Saturday Extra

The United Nations Climate Change Conference begins in early December.

The Bali conference will last 11 days as governments from around the globe try to negotiate a way forward on this critical problem.

So what can we expect of the Bali meeting?

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Geraldine Doogue: Just a week after our Federal elections, members of the new government will be heading to Bali for the UN Climate Change Conference. This conference will last 11 days, as governments from around the globe try to negotiate the way forward on this critical problem.

The backdrop to the Bali meeting are the recent reports by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which paint a grim picture of unchecked climate change. And in news overnight, a new IPCC report will be released today, a synthesis report, suggesting that some changes may be irreversible.

You might have also heard Lord May with Fran Kelly yesterday on Radio National Breakfast, suggesting that subsequent events had proven that each IPCC report was indeed conservative, like good predictive science should be, and therefore we could say with confidence that climate change was accelerating.

So in this year of dire warnings, what can we expect to come from this particular Bali meeting?

Kirsty Hamilton has been an observer of UN climate change talks since the early 1990s. She's Associate Fellow in the Energy, Development and Environment program at Chatham House in London, and she joins me now. Welcome to Saturday Extra.

Kirsty Hamilton: Hello.

Geraldine Doogue: These meetings are annual, but it does seem that more attention is being given to this Bali meeting than really any other since the Kyoto Protocol was signed. Would that be an accurate reflection of events?

Kirsty Hamilton: Yes, that's right. At the Bali meeting there's an unprecedented amount of attention on whether an agreement can be reached for settling the time frame for the new range of decisions on post-2012, because the Kyoto Protocol of course ends its first commitment period in 2012. So if you work back from there, we've got about two years to fine-tune the next round of agreements between governments and what to do, otherwise you'll end up with a cliff-face, and nothing very clear. So that's why there's so much attention on Bali.

Geraldine Doogue: There are some predictions that suggest if agreement on negotiations about the way forward isn't reached, this whole international approach to climate change could dissolve. Do you think that is far too alarmist?

Kirsty Hamilton: Well I think you've got to take a number of things into account. First of all, you would undoubtedly have a massive loss of momentum, and a really very difficult job to revitalise that process. That's one thing. Secondly, and very importantly, I advise the Business Council for Sustainable Energy as well, and what you see now is a lot of attention by businesses, certainly in Europe, increasingly in the US, and of course in Australia as well; those businesses that are engaged in solutions. And it's very important that they remain confident that governments are serious about this agenda and keep momentum in the process. So if that one fails you will make it very difficult for businesses to in any further rank of negotiations, to feel that governments are serious. But thirdly, I think we can't forget that the climate may well itself play a major role in keeping the issue at the forefront of people's minds. I mean you've had a series of sort of weather-focused events, one might call them in Australia the drought and other things. We've just had huge wildfires in California; we had massive flooding in the UK, which keeps people focused on the impact of weather itself. So I don't think the issue's going to go away at all.

Geraldine Doogue: The head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, de has argued that the gathering needs to achieve four things: It must start to begin negotiations; it must agree to begin negotiations to curb gases after Kyoto expires; it must determine the areas under discussion; decide on a deadline; and then create the mechanism for negotiation. You know, they're big process issues, aren't they?

Kirsty Hamilton: They are. I don't think anybody that is either heading to Bali itself or observing it, would say this is anything other than a very complex negotiation. In fact many diplomats that are involved say it's one of the most complex negotiations going on on any topic, largely because it's really about the way our future economies develop.

Geraldine Doogue: But it's also, just before I let you go on, in a way it's not about national interest, like ultimately when diplomats come down to it, they do have that sort of underpinning ballast, you know, guiding their thoughts. This is really quite different, isn't it?

Kirsty Hamilton: It is. It really is about how much we're prepared to act collectively, because when you're dealing with the atmosphere, it doesn't actually get carved up by national boundaries of course. But with Bali, on that agenda, complex agenda, I think there has been such an unprecedented amount of international attention backed by the science, you mentioned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report. You've had Al Gore winning Oscars, you've had the next Stern report, like putting the economics in a different package. I think we've got all the ingredients, it's an unprecedented sort of point in time where all the ingredients are lined up, and governments really just have to bite the bullet and say Yes, we are going to start negotiations, we're going to have a negotiating mandate, we're going to come to agreement in 2009, and we are deeply committed to acting together to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Geraldine Doogue: There is an interesting strand of argument coming through. It was distilled by a man called Brian Fisher here in Australia, a former advisor on our international climate delegation. He was arguing this week that Australia, and presumably other similar countries, might think of going it alone on this issue, that trying to get a workable international treaty that really has guts, as it were, is just too difficult, and that we'll end up, and I quote him here, 'It would be better for people to sit in bilateral meetings dealing with real people.'

