much are developed countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases?
2) How much are major developing countries such as China and India willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions?
3) How significant financial resources will be generated to help developing countries both limit the growth of their emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change?
4) How to structure the governance of that money?

In brief, the most problematic issue for the current negotiation is that of burden-sharing; which countries must make the cuts and by how large, and how can the developed world assist developing countries in their climate change effort? But as reported in the news from the Bonn meeting, the gap between rich nations and emerging economies over carbon emissions targets seems even more unbridgeable.

For the developing world’s side, we can look at China’s argument as an example. Chinese economy has recently overtaken America as the world largest emitter. Yet America has historically emitted far more emissions than China. And on a per capita basis, China’s emissions are much lower. The developing countries also argue that they have a moral right to develop its economy and lift people out of poverty. That would imply the use of more energy, inevitably creating carbon emissions. There is also the issue of developed countries outsourcing emission to developing nations such as China, considering the huge quantities of carbon-intensive manufacturing taking place in China on behalf of buyers in the US. As a result of all these, developing world is vigorously asking the industrialized nations to agree to far more ambitious targets and help the developing world to reduce its emission, while offering no firm commitment of their own.

However, on the other side, it is also impossible to think that emerging economies should be allowed to develop using the same carbon-intensive path to growth as the West in the past. The current climate change may be created by the developed West, but responsibility to prevent further change in the future lies with the current developing world. So, the big emerging economies such as India, Brazil and China are asked by industrialized nations to commit to certain mandatory emission cut in the new agreement. The US congress, in particular, has insisted that it will not commit itself to any target unless the likes of China and India do the same. EU, on a better note, has declared its target of 20% emission reduction by 2020. But the number is still much lower than the 40% goal that developing countries have asked for from industrialized countries overall.

So we now have this deadlock; rich nations have their largely inadequate targets, and developing economies have their vague aspirational non-binding goals in response. Therefore as we are now, it impossible to answer the first two questions given by de Boer, namely how much developed countries are willing to commit and how much the developing world will commit, if at all. The third and forth points of de Boer are also important sticking points at Bonn meeting, as negotiators cannot agree how much money will be set aside to carry out strategies to limit the growth of emissions in developing countries.

So all in all, four major point of negotiation remains unclear. And the possibility of getting the new treaty seems gloomy as a result.

However, if we look closely, there seem to be some good development on other fronts than getting commitment targets or pledge of money from countries on both sides. Progress is being made on the development of a global carbon market, reforestry schemes and certain clean tech funding for developing nations. More extensive global carbon trading scheme is mentioned all over the negotiating text. It is the part that expected to have some progress, as every country has something to gain. Other than that, there is a belief in the current world that enough clean technology financing pumped into the developing world will help to create new markets for clean tech leaders of the US and Europe. As happening now, leaders in renewable energy and clean technology in Europe are having big business with new markets in developing countries around the world, creating an economic win-win situation for both sides. More push for funding of this kind has a solid ground to hope for. Or more recently, during the Bonn meeting, Indonesia and Australia announced that they had cooperating on a scheme for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). It was initiated with the Australian Government's desire to use Asian and Pacific forests as a cheap emissions offset for their local industry; a win-win for all parties. As well summarized by Abigail Edge of the UK newspaper the Guardian;

“Negotiators from the rich world may not be able to see the competitive advantage in signing up to emissions targets that will not be matched by emerging rivals, but they can certainly see the benefits attached to the creation of a major new commodity class in the form of carbon and the strengthening of trade relations with the likes of China and India.”

In other words, the third and forth questions of De Boer concerning the transfer of resource to developing countries are somewhat getting answers from negotiators as well as from the real world.

So at the end, as some observers suggest, what we should push for at Copenhagen may not be only specific targets that are good enough to please NGOs and scientists, but also a mechanism that accelerate market forces to work their magic and de-carbonise the global economy. With or without solid targets from countries, maybe we should expect a global climate change system that at least incentivizes the market and private sector to make a rapid transition from carbon intensive path, innovate and spread better and cost effective clean technologies and practices at global scale.  That could be another way to achieve the 2C goal at 2050 that scientists ask for.

If by December, governments can agree to solid targets or an adequate amount of money to help developing countries fighting climate change, it would be a great success. And I wish that can happen in time. But if not, at least, I would expect negotiators to iron out a framework that create strong enough of an incentive for other parts of the society to work their way to reduce emission. This could be a second tier, but at the same time a more achievable goal. That is what I look forward to see from Copenhagen. I think I can be more optimistic about Copenhagen this way.

Resources;
http://en.cop15.dk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change