By Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent, The Guardian (UK)
Delegates have been packed off and their homework is to prepare their country's emission reduction plan by early 2015
Weary delegates trudging home from an exhausting and sleep-deprived fortnight of climate change talks in Warsaw may be unwilling to acknowledge it, but the hard work is just beginning. Like schoolchildren after a packed day of lessons, they have been sent back to their national capitals to "do their homework".
By the first quarter of 2015, countries must come forward with their "contributions" to global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, that will come into force from 2020.
Those contributions – not the stronger "commitments" wanted by the developed countries – will be the centrepiece of any new worldwide agreement on climate change, scheduled to be struck in Paris in late 2015. They could take the form of curbs to the future growth in emissions, in the case of developing countries, and absolute reductions much tougher than those agreed up to 2020, for the developed contingent.
The contributions will be set at a national level and overseen domestically, but they will also be subject to "assessment" by other participants. The exact format of this assessment has yet to be established, but will involve attempts to judge whether the contributions are fair and equitable, and commensurate to the challenge of staying within the global carbon budget, set out starkly by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in September.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, told the Guardian: "If delegates leave here with a sense of how much is left to do, then maybe that will focus efforts in the coming 12 months, because without that sense we have all reason to be very concerned."
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said: "We have seen essential progress. Now governments, and especially developed nations, must go back to do their homework so they can put their plans on the table ahead of the Paris conference. A groundswell of action is happening at all levels of society. All major players came to COP19 [the Warsaw talks] to show not only what they have done but to think what more they can do. Next year is also the time for them to turn ideas into further concrete action."
Publishing targets in the first quarter of 2015 do not leave long for the assessment process to take place. However, that timetable has been drawn up chiefly to take account of the realities of the US electoral timetable. The US government announced earlier this year that it would set its post-2020 targets in the first quarter of 2015. That is necessary to ensure that the decision does not get tangled up in the US congressional elections in autumn 2014 – they are likely to be touchy enough, without introducing the incendiary subject of climate change.
Other countries, led by the EU, are sympathetic to the need to adopt this timetable, even though it means time will be squeezed, and some countries may try to take advantage of this to let the clock run down on the Paris talks in December 2015.
There is little indication yet of what the future targets from most countries might look like. The European Union is most advanced on this, and the proposal likely to be put forward is for a 40% cut in emissions, relative to 1990 levels, by 2030.
Getting that agreed by all member states may not be straightforward, however. There was almost an open row in Warsaw between the European commission and the Polish hosts, who were accused by high-level EU officials of deliberately dragging out negotiations, and reopening negotiations in a way that enabled some countries to backtrack on issues that were previously agreed. Poland is notably hostile to tougher emissions targets, and attracted controversy early in the talks by giving a prominent role to the coal industry, that supplies 90% of the country's power.
The biggest factor at these talks was the strong influence of the self-styled "like-minded group of developing countries" (LMDC). That grouping comprises several oil-rich nations including Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Bolivia and Malaysia; the coal-rich and fossil fuel-dependent China and India; and satellite nations including Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Thailand.
The LMDC first emerged just before last year's Doha conference, and in response to the Durban meeting in 2011 at which governments agreed to work on a post-2020 agreement. The only two countries to hold out on the "Durban platform" until the final hours were China and India.
At Warsaw, the efforts of the LMDC focused on attempting to reintroduce into the key texts a restatement of the separation of countries into "developed" and "developing" that was first set out in 1992 and enshrined in the 1997 Kyoto protocol, under which developing countries bore no obligations on their emissions and rich nations faced steep cuts.
The US, the EU and other developed countries regarded this separation as having been left behind at Copenhagen in 2009, which marked the first time both developed and developing countries signed up under a single agreement to curb their emissions.
They argue that this new arrangement is needed, as the world has moved on in 20 years: China is now the world's biggest emitter and second biggest economy, and combined emissions from developing countries are on track to overtake those of the developed world by 2020.
Arguments over either keeping or redrawing this "firewall" between developed and developing countries are likely to dominate the negotiations in the run-up to Paris. Todd Stern, the US special envoy for climate change, told the Guardian: "This is now the major faultline at the talks, and [the countries' insistence] on deciding who does what in a new agreement based on unchanging 1992 categories is more pronounced than at Durban and poses the biggest challenge to the negotiations over the next two years."
The Indian environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, said after the talks that as far as he understood, "the firewall exists and it will continue to exist".
The acrimony over the Polish role must also call into question the UN's inclination to hosting the talks in countries that have a history of hostility to tackling climate change, in the hope that the prestige of holding the talks would persuade governments to take a more constructive stance.
That was hardly apparent in Warsaw, when the COP19 president, Polish environment minister Marcin Korolec, was demoted to a mere envoy in the middle of the talks – timing that did not show a great deal of respect for the UN process.
Last year's choice of Doha in Qatar also surprised many, and few failed to note the irony of the country with the highest per capita emissions taking on the role. In 2008, the talks were also held in Poland, in the city of Poznań, and some would argue it produced insufficient progress for Copenhagen to work the following year.
Next year's hosts will be Peru, and the disruptive element there is likely to come from the same source as in this year's talks – the LMDCs, many of whom are South American.
Peru, perhaps mindful of its role as next year's COP president, is not formally a part of the like-minded group. But with so many of its close neighbours and political allies, forming the core group, it must throw a deep shadow over the next round of talks.
As negotiators return to their national capitals to do their homework, the outlook for the next exams is for a tough test of everyone's resolve.
