In The Field - Blog Posts

Barcelona climate: Call it a wrap

jtollefson — 2009-11-06T15:41:50+00:00

Things are winding down here in Barcelona. The latest negotiating text is out, and everybody is waiting for the final plenary session.

Negotiators seem to have coalesced on what needs to come out of Copenhagen, as opposed to what many would like to see. The basic idea, covered in a bit more detail in my last post, is that leaders could sign an agreement providing decisions on the big issues, including emissions targets, financing, technology, adaptation and deforestation, and then come back early next year to get the details for a formal treaty in place. That might not sound like much, but it eliminates the sense of doubt that was clouding the talks earlier in the week.

There's a bit of confusion in some places, particularly among greens and representatives from developing countries, about what that means, but most see it as a viable solution given that securing a complete, ratifiable treaty might not be possible. Indeed, despite what might be called an air of cautious optimism, the gap between rich and poor countries remains substantial and apparently unbridgeable.

This stark truth was on full display as the G77 group representing developing countries, the European Union and then the United States held back-to-back press conferences giving their assessment of where we stand. I'll take a closer look at the implications of all this in next week's issue, but here's a quick summary: The G77 said it won't support any agreement unless rich countries cut their emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020; the EU said its offer to go up to 30 percent is already aggressive; and the US said its unofficial numbers, which appear in legislative proposals that would reduce emissions to just a few percent below 1990 levels, are both unlikely to change and in line with the science.

I say "apparently unbridgeable" because these are negotiations, and there is a sense that everybody wants a deal. I briefly cornered Alf Wills, a G77 leader from South Africa, to talk about the issue, and he acknowledged that developed countries could always try to bridge the divide with offers of things like money and technology. "That's part of the negotiation," he told me.

As it happens, negotiators working on technology transfer issues appear to have made some progress this week. They are converging on some institutional issues and the establishment of regional technology innovation centers that could help developing countries gear up for the future. Similarly, observers say talks over adaptation and deforestation are moving forward as well, although green groups still have some concerns about safeguards in the deforestation text. (See my post on Wednesday for details; they succeeded in restoring some language intended to prevent the conversion of natural forests to plantations, but say the language isn't as strong as it should be).

That leaves mitigation and money, which are, admittedly, the biggest issues. Most tend to cite the United States' inability to put a formal number on the table as the main sticking point, but US negotiator Jonathan Pershing slapped that idea down on Friday. He said everybody should have a good idea what the US number is, given that there is a narrow range in the legislation in Congress. Indeed, although no decision has been made, he said there's no reason why the United States couldn't sign a treaty in December. The question is whether there would be one to sign, he said, adding a quick jab at developing countries for, in his view, arguing against a single treaty that binds everybody to differing levels of commitments.

So, with all that as background, we'll just have to wait and see what happens once leaders take the stage. UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said he's been informed that some 40 heads of state are planning to attend Copenhagen in December, which should make things interesting.

Barring major fireworks in the final plenary, this will be my last post, but keep an eye out for our formal coverage in next week's issue of the magazine.

Barcelona climate: Momentum builds for a "political agreement" in Copenhagen

jtollefson — 2009-11-05T18:41:17+00:00

The European Commission's chief negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, acknowledged this afternoon that Europe might have to settle for a political agreement rather than a binding legal treaty in Copenhagen (see my post this morning for a quick discussion of the issue). Everybody else has been talking about this possibility for some time, but it's not insignificant when the EU, which has always been the primary driver of this process, starts talking about it. Indeed, one environmentalist told me that once Europe gives up on the idea of a fully ratifiable deal in Copenhagen, the game is over.

As noted by The Associated Press, the official European position on the need for a ratifiable treaty remains in place. When I asked a spokesman about some kind of plan "PlanContentRecord B", he squirmed and said this represents more of an acknowledgement of what other people are saying than anything else. In fact, people in the United States started saying this last year, shortly after US President Barack Obama's election, citing the monumental difficulty of establishing a new climate policy in less than a year. Interestingly enough, I talked to one former negotiator who said that many Europeans have been thinking along these lines for just as long but simply chose to maintain pressure by pushing for a full deal.

As it happens, UN climate chief Yvo de Boer and Malta's Michael Zammit Cutajar, who chairs the non-Kyoto negotiations that include the United States, both outlined their vision of a political deal in Copenhagen in a closed-door session with non-governmental groups on Wednesday. For a summary of their positions, check a blog posted by Elliot Diringer at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a group that drew criticism from ncomprehensive one other than Yvo de Boer himself for making the very same assessment last year.

