The View from Here: Barcelona update, Monday.

Barcelona is warm and nice compared to Copenhagen, but the outskirts where we find ourselves are dominated by industrial buildings and a highway. Nothing to do with the touristic picture of Barcelona, but maybe the perfect setting for a meeting about how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The 1 week session here is the last preparatory meeting for the big climate conference in Copenhagen. Our feeling is that Barcelona simply MUST show progress in the negotiations - else the Copenhagen Summit is going to take off like a wet paper plane.

So while the Bangkok meeting a month ago managed to reduce the negotiation text by half and concentrate it into fewer pages, many parts are still too vague to allow for detailed, concrete, line-by-line negotiations.

In many areas there are far too many options, making it impossible for negotiators to get their teeth into the really difficult points in Copenhagen.

The essential task for the negotiators meeting in Barcelona is therefore to get some important 2nd level issues resolved (while the big ticket issues are for ministers to solve), and lay the groundwork for the key choices that must be made in Copenhagen. What we are looking for are signs that the political opinions of key countries are crystallized behind specific positions so that then they can compare and contrast and really negotiate.

Another element that we could see move forward is movement on a fast start-up package for adaptation and mitigation. The least developed countries have been promised help and support for years and nothing has yet materialized.

However, at the political level some Parties have been playing delaying games. During the last weeks, even the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer, said that a legally binding deal would only be agreed in 2010!

Key here, fuelling some of the thoughts of delay, are the fears that the US will gain no progress in its domestic legislation this year. The uncertainty around the US climate bill hangs like a dark cloud over the negotiations, and is at the center of each discussion.

The European Council meeting last week updated its Copenhagen position on a range of issues.

The EU did not increase its commitment beyond 30% reductions below 1990 levels, but has agreed to a vague but slightly stronger language for increasing its unilateral commitment  from 20% to 30%.

Worth noting is that the EU Council endorsed stronger long-term targets aligned with the IPCC 2050 80-95% reduction range, and emphasized again the need for a legally binding agreement (without specifying the time of December 2009).

The chief aim of the EU council was to put a finance offer on the table, which they have partially done – but the offer has many problems

• not high enough scale,
• too high finance demands on developing countries,
• no additionality to ODA,
• overreliance on carbon markets, etc.

...but it is the first industrialized bloc to put a finance number on the table.

As part of the outcomes, the EU also proposed an immediate finance package for developing countries at the level of €5 to 7 billion annually from 2010.

KYOTO Protocol negotiations

The Kyoto Protocol negotiations were grinding to a halt already in Bangkok.

It is very unclear how far Parties can get them to move again here in Barcelona. The big stumbling block is that most industrialized countries want the US involved in the next agreement, and do not want to sit back with only unilateral commitments.

But the US are not Party to these talks as they are not a member of the 'Kyoto Club'.

The big risk in such a lack of movement is that the Kyoto Protocol gets declared finished by the end of 2012, without anyone having any useful replacement in place. Hence NGOs are arguing that a 2-protocol outcome is necessary, which maintains the Kyoto Protocol.

Other Meetings

Today and tomorrow, EU leaders and President Obama will meet in Washington at the regular EU/US high-level meeting. This is an excellent opportunity to reinforce their high expectations for Copenhagen and commit to their full support for a strong deal, but there is little indication they will raise the bar.