Hopefully the meeting won’t descend into the kind of rancor that involves air-powered weaponry — unless you count speechifying and hot air, of which there is certain to be an abundance. But there should also be plenty of significant discussions, as this conference marks an important milestone in the process of deciding a successor to the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period, which ends in 2012.

Specifically, Bali could deliver a mandate or roadmap toward the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009 (via Poznan, Poland, in 2008), where a deal on post-2012 policy is, pretty much all parties agree, meant to be finalized. Yes, Bali may still be “negotiating the negotiations,” but at least it’s better than “discussing the possibility of talking about negotiations,” which has been the operative mode of intergovernmental interaction on climate for the last five years or so.

The environmental NGO umbrella group Climate Action Network put out a pre-conference statement in which it was “quite clear in its demands for the next two weeks.” Item No. 1: “As part of the Kyoto Protocol track of the Bali Mandate, the expanded workplan of the Ad-Hoc Working Group (AWG) will need to include discussion of a number of important issues related to Annex I commitments post 2012.”

Yikes — you know you’re in trouble when even “clear NGO demands” require a glossary. But that’s the nature of the beast, and to be fair, if you’ve ever had trouble agreeing with your friends which video to rent and are reduced to a quivering mass of indecision and discord in front of wall after wall of perfectly good options, then try figuring out how to completely restructure energy use and major parts of the economy among almost 200 countries, many of which don’t even want to be in the room. It’s no wonder just getting in and out of this U.N. Blockbuster without throttling each other can seem like an accomplishment in itself.

To Rent, Perchance to Own

The Byzantine nature of the negotiations is due both to sheer technical complexity and to a need to accommodate so many positions. When discussions get too obvious, and winners and losers are plain to see, it’s dangerous to the process. But of course, no major decisions can be made without reaching such a point, and Bali is part of the process of erecting supporting structures and stringing safety nets for that moment when parties finally step out on a limb.

In Bali, there are three main tracks to the negotiations, which were launched at the U.N. climate meeting two years ago in Montreal. The first is the aforementioned Ad-Hoc Working Group, which is discussing future targets for developed country parties to Kyoto. But of course a lot of the controversy surrounds those countries that don’t have targets or are outside of Kyoto — namely the United States and large developing countries like China. These are included in the second process, which is a discussion under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the overarching agreement of which Kyoto is a spinoff, and to which even the U.S. is a party. This “dialogue on long-term cooperative action” has been light on details, but is as much as anything a means of keeping people talking rather than causing mischief, and it expires at Bali. The third track is a formal process mandated under Article 9 of the Protocol, which is a periodic review of its general adequacy — this was all but ignored when it arose the first time two years ago, but in theory offers a chance to structure a broad-ranging review of the process this time around.

However it is formally agreed, it is clear that there are some pretty basic issues that need to be addressed. These include:

Setting a long-term emissions reduction goal: The European Union wants to see global emissions reduced by 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, which is likely a minimum to achieve their goal of limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius. Without some flesh on the bone of the general U.N. commitment to “avoid dangerous anthropogenic warming,” it will be hard to argue specific reduction levels at upcoming negotiations.

Deciding the next reduction targets among developed countries: A process decided in last-minute chaotic discussions in Kyoto, specific reduction targets could be set using some more coherent methodology for the next round, agreeing on overall reductions and an achievable plan to share the burden. However, the scale of needed cuts is daunting and could cause some governments to balk — 60 to 80 percent cuts by 2050 (in the context of a global 50 percent cut, meaning that developing countries have some more breathing room to reflect the fact that they start with much lower per capita emissions).

Finding a way to incorporate countries that do not currently have targets: This is perhaps the trickiest of all issues, because it is a catch-22: the U.S. has always said it will not take on targets without large developing countries like China and India doing the same, but these have said they will not take on targets until those responsible for most emissions, both historical and current, show success in cutting theirs first. The key may be to develop a stepwise approach toward targets that create confidence on both sides of the issue, rather than all-or-nothing posturing that is doomed to fail.

Restructuring the Clean Development Mechanism: This project-based crediting system was designed to allow developed countries to meet their targets more cost-effectively through emission-reduction projects in developing countries, while having benefits for the hosts. The problem is that it is proving difficult to separate out activities that would have happened anyway from those the CDM is actually causing to take place, such that a large percentage (as much as 40 percent according to the NGO WWF) may have been given credit for making no extra effort. The net result is a rise rather than a cut in emissions. Also problematic is the limited scale of the CDM — despite its rapid growth over the past two years, after a slow start, the CDM is only scratching the surface of the massive restructuring of energy supply and other sectors needed in the developing world. To make a larger contribution, the system will have to be made less unwieldy, broader, and more effective.