The problem, once again, is that the United States is not ready to commit because it doesn't have, and isn't likely to have before early next year, domestic climate legislation in place. The US and the EU discussed the issue at a climate summit this week in Washington but were unable to reach any agreement on how to move forward.

As it happens, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a comprehensive climate bill today, but committee votes aren't that important in the Senate. This one is even less important given that Republicans boycotted the vote. The significance of the boycott is unclear, but Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who authored the Senate bill, is already reaching across the aisle in an effort to craft a compromise (see the Washington Post for more detailindex).

One thing is clear: US Senate does not respond to global frustration. On the other hand, discussions about securing some kind of an interim political agreement in Copenhagen and then returning to seal the deal in three to six months do in fact take into account the Senate schedule. Conventional wisdom posits that the bill needs to be finished in the first half of next year, because once lawmakers start campaigning for the 2010 elections in the fall they won't want to touch the issue. That pushes things off until 2011. Scheduling another meeting in, say, June, would maintain pressure on Democrats while giving the Senate some necessary breathing room.

Make of all that what you will. In the meantime, the talks here in Barcelona wrap up tomorrow. There are some early reports of progress on discussions of technology and adaptation, but many of the bigger questions on financing and emissions are likely to get kicked down the road. More soon.

Barcelona climate: New analysis shows progress in emerging economies

jtollefson — 2009-11-05T18:16:15+00:00

And now I'll take a look at the major developing countries, as promised both yesterday and today. A new analysis of climate commitments by the six biggest emerging economies - Brazil, China, India, South Africa, Mexico and South Korea - suggests that their cumulative emissions add up to a 25 percent reduction compared to "business as usual" projections for 2020. The report (not yet available on the web but discussed in a session on Tuesday) was commissioned by the German government and this portion was led by Niklas Hohne of the consultancy Ecofys in Koln. For some background, see our earlier coverage here.

Hohne said these six countries make up roughly two-thirds of the developing world emissions, which are more than half of the global total; include everybody and you get a 16 percent reduction in cumulative emissions from the developing world. That is in fact within the 15-30 percent reduction range that has been extracted from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent assessment and made into official EU policy.

This is without word of new commitments expected from Brazil, which ended up delaying its announcement of a new, potentially more comprehensive emissions commitment this week (see our story this week here). President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva held a cabinet meeting to discuss the issue on Tuesday, but the government was unable to settle on a proposal and ended up scheduling another meeting for 14 November.

It should be noted that the report's analysis of Brazil's existing policies (largely its commitment to curb deforestation by 80 percent by 2020) comes in significantly higher than the analysis by Brazilian scientists cited in our story. The report suggests that existing policies could reduce emissions by 41 percent below BAU, which is higher than a more comprehensive scenario analyzed by Rede Clima. But BAU is a tricky thing to calculate, and Hohne acknowledged that their BAU estimates were in some cases higher than other analyses, particularly for China.

All of which is to say that these numbers might be a bit optimistic, but the clear implication is that the developing world is either living up to its obligations, as interpreted by the EU at least, or coming close. Whether that message holds up or indeed gets through in the first place, however, is a different question.

Barcelona climate: Monitoring the (same old) debate

jtollefson — 2009-11-05T17:07:50+00:00

I’m sitting in the plenary session of the Kyoto Protocol, listening to an old debate over the baseline year used to assess emissions. The protocol is currently tied to 1990 emissions, but Japan, Australia and Canada have all suggested that expressing emissions reductions according to multiple baselines might be useful.

The logic is that although the Kyoto Protocol is tied to 1990, many countries – including the United States - are now pegging their climate proposals to more recent years. That has the advantage of providing a picture of what each country plans to do moving forward. The US and European proposals, for instance, actually look similar using a 2005 baseline (for more on that, see our earlier coverage here). On the other hand, many – including Europeans – have long argued that using new baselines would dilute the protocol and potentially let countries like off the hook (in addition to the United States, think Canada, which has acknowledged it cannot meet its Kyoto targets).

Today, like so many other days, the parties were unable to resolve the matter. Japan’s proposal to illustrate the commitments in tabular form drew initial objections, particularly from China, which said any effort to shift away from the legally binding 1990 baseline would be "totally not acceptable." But those backing the proposal's supporters said there should be a way to ensure that the 1990 baseline remains while noting additional baselines. The idea of using “footnotes” came up.

Discussions about the relative merits of footnotes versus charts seem a bit silly, to be sure, but the issue has been a sticking point for a long time. Some kind of resolution will be necessary in whatever emerges from Copenhagen.

