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After two weeks of heated negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, the international community successfully reached an agreement on a path forward to a post-Kyoto climate treaty. What was it like inside the room when tempers flared? How did the United States' announcement of another major emitters meeting play at the negotiations? Specifically, what was decided at the meeting and will the "Bali Roadmap" effectively pave the way to a new agreement? During today's OnPoint, David Doniger, climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, gives his perspective on the discussions.
Monica Trauzzi: Welcome to OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. Joining me today is David Doniger, the climate policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. David, thanks for coming on the show.
David Doniger: Thanks for having me.
Monica Trauzzi: David, you just got back from the U.N. climate discussions in Bali. Assess the final agreement for us. Would you consider the meeting a success?
David Doniger: Yeah, it was a success because we have started a two-year negotiation on the next treaty, the treaty to follow the Kyoto Protocol, and we really have only one last chance to get this right before we are facing really serious global warming impacts, last chance to avoid them. And this meeting triggered a two-year negotiation, which will involve both developed countries and developing countries on the next round of emission cuts and other matters like deforestation.
Monica Trauzzi: But did it go as far as you were hoping it would go when you left for the meeting?
David Doniger: Well, you always hope that you can get more commitments at the beginning from some of the players. I'd say I'm most disappointed of course with our own delegation, because the missing ingredient to make real progress is a commitment by the United States to cap and reduce its emissions. We find our delegation asking a lot of developing countries. And developing countries are ready to talk about things now that they would have ruled off-limits two years ago, and certainly 10 years ago, but they are looking for our leadership and it's not there yet.
Monica Trauzzi: OK, so no specific targets were agreed upon or included. So, does the deal sufficiently pave the way as we look toward Copenhagen 2009? Does it do what we need it to do?
David Doniger: Well, it opens the door for developed countries to take on tighter targets and for the United States to take on a target for the first time. It opens the door for developing countries to agree to concrete actions, measurable, reportable, verifiable actions that will slow the growth of their emissions and in later years actually turn their emissions down. So the elements are there. And the third element is an opening for agreement on reducing deforestation in the countries where the forests are in peril. And one final element is a serious opening to talk about adaptation needs of the poorest countries. So all the elements are there, but it will take a lot of work by the developed countries, and especially by the United States to make this work.
Monica Trauzzi: Towards the end of the meeting things seemed to get a bit heated. From where you were sitting, how bad did it get in those negotiations when it was becoming clear that the U.S. was not agreeing with what Europe was putting forward? Describe the level of frustration you saw.
David Doniger: Actually, what happened is there was a lot of frustration a couple of nights before and they always leave, in these negotiations, everything important to the end. Jim Connaughton said something unfortunate, a couple days earlier he said, "We are leading, but sometimes leadership requires others to fall in line." And this really irritated people from other countries who doubted both halves of that premise. And things got a little better on Friday. They still didn't reach agreement by late Friday night, 3 a.m. they called a halt to the meeting until the next day. They ran all day Saturday in overtime. Overnight the secretary had put forward, through the president of the meeting, a compromise text that had these elements that I described, developed countries considering targets and other actions, developing countries considering actions to cut their emissions growth. The meeting opened on Saturday with India proposing what really was a cosmetic wording change, moving a few words in their sentence around. The Europeans saw it as cosmetic and agreed to the change. A number of other countries agreed to the change. Then comes the United States and they say, "We object." And the spirit of the meeting which had been heading for consensus was suddenly turned around. There was an hour long debate after that where the United States delegation got pounded by other countries, developing countries insisting that they were making unprecedented openings to consider negotiating things they had never been willing to put on the table before. And what they wanted was something from the United States, it wasn't coming. Finally, I think the United States, in the interval, the U.S. delegation called home for new instructions and an hour later retreated. So the meeting was saved, but it was the most amazing public display that I've seen in 15, 20 years of going to negotiations like this. You don't see that kind of rancor out in the open.
Monica Trauzzi: So, beyond that, any surprises overall from the meeting?
David Doniger: No, in that respect I think other than that we are able to, as I said, get these negotiations launched. But now, if we want to make some progress, the U.S. has to have something to offer. Now it would be a lot easier if the United States government, the administration could endorse something like the Lieberman-Warner legislation and then go abroad saying, "This is what we favor. This is what we could do." There's no sign of that yet from the administration. So I think most people looking at this two-year thing, knowing that at the halfway point there is a presidential election and the United States is going to field a different team in the second half. I hope we don't have to wait that long to get some progress, but it is possible to pull this off even if we don't have a serious U.S. offer until 2009.
Monica Trauzzi: And was there a feeling at the meeting that delegations are sort of looking towards the 2008 presidential election and paying a lot of attention to the politics of the election?
David Doniger: Well, first, many other countries, they don't have as natural an understanding as we do of the American system. In parliamentary systems the government and the parliament are on the same page. In this country the administration and the Congress can be on very different pages and that's what's happening now. Senator Kerry was there, members of Senator Boxer's and Senator Warner's staff and other staff were there, state leaders were there, NGOs and business leaders were there all saying, all testifying to the changes that are happening in the United States. So there's intense interest in the policy shift that's going on here.
Monica Trauzzi: What about China and India? How did they do at the meeting?
David Doniger: China was very forthcoming compared to what you might have expected a couple of years ago, also South Africa and Brazil opening a door. Another way to put it was that there was, up to this point, an absolute position by the developing countries formed in Berlin in 1995 that there would be no new commitments for them. Well, the Berlin Wall came down because they are now willing to talk about taking actions to curb their own emissions. They want the developed world to be acting and they want assistance from the developed world, but the opening is there. And China was very forthcoming on this. India, a little less so, but India came onto the consensus on that basis at the end as well.
Monica Trauzzi: The Bush administration is now calling for the 17 major emitters to meet in Hawaii in January.
David Doniger: Right.
Monica Trauzzi: At the end of January. How do you see the announcement of that meeting? How did that play into the Bali discussions and how do you think that this is going to impact the roadmap that was just put out in Bali?
David Doniger: Most other countries are very suspicious of the Major Emitters Initiative. They understand that the problem can't be solved without action by those countries. They represent most of the emissions in the world. But the Bush administration's versions of a major emitters approach is faulty, because it's put forward, even though they don't say this, it's really seen as an alternative to negotiating in the U.N. And the other reason that it's problematic is the United States has put nothing on the table. It's called the countries together in Washington and they came. They expected to see some new proposals from the Bush administration and there was nothing. There's nothing promised for Honolulu. There's another meeting being talked about in France, but the United States, which is the sponsor of the whole effort, has no policy initiatives which it's putting forward. Talk about a long-term goal, but the United States has put forward no view about what the long-term goal should be. At the very end Under Secretary Dobriansky said, the United States, something to the effect that the United States sees the need for cutting emissions by half by 2050 across the world. Well, that's a start, but we need to see a lot more if there's going to be any meat on the bones of the major emitter's process. So, at the moment, I see it petering out even though there is a great need for those countries to come together on a strategy within the total U.N. negotiation.
Monica Trauzzi: All right. I think we're going to end it right there.
David Doniger: All right. Thank you.
Monica Trauzzi: Thank you for coming on the show. This is OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. Thanks for watching.
[End of Audio]
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