As part of our project with Latvian NGO homo ecos:, Kathryn Wright, Bunyod Holmatov, and I are keeping an eye on topics here at COP18 that are important to Latvia. Aviation and maritime transport (shipping) are vital to the Latvian economy, which relies heavily on the sector to maintain connections to other nations in the EU and around the world. The UNFCCC has expressed interest in taking action to limit emissions from this sector, as it is both carbon-intensive and global in nature. Parties agree that regulation of aviation and shipping should occur through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and International Maritime Organization (IMO), but disagree over what “signal” the UNFCCC should send to the ICAO and IMO…
Though my personal Twitter account languishes from disuse, this semester I have started tweeting actively under the FES handle. In Doha, I’ve gotten to put this skill to serious work. Through the International Organizations and Conferences class, David Emmerman, Bunyod Holmatov and I partnered with homo ecos, a Latvian NGO whose primary focus is generating environmental awareness and social movements in Latvia. Our role was to help in climate policy research and capacity building for the larger Latvian NGO community. To do this, we produced a policy paper about key issues for Latvia at COP18 (Short primer: http://homoecos.lv/uploads/files/COP18_Short_Primer(1).pdf). The paper was intended for NGOs and ministries and distributed to the Latvian delegation. We also agreed to facilitate a social media campaign for…
Before I started my graduate studies in August, I was campaigning incessantly with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to drive the Rio+20 Earth Summit process towards real actions and accountability. I am carrying on the same mission to the UN Climate Conference in Doha with fellow students from Yale, but with a new tool at hand – a smartphone and web app called DecisionMakr – to crowdsource accountability.
Why am I obsessed with accountability?
We have had exactly 20 years of negotiations since the first Rio Earth Summit in 1992, out of which the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was officially born. We have had a plethora of summits, conferences, intersesssionals, “informal informals”, and…
The COP18 UN climate negotiations have kicked off without too much fanfare. Host country Qatar is hosting its largest ever conference, with an expected 17,000 participants, including 1,500 media (although I heard only about half of these anticipated media actually got accredited). So far, expectations are quite muted for the conference, with Doha meant to be mainly an “implementation” Conference of Parties (COP) meeting that will not end in the high drama and pressure of its predecessors, Durban, Cancun, and Copenhagen.
This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post and The Metric, the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy’s blog.
Expectations for the global climate negotiations taking place over the next two weeks in Doha, Qatar, are dismally low, and major political transitions in China and the United States – the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases – further temper hope for any kind of game-changing proposal. So what are the more than 7,000 civil society members and 1,500 journalists(myself included) in attendance going to do to make their opinions count and to hold their governments accountable for accomplishing something in Doha?
Well, there’s an app for that, and it’s called DecisionMakr.
Having attended many of these negotiations in the past, I…
Doha is turning into a huge construction site. The COP 18 convention center itself is surrounded by several ongoing construction projects. The high standing cranes seem to signal the country’s ambition in not only expanding its infrastructure but also engaging more in international affairs. The modern, fancy and huge convention center has clearly achieved such ends. It took me more than half an hour to simply walk through the building. I like the giant spider sculpture in the center, the many laptops for the participants to use, the food courts named “Grab n Go” and the wifi server named “Plug n Play”. But when I was about to go the opening ceremony, the volunteer told me the room was full. Last year in Durban, big TV stations lively broadcasted the…
Kivalina clings to the tip of a wisp of a barrier island jutting into the Chukchi Sea. Home to less than 400 people, Kivalina, Alaska, is a windswept collection of buildings: a school, a store, homes. The Inupiat ancestors of Kivalina’s residents have persisted through harsh environmental conditions at or near the village’s current location – 80 miles from the Arctic Circle – for thousands of years. But new environmental challenges may force the residents to leave.
In October, a group of FESers traveled to Kivalina to gain a better understanding of this community’s experience at the frontline of climate change. They learned from a 77-year-old village elder and whale boat captain that whale hunting – a practice which has coloured Inupiat folklore, and provided sustenance…
The next round of United Nations climate negotiations is gearing up to take place starting next week in Doha Qatar, where countries will look to both China and the United States to see whether domestic political events will provide any momentum for the stalling talks. However, because of the proximity of the U.S. Presidential Election and the start of China’s once-in-a-decade leadership transition that will culminate in March, it is not expected that the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) will be bringing too much by way of game-changing developments to Doha. Instead, we can expect most of the discussions in Doha to focus on securing final details for a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol, primarily for the E.U. and now Australia, as well as starting to formulate language for a new deal that will be decided by 2015.
If you think the upcoming Doha Climate Conference will be full of yet more uneventful climate diplomatic fanfare, think again. The Guardian recently reported that the US may be considering diverting substantive elements of climate change governance away from the long-established United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) framework and into an alternative arena – the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF). This move would seriously undermine, or even completely kill the future effectiveness of the UNFCCC. Why might the US to possibly go down this route and what would be the ramifications? Let us take a closer look at both the UNFCCC and the MEF frameworks.
The current UNFCCC framework utilises a consensus-based decision making process, and every word in the…
by Marissa Knodel and Omar Malik
This month, a group of enthusiastic Yale students will take part in the ongoing drama of climate change negotiations in Doha, Qatar. They will participate in the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the global stage where countries have been meeting to tackle climate change since 1992. While the experience will be new for the students, seasoned diplomats are prepared for a familiar scene: from Cancun to Durban to Doha, efforts to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change and prevent harm to millions of vulnerable people around the world have instead turned into deliberations over the process itself.
Even if developed countries were in full compliance with their Kyoto Protocol greenhouse…