The discussion eventually hit the big issue of emissions targets. The Alliance of Small Island States, which fears the dual impacts of acidification and rising sea levels, led the way by adding up all of the developed country targets (including legislation being debated in the United States) for a grand total of 12-19 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That compares to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's analysis indicating that a 25-40 percent reduction might be necessary by 2020. And AOSIS is actually pushing for 45 percent cut, to increase the likelihood of keeping temperature increase below 1.5 degrees instead of the generally accepted 2-degree target.

As expected, no headway was made on this issue either, but it does lead into my next posting.

Barcelona climate: Big heads of state

jtollefson — 2009-11-05T11:03:46+00:00

I arrived at the conference this morning only to encounter global leaders with unusually large heads pulling funny money out of one box labelled "aid" and putting it into another labelled "climate change." It was a short stunt by Oxfam - and just one of many put on by various activist groups each day - intended to raise awareness of the danger that rich countries will simply reduce development aid as they increase funding for adaptation and mitigation. Developing countries have made this a central part of their platform going into Copenhagen - any climate financing must be in addition to existing development aid.

Things are rolling along at the conference. Two days left, and nobody is panicking yet. I haven't heard of any all-night meetings, although short days at these conferences tend to start with business meetings at breakfast and run straight through late dinner meetings, which basically translates into 12- to 14-hour days. It's easy to say that they aren't getting enough done, but one certainly cannot claim that they aren't spending a lot of time on the effort.

So I just bumped into Ned Helme, who heads the Center for Clean Air Policy in Washington, and he seemed newly optimistic about the way things are going. He says things appear to be headed toward a political agreement in Copenhagen, which would then be followed up with a binding legal agreement next year. And although he was initially sceptical, the idea has grown on him after talking to the negotiating teams in here in Barcelona. A broad agreement on the core principles from on high would free up the technical negotiators to work out the details that are currently bogging things down, Helme says, namely the ongoing architectural dispute over what to do with the Kyoto Protocol (see the first post below).

One of the other ideas floating around is to just pause the negotiations without producing an agreement and then hold another meeting in the first half of next year, but many here say there will be too much pressure on politicians for them to leave Copenhagen without producing anything. A political statement that spells out the basic commitments on financing, REDD and perhaps even emissions targets - likely requiring a range to allow some flexibility for the United States, which is unlikely to have worked out its domestic policy - would allow everybody to claim success while leaving the details for later. That's one theory, anyway.

Now it's time for lunch. It's a good time to try and catch delegations between meetings. More later, including an update on Brazil and developing country commitments promised yesterday.

Barcelona Climate: safeguarding primary forests under REDD

jtollefson — 2009-11-04T18:29:15+00:00

And now back to the case of the missing 10-word phrase, which says that any payments for reduced deforestation should include "safeguards against the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations." Just for amusement, here's the gist in UN climate speak: It was in "Non-paper No. 11" but was left out of "Non-paper No.18" when negotiators gathered for a final session before departing Bangkok last month.

"Non-papers" are basically papers with new negotiating text, compiled by facilitators, that are periodically released in order to assess progress and move things forward. Apparently the logic when the practice began was that nobody wanted to give too much weight to unapproved language. At any rate, when this particular section was winnowed down, the phrase was lost.

For the Ecosystems Climate Alliance, a coalition of interest groups that is tracking the REDD debate, this safeguard is critical to ensure that payments for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) do what they are intended to do, which is protect forests. Because plantations can also meet the legal definition of a forest (a separate issue that many are pushing to change), they say countries could get paid to clear native forests and replace them with plantations, which actually increases emissions.

I discussed the issue with a REDD expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Doug Boucher, after the Bangkok meeting, and his assessment was that the massive spike in emissions from clearing forests would be enough to prevent such activities. And indeed, it's hard to believe such a practice would be allowed, or that companies or countries would want to invest in it even if it were.

But it also depends on what, exactly, is being measured: overall emissions or forest cover. Non-paper 18 has three options for tracking deforestation, including one that is based on forest cover alone. If that language moved forward, based on the current definition of "forest," the loophole would remain, says Peg Putt, who works on forest and climate issues for The Wilderness Society, itself a member of the alliance.

In the end, the Europeans took the blame for removing the forest-conversion safeguard but claimed it was an accident. The European Commission's chief negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, says they have since proposed something to plug the gap, and environmentalists expect to see the new language when the next non-paper is released tomorrow morning.

"There is agreement from all but one party," Putt told me. "I've heard it may be the United States, but that might be pure speculation."

Such speculation is unfortunately common here, due to the fact that the formal talks generally take place behind closed doors. Perhaps we'll find out more tomorrow morning.

