United Nations Climate Change Conference in Doha

Deciphering the Doha Outcome

Delegates from the United States and more than 190 other nations gathered in Doha, Qatar from November 26 to December 7, 2012 to continue work toward an international agreement to avert climate change. Read our Hotline blog about the outcome here or scroll below.

The Doha Gateway decisions included (summary from Climate Action Network-International):

• An extraordinarily weak outcome on climate finance which fails to put any money on the table or to ensure a pathway to the $100 billion a year by 2020 target. The decision asks for submissions from governments on long term finance pathways, calls for public funds for adaptation but does not mention a figure, and encourages developed countries to maintain funding at existing levels dependent on their economies.

• An eight-year second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol with loopholes that allow carry over, use and trading of “hot air” (Assigned Amount Units, or AAUs);

• A call--though not an official ambition ratchet mechanism--for Kyoto Protocol countries to review their emissions reduction target in line with the 25-40% range by 2014 at the latest. While it could have been stronger, the decision reinforces clear moral obligation for countries to increase their emission reduction targets prior to 2020 and provides opportunities for them to do so.

• An agreed work program on loss and damage to help victims of climate change will start immediately and a decision “to establish institutional arrangement, such as an international mechanism, at COP19”

From Durban to Doha

In Durban, countries agreed on a road map that, for the first time in the history of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), set up a process to negotiate a comprehensive and balanced legal instrument to avert climate change. The outcome of COP 17 was a success politically and revived confidence in the international negotiations. However, the outcomes of COP 17 fell short of adequately addressing current levels of ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the goal of restricting global warming to 2 degrees Celcius. Success in Doha would have meant considerably advancing the hard work of mitigating the impacts of climate change on our planet and its inhabitants, and accelerating a clean energy economy around the world.

Throughout the talks, US NGOs and the international community pressed the United States to come to the table with a better negotiating stance. Although the US was generally seen as obstructionist, there was a small shift by lead negotiator Todd Stern, who stated a willingness to discuss how to equitably share responsibility among countries for making the substantial post-2020 emissions reductions and laid out the need for more work for the US to meet its 17% emissions pledge.

Reactions from US and international NGOs indicated that the urgency of the concluding spectacle was clearly not reflected in the decisions themselves, although minimally they did lay a path for a way forward. Analyses thus far have deemed the decisions anywhere between a dismal failure and a modest outcome, but the consensus is that conclusions were clearly not sufficient for what the science is telling us is needed to address the worst impacts of human-induced climate change.

For the official UNFCCC Doha Climate Change Conference Documents, click here.

For more of the latest resources and materials please click on the tabs below:

Tweets about "#cop18, #UNFCCC, #doha"