Addressing deforestation: Accounting for something like 20 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, not to mention the myriad other environmental consequences, deforestation has been among the most difficult issues to address under the climate regime. While crediting for forest management and reforestation has been included for developed countries, project-based crediting for reforestation in developing countries has gotten off to a slow start due to concerns about how to account for them and guarantee permanent positive impact. But, most important, there is no mechanism to encourage avoiding deforestation in the first place, and while there are good reasons not to want to give people credit for not doing something, this is an obvious inconsistency.

Addressing adaptation to climate impacts: As the science shows the seriousness of inevitable impacts, not to mention those that could arise if we fail to curb additional warming, adaptation is rising on the agenda. However, there are some initial commitments made by developed countries to developing ones that have long been unmatched by appropriate plans and funding. Developing countries see this as a key element to their overall willingness to participate in a process that could lead to some of them eventually taking their own emission-reduction targets.

Tackling emissions from aviation and shipping: As they often occur in international airspace or waters, aviation and shipping emissions have fallen outside the scope of the protocol. But both are increasingly important sources of greenhouse gases that can’t be allowed to fall between the cracks. Among other things, parties like the E.U., which wants to include aviation emissions in its Emissions Trading Scheme, need to feel they are supported by the international community.

The Cheese Stands Alone

That an agreement in Copenhagen two years from now has been set as a goal not only by the European Union and other U.N.-friendly parties, but also the United States, is no mean feat. It may represent a considerable turnaround by the Bush administration, which has been a major sticking point in the whole U.N. climate process. It has not been at all clear that the U.S. would participate in or condone any U.N.-led agreement to follow on to the reviled Protocol, and a great deal of effort has been expended by pro-U.N. negotiators to ensure that result.

Perhaps the groundswell of popular feeling on climate change has just been too much to resist — in the past two and half years, there’s been an unprecedented shift of attention to the issue, with Hurricane Katrina, Al Gore, Nicholas Stern, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change all lending to the sense of urgency, and connecting with the public in a way that for years had seemed impossible.

The U.S. is now more or less isolated as a Kyoto nonratifier (unless you count its good friends Libya and Syria), with the victory of Kevin Rudd in Australia, who ratified Kyoto as his first official act. His predecessor, John Howard, had been a stalwart U.S. ally in all retrograde activity from the war on Iraq to war on the climate, and the reversal of government there may be a harbinger of things to come for the U.S.

However, not all is rosy, as Canada is in some ways looking even worse off than the U.S.: it has ratified Kyoto, but the federal government looks set to simply ignore its commitments. This will surely create a crisis of confidence in the international regime if there are no repercussions.

In addition, it is not clear what the U.S. considers “progress.” Despite President Bush’s new warm rhetoric on the U.N., substantive areas of disagreement remain. Primarily, the U.S. still opposes binding emission-reduction targets set at the international level, although it has suggested it could adopt national targets. The U.S. strategy could thus be to support a U.N. agreement on long-term global reductions, but with each country establishing a target for itself — an outcome unacceptable to most other parties. Under this model, more cooperation would be found in international technology partnerships like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the Methane-to-Markets Partnership, or the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, which are essentially toothless forums for information exchange.

Somehow, though, it is hard not to be optimistic, given how badly things are going. That is to say, as evidence of the seriousness of climate change is finally breaking through to the popular consciousness, there is a groundswell of public and political concern that would have seemed like a pipe dream only two years ago. Failing to iron out a process in Bali leading to agreement in Copenhagen would be a waste of a historic opportunity. And if backward governments refuse to listen to reason in Bali, down at Kuta Beach there may still be plenty of guys selling just the kind of equipment needed to get the point across.

Hey, wanna save the planet?

The event is a typical U.N. phenomenon — a regular meeting of signatory countries to an international agreement, meant to chart progress and hammer out further commitments. But this year’s UNFCCC COP is special, because it is also the occasion of the first Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol — which, despite being short of loud music and booze, and lacking peyote entirely, will be a veritable Burning Man for the climate-policy set.

Since agreement of detailed rules for the Kyoto Protocol four years ago in Morocco, most time at COPs has been spent twiddling thumbs, waiting for Kyoto to enter into force. It hardly made sense to tackle any new issues while the protocol, the main event, languished. Now, however, the meeting takes on fresh significance. Thus we get the first-ever MOP, concurrent with the COP, between Nov. 28 and Dec. 9.