Barcelona climate: Nature Geo stirs things up with deforestation analysis

jtollefson — 2009-11-04T15:48:40+00:00

This afternoon has been all about deforestation. Environmentalists are busy tracking the debate about an 10-word phrase - mysteriously deleted at the last talks in Bangkok - that is designed to prevent natural forests from being converted into plantations. But I'll deal with that issue in my next post and move on to a Nature Geoscience commentary that has caused quite a buzz here in Barcelona by downgrading the relative contribution of carbon emissions from deforestation.

The commentary by Guido van der Werf and colleagues (reported by the Guardian here) suggests that emissions from deforestation and degradation are closer to 12 percent of global carbon emissions, rather than the oft-stated 20 percent.

It's an important finding, although not entirely surprising. Folks at the World Resources Institute in Washington have been looking into the issue as well, and their numbers seem to point in the same direction. Indeed, their assessment of 2005 greenhouse gas emissions, illustrated in a flowchart here, shows deforestation making up just 11.3 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions; separate out carbon dioxide, and the contribution of deforestation comes out below 15 percent.

I recently chatted about the issue with WRI's Tim Herzog, who works on greenhouse gas inventories, and he said the problem is that the numbers are still a bit squishy. WRI's initial analysis converged on 15 percent, with the high end of the range coming in around 20. The report in Nature Geoscience also shows a sizeable uncertainty, ranging from 6-17 percent. It will be interesting to see how these numbers hold up.

Questions quickly arose about whether these new numbers would undermine efforts to include forest carbon in a future climate treaty, but it's not at all clear why or how better information would stall the debate. Forests are being chopped down, releasing carbon into the atmosphere, and stopping this practice remains a relatively cheap and possibly fast way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The only question is how much of the problem we would be solving were we to accomplish that goal.

The van der werf commentary also assesses emissions from peatland fires and degradation in southeast Asia. Including peatland emissions brings the total to 15 percent of global emissions, according to their analysis. As it happens, the conservation group Wetlands International released a new report in Barcelona looking at global peatland emissions. They said their analysis on Southeast Asia is similar to that in the Nature Geoscience, but adding in the rest of the world doubles the impact. Surprisingly, the results suggest that the European Union has the second-highest peatlands emissions, behind only Indonesia.

Barcelona climate: Afternoon updates from the Africans, EU

jtollefson — 2009-11-04T12:49:16+00:00

Following up on yesterday's agreement, the leader of the African Group said during an afternoon press conference he is "guardedly optimistic" about the talks going forward.

But Sudan's Lumumba Di-Aping refused to give any ground on developing countries' demands that rich countries curb emissions by 40 percent by 2020. Current proposals aren't even close to that number, and most political leaders in the United States and Europe consider that goal unattainable. Asked about a compromise and assessments that achieving a 40 percent reduction could be a "heavy lift," Lumumba cited the massive financial investments that followed the economic crisis in suggesting that developed countries are simply lacking the will to act aggressively in response to the climate crisis.

"It cannot be heavy lifting, unless you say that some people are more equal than others," Lumumba said. "We cannot accept total destruction as a choice for developing countries in order to simply appease some political leaders in the West."

Speaking at a press conference an hour later, European officials fell back on the EU position of unilaterally cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and 30 percent if there is a global agreement. Sweden's chief negotiator, Anders Turesson, said those commitments are in line with the science and urged developing countries to put pressure on other rich countries that have not yet announced positions (read: United States) and others whose current offers are "insufficient."

The talks are now "on track, moving forward," said Artur Runge-Metzger, chief negotiator for the European Union. "But of course we'll have to see during the coming days what kind of resonance we get from the African Group" and other developing countries.

More to come soon on the state of REDD talks ( reducing deforestation and forest degradation) and Brazil's climate change discussions.

Barcelona climate: A rough start, tinged with hope

jtollefson — 2009-11-04T02:25:51+00:00

I arrived at the United Nations climate conference today - late, on the second day, after a red-eye flight over the Atlantic and an all-too-brief nap at the hotel – and encountered drama much sooner than expected. I registered, oriented myself at the conference centre, gathered the requisite daily briefing documents and then found a bathroom to deploy a newly purchased toothbrush. It was there, after bumping into a colleague, that I learned the African Group had announced at the opening session on Monday that it would boycott the Kyoto Protocol talks until developed countries get serious about their climate commitments.

The Associated Press covered the story, and our coverage of the last climate meeting in Bangkok has additional background. But the important thing to understand here is that the talks are split into two main tracks. One is designed to extend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and the other is under the original 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. The main difference is that the United States is party to the latter but not the former. Developing countries have taken the stance that the Kyoto Protocol should retain its central role going forward – particularly as there is as yet no alternative - but Europe is seeking a new agreement under the convention.