Delegates have been packed off and their homework is to prepare their country's emission reduction plan by early 2015
Weary delegates trudging home from an exhausting and sleep-deprived fortnight of climate change talks in Warsaw may be unwilling to acknowledge it, but the hard work is just beginning. Like schoolchildren after a packed day of lessons, they have been sent back to their national capitals to "do their homework".
By the first quarter of 2015, countries must come forward with their "contributions" to global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, that will come into force from 2020.
Those contributions – not the stronger "commitments" wanted by the developed countries – will be the centrepiece of any new worldwide agreement on climate change, scheduled to be struck in Paris in late 2015. They could take the form of curbs to the future growth in emissions, in the case of developing countries, and absolute reductions much tougher than those agreed up to 2020, for the developed contingent.
The contributions will be set at a national level and overseen domestically, but they will also be subject to "assessment" by other participants. The exact format of this assessment has yet to be established, but will involve attempts to judge whether the contributions are fair and equitable, and commensurate to the challenge of staying within the global carbon budget, set out starkly by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in September.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, told the Guardian: "If delegates leave here with a sense of how much is left to do, then maybe that will focus efforts in the coming 12 months, because without that sense we have all reason to be very concerned."
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said: "We have seen essential progress. Now governments, and especially developed nations, must go back to do their homework so they can put their plans on the table ahead of the Paris conference. A groundswell of action is happening at all levels of society. All major players came to COP19 [the Warsaw talks] to show not only what they have done but to think what more they can do. Next year is also the time for them to turn ideas into further concrete action."
Publishing targets in the first quarter of 2015 do not leave long for the assessment process to take place. However, that timetable has been drawn up chiefly to take account of the realities of the US electoral timetable. The US government announced earlier this year that it would set its post-2020 targets in the first quarter of 2015. That is necessary to ensure that the decision does not get tangled up in the US congressional elections in autumn 2014 – they are likely to be touchy enough, without introducing the incendiary subject of climate change.
Other countries, led by the EU, are sympathetic to the need to adopt this timetable, even though it means time will be squeezed, and some countries may try to take advantage of this to let the clock run down on the Paris talks in December 2015.
There is little indication yet of what the future targets from most countries might look like. The European Union is most advanced on this, and the proposal likely to be put forward is for a 40% cut in emissions, relative to 1990 levels, by 2030.
Getting that agreed by all member states may not be straightforward, however. There was almost an open row in Warsaw between the European commission and the Polish hosts, who were accused by high-level EU officials of deliberately dragging out negotiations, and reopening negotiations in a way that enabled some countries to backtrack on issues that were previously agreed. Poland is notably hostile to tougher emissions targets, and attracted controversy early in the talks by giving a prominent role to the coal industry, that supplies 90% of the country's power.
The biggest factor at these talks was the strong influence of the self-styled "like-minded group of developing countries" (LMDC). That grouping comprises several oil-rich nations including Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Bolivia and Malaysia; the coal-rich and fossil fuel-dependent China and India; and satellite nations including Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Thailand.
The LMDC first emerged just before last year's Doha conference, and in response to the Durban meeting in 2011 at which governments agreed to work on a post-2020 agreement. The only two countries to hold out on the "Durban platform" until the final hours were China and India.
At Warsaw, the efforts of the LMDC focused on attempting to reintroduce into the key texts a restatement of the separation of countries into "developed" and "developing" that was first set out in 1992 and enshrined in the 1997 Kyoto protocol, under which developing countries bore no obligations on their emissions and rich nations faced steep cuts.
The US, the EU and other developed countries regarded this separation as having been left behind at Copenhagen in 2009, which marked the first time both developed and developing countries signed up under a single agreement to curb their emissions.
They argue that this new arrangement is needed, as the world has moved on in 20 years: China is now the world's biggest emitter and second biggest economy, and combined emissions from developing countries are on track to overtake those of the developed world by 2020.
Arguments over either keeping or redrawing this "firewall" between developed and developing countries are likely to dominate the negotiations in the run-up to Paris. Todd Stern, the US special envoy for climate change, told the Guardian: "This is now the major faultline at the talks, and [the countries' insistence] on deciding who does what in a new agreement based on unchanging 1992 categories is more pronounced than at Durban and poses the biggest challenge to the negotiations over the next two years."
The Indian environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, said after the talks that as far as he understood, "the firewall exists and it will continue to exist".
The acrimony over the Polish role must also call into question the UN's inclination to hosting the talks in countries that have a history of hostility to tackling climate change, in the hope that the prestige of holding the talks would persuade governments to take a more constructive stance.
That was hardly apparent in Warsaw, when the COP19 president, Polish environment minister Marcin Korolec, was demoted to a mere envoy in the middle of the talks – timing that did not show a great deal of respect for the UN process.
Last year's choice of Doha in Qatar also surprised many, and few failed to note the irony of the country with the highest per capita emissions taking on the role. In 2008, the talks were also held in Poland, in the city of Poznań, and some would argue it produced insufficient progress for Copenhagen to work the following year.
Next year's hosts will be Peru, and the disruptive element there is likely to come from the same source as in this year's talks – the LMDCs, many of whom are South American.
Peru, perhaps mindful of its role as next year's COP president, is not formally a part of the like-minded group. But with so many of its close neighbours and political allies, forming the core group, it must throw a deep shadow over the next round of talks.
As negotiators return to their national capitals to do their homework, the outlook for the next exams is for a tough test of everyone's resolve.
