CoP18, Doha: a gateway that leads nowhere

Doha climate talks score very low – perhaps fatally low – on the ambition to keep the world within safe limits, says Sunita Narain  

Mistakes made at Copenhagen may get repeated at Doha climate talks

At the end of the fifth day of the Doha climate talks on November 30, the president of the Conference of Parties (CoP) held an informal meeting of all parties “in the spirit of transparency” to take stock of how negotiations have progressed. The session happened around the time news spread that negotiations will go into closed-door mode—what are called green rooms—when ministers of more than 190 countries arrive early next week in Doha.

Doha debates Kyoto Protocol

Two issues dominated negotiations under the Kyoto Protocol track or ad hoc working group on Kyoto Protocol  (AWG-KP) on the second day of CoP 18 meeting in Doha, Qatar. One, on the second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol (KP 2), and two, the ambition levels with respect to emissions reduction targets of developed countries.

Agenda for Doha

The last conference of the Parties that took place in Durban in 2011 has put climate negotiations at the crossroads again. The decisions taken at Cancun in 2010 supported a bottom-up approach wherein countries agreed to take on voluntary emissions reduction commitments that were not legally binding. This, along with low expectations for the survival of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) post-2012 cast serious doubts on the continued role of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the future of a top-down, multilateral approach in climate negotiations

Bonn sees some progress; Durban Platform agenda adopted

As climate talks at Bonn near conclusion, participating countries finally came to an agreement and adopted the agenda of the Durban Platform. Consensus on the agenda had seemed almost elusive over the course of the past two weeks of negotiations.