Officially they are separate meetings, but with significant overlap, since almost all countries (the U.S. and Australia being glaring exceptions) are party to both agreements. We can expect some pomp and circumstance to mark the protocol finally coming into force and the continuation of some long-running detailed discussions interesting to few. And then there will be some new items of real importance — including the first stabs at what will happen when Kyoto ends in 2012.

MOPping Up the Pieces

The 156 countries at the MOP face an agenda containing some substantial issues. First among them is that all of the “decisions” taken until now that substantively affect the protocol — from rules of procedure to the design of emissions-trading schemes — are only drafts, and must be confirmed by the first MOP. This primarily means approving the Marrakech Accords, hammered out four years ago, which filled in the details of the protocol and gave countries the confidence to ratify it. While no glitches are anticipated (barring the now traditional Saudi attempt at sabotage), approving these decisions is vital.

Quebec and call.

The Saudis may keep their powder dry for another agenda item, however — settling on the compliance regime. Or, in other words, how to enforce the agreement. The protocol is legally binding, but there have been attempts to make it more hard-hitting with things like penalties for failing to meet reduction targets. This regime can be decided either by a decision of the MOP or by amendment of the protocol — the Saudis have proposed the latter, which would mean another round of national deliberations that could take years. A decision, on the other hand, would take minutes. The UNFCCC Secretariat’s agenda is a bit transparent regarding their view of how this will play out: it says (paraphrasing): “A: Take into account Saudi proposal for an amendment. B: Adopt the decision anyway.”

Another important discussion, which basically all parties agree needs to be tackled, is about how to make the clean-development mechanism (CDM) work better. This is the system whereby developed countries with reduction targets can buy “credit” from emission-reduction projects in developing countries. The process is currently filled with expensive hoops; many criticize the executive board of the CDM for working too slowly, and say there are too many rules that, while designed to ensure only real reductions earn credit, make the process almost not worth pursuing. There are ideas afoot ranging from increasing board funding to dispensing with many of the rules, with possibly negative environmental repercussions.

What also needs to be addressed at the political level is what happens to the CDM after Kyoto’s first commitment period ends in 2012 — if some other system takes its place, investors need to know that the stream of future credits coming from their current investments won’t go lost. A guarantee that the CDM will continue in the future is needed to make it work now.

Which brings us to the most significant item on the agenda, dictated by Article 3 Paragraph 9 of the Kyoto Protocol. This states that the discussion of future, post-2012 targets needs to begin seven years before the end of the first commitment period — in other words, this year.

But Hey, No Pressure

With the U.S. and Australia out of Kyoto and debate raging in Europe and Japan about how to reach an agreeable deal next time around, there’s no telling what the future of the protocol will be. With the system’s entire design in question, the process of deciding targets won’t be the orderly task the drafters imagined.

So what will the future hold? The E.U. tends to favor the approach of continuing Kyoto-type targets and inviting the more-developed of developing countries (like South Korea or Mexico) to accept them, while coming up with transitional commitments for other countries. This could pull China and India into a step-wise process of making more specific commitments, for example. However, the U.S. seems intent on rejecting any agreement with fixed targets and timetables, in keeping with President Bush’s general rejection of international agreements that put external pressure on internal policy and economic decisions. Developing countries, meanwhile, are generally wary of taking on anything smelling of a fixed target, given that they have pressing development needs and low emissions compared to developed countries.

While the U.S. claims to offer an alternative in the form of technology development and bilateral or regional agreements (such as the Asia-Pacific Partnership), it is hard to take this seriously with no concurrent vision of how it will lead to real emissions reductions. However, as the world’s biggest emitter, the U.S. needs to do little to make other countries rethink their approaches — the U.K., for example, is bending over backwards trying to find a way to reconcile the E.U. and U.S.

We can’t expect Montreal to hammer out any clear pathway to Kyoto or non-Kyoto futures. The fact is that international negotiation is slow business. But we can expect Montreal to adopt some principles, probably short of an actual action plan — and then subsequent COP/MOPs will have the unenviable task of working out some kind of compromise.

It is always possible, of course, that while paying lip service to the U.N. process, bodies like the G8 and the sorts of regional and bilateral agreements the U.S. is engaged in will slowly chip away at the content of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, to the point where it faces a crisis. If no real progress is made in the next couple of years, it will be time to reassess. Meanwhile, the usual diplomatic give-and-take will grind slowly along. One thing’s for sure: it’s no party.

The Maritim Hotel.

Photo: IISD.

