CAN Intervention – KP Opening Intervention – 1 Jun 2010

Thank you Mr Chair, Distinguished delegates, Clearly, progress is needed on the KP track here in Bonn.

CAN would like to remind delegates that when the KP was first negotiated, Parties agreed targets first, and the following years were spent agreeing the loopholes to accommodate them – loopholes that have contributed to the gigatonnes gap between accounting for emissions and what the atmosphere actually sees.

It is CAN’s long-standing opinion that the underlying rules should be negotiated first, so that the needed reduction target of at-least -40% can be allocated between the Annex B Parties, based on a clear and common understanding of the underlying scope and accounting rules.

Negotiating time in Bonn and for the subsequent intersessionals should therefore be focused on reaching agreement on a number of issues, including:

• Accounting rules that actually reduce net LULUCF emissions;
• Modalities for the flexible mechanisms – to avoid double counting of developed country mitigation and financial support obligations, and keep out inappropriate sectors, such as nuclear and CCS
• The AAU banking loophole
• The scope of new sources and sectors and other accounting rules – the “other issues”
• Commitment period length and base year

These issues need to be agreed, but not agreed at any cost. CAN has strong concerns about some of the proposals currently being discussed, especially for LULUCF.

In the LULUCF negotiations, Annex I Parties are proposing to make their forests part of the climate change problem, rather than part of the solution. They are proposing to increase their annual net emissions from forest management by approximately 400 Mt CO2e without even accounting for it. This type of proposal has absolutely no place in a global climate agreement.

At this session, Annex I Parties must stop the accounting games. Annex I Parties must commit to absolute reductions in net anthropogenic emissions from LULUCF and they must protect their forests and other natural ecosystems as reservoirs of greenhouse gases. Parties could then quickly agree to LULUCF rules that transparently meet these two principles.

Like so much in this process, time is not required to fix LULUCF, only political will and ambition.

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