After the first day of negotiations here in Bangkok it’s becoming clear that Asia is where the climate action’s at. Japan has increased its target to 25%, which resulted in public praise from other delegations, in contrast to the complete lack of public praise when New Zealand belatedly announced its proposed target in Bonn in August.
Both the Chinese and Indian leaders have made statements at the United Nations General Assembly and in their own capitals showing they are more willing to take action to tackle climate change.
But it is Indonesia’s announcement that it will reduce its emissions by 26% below business as usual by 2020 unilaterally and by up to 41% below business as usual with support from developed countries that is really great news. This country is much poorer than New Zealand (its per capita GDP is $3,728 compared with New Zealand’s $26,610).
So will New Zealand reciprocate by lifting its target in response to the increase in commitment we’re now seeing from Asia? I doubt it. Lets face it: Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee has very quietly canned the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy and wants to increase mining in our public conservation land; changes to the New Zealand ETS will subsidise big polluters while allowing them to increase their emissions, and the Government won't lift a finger to stop the import of palm kernels – imports it admits cause damage. New Zealand is a laggard in these negotiations.
So what’s my assessment after day one of the Bangkok negotiations? Well, you know when the negotiations are heating up when sparks begin to fly. And yesterday afternoon they certainly did with a very public spat between the US and Indian delegations. So I think that delegates are finally gearing up to do business. It makes it all a bit scary – the negotiations between now and Copenhagen will sort out who does what to save ourselves from climate change, and whether the world will even try.
At the opening of the negotiations Denmark’s climate change and energy Minister Connie Hedegaard made a strong plea for negotiators to shrink the very large negotiating text into something that the politicians at Copenhagen can make decisions on. Right now the negotiating text is a complete mess.
To cap off the state of play at the end of day one, both China and India are showing signs that they are willing to do their fair share in cutting emissions, Japan has reiterated its new target and the EU has begun to wake up to the fact that the US has an extremely weak target. Yet the combined target of the industrialised world, even with Japan’s new commitment, remains at only 10-17% by 2020 at 1990 levels, woefully short of the 40% needed to keep global temperature rise to well below two degrees C. Let’s see if little old New Zealand will become a leader or remain a laggard.