The Maritim Hotel in Bonn, Germany is the regular site of the bureaucrat-level United Nations climate change meetings that take place between the ministerial sessions known as Conferences of the Parties. The building has the air of the showpiece hotel in an impoverished third-world capital: a chandelier and mirror quotient that’s off the charts, but leaves you feeling oppressed rather than impressed.

In previous years, the intensity of the climate negotiations created a buzz that held people’s attention through night after night of $8 stale-white-bread-and-pink-mayonnaise sandwiches. But since the Bonn Agreement sealed the political deal here last summer, and the Marrakech Accords nailed down the details, the tenor of the meetings have changed. Aside from a couple of headline issues, like defining the word “forest” (I’m not kidding) and establishing whether scientific research should be linked to the negotiations on climate (still not kidding, unfortunately), most of the meetings have been dedicated to dusting off long-shelved agenda items for their day in the gloom of the Maritim’s marbled halls.

But that’s not to say there wasn’t real action; quite the contrary. It wasn’t on the official agenda, but when you come right down to it, this meeting was all about — what else? — the World Cup. The lounge area with the large-screen TV was easily the most well-attended venue at the conference, and the atmosphere of international camaraderie was uplifting, though relations occasionally threatened to deteriorate over the problem of simultaneous matches. Channel-surfing fisticuffs nearly break out over whether Germany-Cameroon or Ireland-Saudi Arabia took precedence. That conflict was resolved using the Peace through Strength tactic when a big German sat right next to the TV.

Somewhere in the middle of the soccer madness, it dawned on the NGO reps in attendance that tapping into the sports mania could be the key to mobilizing international attention and finally getting something done about climate change. On Tuesday, the Climate Action Network news bulletin ECO published research from Great Britain showing a noticeable dip in electricity use during and after the England-Argentina match. A group considering rules for generating carbon dioxide credits from clean energy projects was in attendance, and their excitement was palpable. They were the ones who came up with the signature idea of the meeting: soccer as a mitigation measure. From there, the ideas started flying. What about policies requiring games to be held during peak electricity-use hours as a load-shifting mechanism? Or avoiding night games to cut down on electricity use — play during the day and get solar energy credits?

Unfortunately the whole concept hit an old, familiar adversary: the United States. The rest of the world could go ahead with soccer as a mitigation measure, but the Bush administration had its own plan: baseball. The soccer plan is fatally flawed, the Americans insisted, because it’s only played once a week, whereas baseball is an almost daily event. Furthermore, baseball games can last over twice as long as soccer matches. Even more important, recent studies by the International Panel on Climate Change showed that 34.5 percent of people who watch baseball games on television fall asleep before the 7th inning and can stay that way for hours, dramatically reducing energy use. Finally, the plentiful commercial breaks would provide crucial engagement of the private sector.

Stung by allegations that the U.S. was further distancing itself from the world community on the climate change issue, American negotiators pointed out that baseball too has a World Series, and the fact that U.S. teams keep winning it only shows their natural superiority. Canadians, who are on the fence about the Kyoto Protocol, eventually decided that they’d prefer to participate in the soccer scheme but should also be eligible for credits from the baseball system. They argue that while they feed two teams into the U.S. league, this only reduces energy use in the U.S., because no one in Canada bothers to watch them.

Negotiations on the issue will continue — after the games, naturally.

That was some of the reassuring news coming out of Montreal earlier this month, during the 10th anniversary meeting of the committee in charge of financing the phase out of ozone-depleting gases in developing countries. Among other things, the Multilateral Fund of the Montreal Protocol approved World Bank projects to finalize CFC phase-out in four countries, ahead of schedule. Another success in the Hair Spray revolution.

But success notwithstanding, looking at the detail of what the fund is approving could make some eyebrows start to arch. During the meeting, the Executive Committee vetted 47 projects to replace CFC-11 with HCFC-141b, and 46 projects to replace CFC-12 with HFC-134a. Odd, considering HCFCs are also slated to be phased out by the selfsame Montreal Protocol. Odd, considering the Kyoto Protocol to limit greenhouse gas emissions put HFC-134a on its hit list. High on its hit list: HFC-134a is 1,300 times more potent than CO2 in warming the planet. Odd, considering that non-ozone-depleting, non-greenhouse gas alternatives are readily available for the same applications. What gives?

