Publication - 3 December, 2009
The Bali Action Plan (BAP), agreed in 2007, launched a two-year negotiating process to agree a climate deal. The Copenhagen Climate Summit is the deadline for that agreement. One of the key elements of the BAP was the 'shared vision.' The post-Bali process was to address 'a shared vision for long-term cooperative action, including a long-term global goal for emissions reduction, to achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention.'
Executive summary: The shared vision must be for an agreement that avoids the unprecedented threats of climate change facing all life on Earth. The agreement must be comprehensive, ambitious, fair and binding. The shared vision must set out yardsticks against which it is measured. It must be a vision for the transformation of the global economy into one that is low-carbon and sustainable in its production and consumption. It must put down markers for adaptation, forest protection and the levels of technological, financial and capacity building support that will be required to achieve the overall level of ambition.
It should guide governments’ concrete actions on mitigation, forest protection and adaptation over the medium and longer term. This vision must ensure that the world is on course to stay as far below a rise of 2 degrees Celcius as possible. Indeed, Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDs) have called for '1.5 to stay alive' – making it clear that more than 1.5 degrees Celcius of warming would be catastrophic for their countries. Most importantly, the shared vision must be expressed in legal text that leaves no room for reinterpretation afterwards. A fudged political declaration is inadequate and therefore unacceptable.
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