June’s meetings of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn set the stage for the Tenth Conference of the Parties (COP10), to be convened at the end of this year in Buenos Aires, but significant unfinished business and uncertainty remain.
Difficult issues such as further commitments and compliance have not yet been fully addressed, nor is it likely they will be, prior to the Kyoto Protocol’s entry into force. In light of doubts concerning entry into force, SB meetings have had little choice but to focus on small technical amendments to previous decisions.
The UN climate process treads water as it waits for the Russian Federation to decide whether it will ratify the Kyoto Protocol, triggering entry into force. Although some participants were optimistic that the country will ratify, Russian bureaucratic procedures would make this impossible in time for COP-10 to celebrate actual entry into force. In the meantime, the European Union is moving ahead to implement its emissions trading system at the beginning of 2005.
Those present at the June SB meetings expressed disappointment and doubt over the functioning of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which has thus far approved fewer than 20 methodologies – the first of several steps to approve a project for credit. Several governments noted that the “window of opportunity” for CDM’s use in the EU emissions trading system was closing. Unless a project is started soon, the credits will not be available in time for use in the first and second periods under the EU system.
The International Chamber of Commerce has stressed the need to follow streamlined procedures in the CDM in order to encourage the thousands of projects that will be necessary to meet developing countries’ energy needs and begin to mitigate their green house gas emissions.
ICC and other business groups played an active role during the SB meetings, meeting with the chairs of the SBs, the Experts Group on Technology Transfer, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN framework convention’s executive secretary and the heads of EU delegations to the meeting.
Industry has volunteered to work with the experts group and the convention secretariat to organise an in-session roundtable during COP10 to present business experiences and recommendations concerning enabling environments for technology transfer. ICC has agreed to coordinate a major industry sidebar presentation at COP10, permitting business associations to demonstrate their accomplishments over the first ten years of the convention.
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EU Still Over-REACH-ing on Chemicals Regulation – USCIB recently sent comments on the trade impact of the European Commission’s proposed EU-wide chemical regulation, known as REACH, to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and several other senior U.S. and EU officials. REACH stands for “registration, evaluation and authorization of chemicals.” The proposed regulation, which could be enacted by 2006, would govern use of some 30,000 chemicals and the products made from them, affecting downstream users and importers as well as chemical manufacturers. “We remain troubled by the trade restrictiveness of several basic structural elements of REACH,” wrote USCIB President Thomas Niles. “In our view, the proposed regulation will pose trade and market access barriers, while providing ill defined environmental and human health benefit.” Learn more at: Click Here.