HCFCs are touted as a “transitional” substance, necessary as readily available replacements for CFCs, but bad enough (10 percent as bad as CFCs in the long term) to warrant eventual phase-out themselves. Unfortunately, the 10 percent figure overlooks the short-term impact of HCFCs, which in the decade following release are 30 percent as bad as CFCs. It is during this period that ozone depletion will reach its peak. HCFC phase-out plans are also fuzzy. In the developing world, the phase-out is supposed to be complete by 2040, but no interim targets have been set. And as the Multilateral Fund pays for conversion to HCFCs, it makes it clear to recipients that the fund will not be responsible for a second phase-out later. Businesses in developing countries will have to shoulder that responsibility when the time comes. But will they be able to?

Unlike the interim HCFCs, HFCs earn a clean bill of health as “permanent solutions” in the jargon of the Montreal Protocol. This is because they have no ozone-depleting potential and thus fulfill the mandate of the protocol. This blinkered environmental view ignores the impact HFCs could have on global warming. Concerns about HFCs have led most of Northern Europe to adopt a refrigerator technology developed by Greenpeace ten years ago, the Greenfreeze, which incorporates an isobutane refrigerant that has negligible warming impact and yields improved system efficiency. Yet by 1998, only 18 of 311 projects financed by the Multilateral Fund used similar technology.

Many consider the long-term use of HCFCs and HFCs as the price paid in order to gain the cooperation of the chemical industry in the Montreal Protocol. Because these substances have more recent patents and are significantly more expensive to purchase than CFCs, the big chemical concerns like Dupont, Honeywell, and ICI Klea aren’t doing badly, even while losing business to other alternative substances. They’re getting rid of a product that permeated daily life worldwide for decades, while staying in business and earning environmental kudos — a major coup. But revisions to the Montreal Protocol establishing quicker HCFC phase-out dates, and the Kyoto Protocol’s inclusion of HFCs, have understandably put fluorocarbon manufacturers on the defensive, as they watch their remaining aces slip from their sleeve.

Phased-out and Confused

The significance of replacing ozone-depleting gases with greenhouse gases has long been recognized — and long been downplayed. Industry has claimed a kind of moral immunity from global warming concerns in exchange for agreeing to the phase-out of CFCs, which are also powerful greenhouse gases. That makes their phase-out all the more important — but then why replace them with other greenhouse gases, when alternatives are there? The relationship between ozone-depleting gases and greenhouse gases was the subject of a handful of heated debates early on in the history of the Montreal Protocol, leading to little more than a workshop and a resolution exhorting caution. Predictably, neither had much impact. Switching to hydrocarbons like isobutane could have had a huge impact, significantly reducing the greenhouse gas emissions problem. But conservatism about new technologies, and unwillingness to accept the additional expense of training and safety precautions, delayed their early adoption. As the years have passed, it has become harder and harder to consider alternative substances; markets are standardizing around fluorinated substances, and smaller enterprises that are interested in alternatives have even less money to buck the trend.

In fact, the questions about alternatives don’t stop with HCFCs and HFCs. There are foam technologies based on the toxic methylene chloride, and solvent replacements using trichloroethylene, recently linked to infertility in men. While both of these substances are accepted for industrial use, does the multilateral fund have a duty, as part of a United Nations environmental agreement, to undertake a more holistic review of their human and environmental impact? Shouldn’t U.N. protocols on ozone and climate work towards the same long-term environmental goals? To several multilateral fund donor countries, most notably the United States, the answer is a resounding “No.” For years, the U.S. has stymied efforts to give preference to non-fluorocarbon alternatives (coincidentally helping a powerful domestic industry) and has kept a firm grip on the reins of the protocol’s commitments, never letting them stray beyond the letter of the CFC phase-out deal, at the lowest cost possible.

The recent announcement in Montreal fits the pattern: complete phase out plans of CFCs ahead of schedule — what could be better than that? The attraction to the United States is clear: The commitment to finance phase-out needs to have a defined end-point. What replaces CFCs is a secondary issue. In fact, whether the replacement actually happens is a secondary issue, because once developing countries sign the finalization plans and accept the money, meeting the targets is their own responsibility.

It’s hard to be too disparaging, of course. CFCs are nearly gone in rich countries, and these same countries are footing the bill for eradication in developing countries as well. Replacement has turned out to be easier and cheaper than expected, and newer technologies are much more efficient. But many opportunities to incorporate multiple environmental considerations into current changes are being wasted, due to the rigid division of environmental issues. The interaction (or lack thereof) between U.N. protocols will undoubtedly be a hot topic at next fall’s World Summit on Sustainable Development. By replacing ozone-depleting gases with greenhouse gases, the Montreal Protocol provides a crystalline example of why that discussion is needed.