Kirsty Hamilton: Yes. Well I mean I don't think this is the moment in time to lose your nerve. In fact these are negotiations, so it always looks rather hopeless till about 5am on the final morning. In fact there was one of them where they were dismantling the conference infrastructure while people were still reaching their final agreements. I mean that's the nature of the beast, so we need lots of bilateral discussions about what has one country got to offer another in helping, what do businesses have to offer. That means there's an entire new package of momentum and institutions that are needed internationally to help solve this problem. However, you do need a multilateral governmental agreement, it can't be solved by Australia going off and talking to the United States, that just doesn't work.

Geraldine Doogue: But are you sure it can't? I suppose just for the sake of argument, like sometimes these very big issues are solved by the side door, like is it not possible that this whole admirable effort and symbolic effort with Kyoto producing all sorts of other yields, I accept that, will ultimately be the precursor to the real move, particularly thinking of your emphasis on business entering the picture.

Kirsty Hamilton: I think you need, as you said, I think you need bilateral agreements. You've had the G8 process, you've got AP6 sort of going along at some level. Those processes exist, but ultimately it has add up to a solution to dangerous climate change, and that means that if you want to take that approach seriously, you would end up with a whole lot of rather sub-optimal little dollops of activity going on. But the question is, would they add up to the kind of very deep production. I mean people were talking, I was at a meeting today, and senior government people where they were talking about 60% to 90% emission reduction. So that, I mean think about it, this doesn't sound like it's going to emerge out of some ad hoc voluntary bilateral -

Geraldine Doogue: No, but if you look at what Schwarzenegger's done in California, where he's sort of acted unilaterally I suppose, and producing remarkable response, tipping point type responses in his State from business, and an altogether different, it seems to me, debate than has been had certainly in the Southern Hemisphere, it might be different in Europe. You know, maybe that will be the breakthrough more than this big unwieldy ambitious process.

Kirsty Hamilton: Essentially what you've got are two things. One is can we act collectively? Will we be prepared? Will Heads of State step up to the plate, or Environment Ministers step up to the plate and say Yes, we're going to solve this collectively, because it's only with collective action that you can really solve climate change. That's one thing. But what does collective action mean? It means that you're getting your ambition level right globally, and that you're implementing it on the ground. And what Governor Schwarzenegger has done is he's put into place the implementation package on the ground in California, in absence of having essential administration leadership. So he's done a very, very important thing.

Geraldine Doogue: But Kyoto's been his road map you're saying?

Kirsty Hamilton: Well Kyoto's been there in the background, but if you listen to what some of the US businesses are starting to say, they're saying 'We need the Administration to signal clearly where they're on this issue, because we're making 30-year investments in the energy sector and other long-term infrastructure, and we don't want to suddenly find in ten years time we can't get our money back from those, because people have woken up to this. You would rather they wake up now, tell us clearly what they're going to do and let us get on with it.' And because we're in a globalised economy now, it makes considerably more sense for people, even if it's just in business terms, to get that momentum fully wound up globally.

Geraldine Doogue: Kirsty, we've just got time for one more question. Do you think we will see developing countries take these negotiations more seriously? That seems to be the real sticking point, as I've read, coming up at this Bali meeting.

Kirsty Hamilton: Well I think a lot of developing countries are taking the negotiations seriously, in two ways. First of all I think there's an increasing amount of awareness that climate change itself affects developing countries particularly seriously, it affects all countries, but there's particular concern over most of the developing country impacts and their resilience. So that's one thing. And secondly, there's a lot of activity going on in developing countries. China's got ambitious energy efficiency and renewable targets; Brazil's well known for its international leadership in some of the bio-ethanol areas at the moment. But one of the things that really is at the heart of getting agreement value is trust. And so developing countries are quite legitimate in saying Have developed industrialised nations really shown that they're taking the matter seriously? And that's why unfortunately the actions of the United States and unfortunately Australia, hasn't really helped create the sense that industrialised countries have stepped up to the plate as they agreed, even in the framework convention to do their bit. And so I think that's an unfortunate sort of schism in the north-south issue, and I think there's been rather a lot of finger-pointing from some of the not very advanced industrialised countries in terms of taking the matter seriously for their own emissions, instead finger-pointing at places like China. I think what you can't expect is that developing countries are going to rush to take on binding absolute emission reduction targets in Bali, but there are a range of other types of activities that are being seriously discussed on the policy side, so I don't think we should be too polarised on that matter.

Geraldine Doogue: All right Kirsty Hamilton, thank you very much indeed for your analysis there. We might talk to you at the end of the meeting.

Kirsty Hamilton: OK, that will be a real pleasure.

Guests

Kirsty Hamilton
Associate Fellow
Energy, Environment and Development Program
Chatham House
London

Story Researcher and Producer

Julie Browning