After brushing my teeth, I met with a representative of the conservation group WWF, Keya Chatterjee, who proceeded to fill me in. What followed the African protest was a full day of informal talks intended to restart negotiations (Chatterjee called them “trust-building sessions”). We then proceeded to a plenary session where a new agreement was announced. Henceforth, negotiators under the Kyoto track would dedicate at least 60 percent of their time talking about emissions targets for industrialized nations; the rest of the time would be used to talk about offsets and land-use and forestry issues that affect the emissions calculations.

So. Here we are at the end of day two, with three days of formal negotiations before the big climate summit in Copenhagen this December, and we have an agreement on how to structure negotiations on one of two tracks. Not exactly promising, but it’s clear that the African countries – largely supported by the G77 representing most developing countries – have made their point. Now we’re back to core issues, such as who does what, how to ensure that it gets done, where the money comes from and how to bundle everything into a single package.

The thought of ironing out all of this by December is daunting, and conventional wisdom posits that it’s now virtually impossible. As a result many are starting to think about minimum requirements for success in Copenhagen, which is perhaps as it should be. But for perspective, it took WWF about a week to piece together a sample treaty (based on language already on the negotiating table) that would resolve the architecture issue by allowing the Kyoto Protocol to continue while including the United States and additional commitments by developing nations in a separate agreement.

The copy Chatterjee gave me is 37 pages; just fill in the numbers. Point being that there is plenty of room for compromise, Chatterjee says. From this perspective, what is missing is trust and political will, but she says one shouldn’t forget about a third factor: shame. Indeed, the idea of shame leads her to a remarkably optimistic conclusion: countries will manage to fill in the numbers in Copenhagen, simply because nobody wants to be responsible for blocking a deal. “There’s not a single country in the world that wants to take the blame for failure in Copenhagen,” she says.

There’s been no shortage of challenges to this view, but it’s worth noting that not everybody has given up on Copenhagen here in Barcelona.

Barcelona climate: The last stop before Copenhagen

awitze — 2009-11-03T02:28:22+00:00

Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson will be at the United Nations climate summit from 2-6 November 2009 in Barcelona, Spain. It is the last negotiating period before the seminal climate summit in Copenhagen in December. For more, see www.nature.com/roadtocopenhagen.

SfN 2009: The attention of owls

awitze — 2009-10-24T23:57:38+00:00

Sudden movements and sounds can trigger a battle between neurons in the brain, and the winners get to decide where an animal will look, according to new research. Read the full story on Nature News.

ASGH 2009: Problems of blood

echeck — 2009-10-24T19:03:08+00:00

Jibril Hirbo hails from a tiny mountaintop town called Marsabit, in northern Kenya. Now, as a population geneticist, Hirbo has completed perhaps the largest-ever genetic study of people from Kenya and other East African nations.

ASHG 2009: Sequence, and then sequence again

awitze — 2009-10-23T22:16:08+00:00

Posted on behalf of Chris Gunter

Believe it or not, some people are complaining that now the ASHG meeting has too much genomics. This comes after years of dire warnings that the society was ignoring genomics at its own peril. Friday morning featured yet another all-genomics platform session, with multiple talks on sequencing whole human genomes.

Matthew Bainbridge of Baylor made crowd laugh by saying all we need is an assay with 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity. In the meantime, he’s using a method of sequencing a genome on two different platforms and comparing the results. He and others at the Baylor College of Medicine extended their work on personal genomes by sequencing in a family with a form of ataxia not due to a triplet repeat mutation, as many ataxias are. As in several talks at the meeting, Bainbridge and colleagues captured the sequence of the exome (or entire set of expressed genes) from key members of a pedigree, and by comparison of genetic variants were able to pinpoint the one gene they think carries the responsible mutation.

ASHG 2009: Your Individual Development Plan: Two Modest Proposals

echeck — 2009-10-23T20:56:37+00:00

Posted on behalf of Chris Gunter

In 2006 I blogged from ASHG’s career development session and hate to say that not much has changed.

Back then I said “The session was kicked off by Bill Lindstaedt, Director of the UCSF Office of Career and Professional Development. He delivered the depressing news first: the median age of first tenure-track positions is 38; the median age of receiving a first NIH research grant R01 is 42; and only 4% of such grants go to first-time investigators.”

ASHG 2009: If mice could speak

echeck — 2009-10-22T20:09:08+00:00

Everyone wants to find the genes that "make us human." The problem is, when we find them, how will we know?