Tiempo Climate Newswatch

In his first public assessment of the Copenhagen climate summit, Yvo de Boer, head of the climate treaty secretariat, remained optimistic that the negotiating process would eventually result in a global treaty. While, he acknowledged, the Copenhagen summit may not have delivered enough, it did raise the climate issue to the highest level of government, the only level at which it can be resolved. A second positive outcome was the Copenhagen Accord, which reflects a political consensus on the long-term, global response to climate change. Finally, he said, negotiations away from the cameras brought an almost full set of decisions to implement rapid climate action near to completion. "If countries follow Copenhagen's outcomes clearly with their eyes firmly fixed on the advantages of global action, then we can finish the job," he concluded.

Concern has been expressed that many nations may not meet the January 31st deadline to "associate" with the Copenhagen Accord and document what sort of measures they plan to take to meet its goals. This was not a coercive deadline, however, de Boer said, but simply to help him write a report on the outcome of Copenhagen. "If you fail to meet it, then you can still associate with the Accord afterwards," he continued. "In that sense, countries are not being asked to sign the Accord, they are not being asked to take on a legally-binding target, they will not be bound to the action which they submit to the [climate treaty] secretariat." Following the heated discussions in Copenhagen, there will be a "cooling-off period" before the next negotiating session in Bonn, Germany, at the end of May 2010. The next major summit will be in Mexico at the end of the year. Flagging that the negotiating process could well continue unto 2011, de Boer said that his sense is that generally "people want to reach a conclusion on the [negotiating texts on the future of the Kyoto Protocol and on long-term cooperative action] in Mexico and then they will be in a position to decide on how they want to package that outcome in legal terms."

Farmers in Burkina Faso are responding to the disappointing outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit by developing strategies to adapt to changing weather patterns. Traditional soil protection techniques, such as compost-filled planting pits to hold water and rock and soil barriers around crops to reduce soil erosion, are being re-introduced. Financial support amounting to US$3 million has been channelled by the government to the farming, livestock, forestry and water resource sectors through the national adaptation programme.

"Despite the failure of Copenhagen we must follow adaptation at our own cost because we have been experiencing the impacts of climate change in Burkina for several years, and they are getting worse," said Bassiaka Dao, president of the confederation of farmers in Burkina Faso. Desertification in the north of the country is spreading south and both the start and the end of the rainy season have been delayed in recent years, with heavy rains more frequent. "The rain comes in torrents, with the capacity to flood a field in 15 minutes," Dao reported. Francois Traoré, president of the National Union of Cotton Producers of Burkina, said that "aid to help farmers adapt to changes could open up new areas of agricultural production and transform how we produce crops here."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has admitted that a conclusion regarding the future of Himalayan glaciers in its latest report was "poorly substantiated." The statement, which referred to a very high probability of Himalayan glaciers "disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner," was based on an unpublished study and a later inversion of the date (2035 rather than 2350) cited in a WWF report. "In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly," the panel acknowledged.

The IPCC stands by its overall conclusion that "widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century" and chairman Rajendra Pachauri robustly defended the overall work of the Panel. "Theoretically, let's say we slipped up on one number, I don't think it takes anything away from the overwhelming scientific evidence of what's happening with the climate of this Earth," he said. The next IPCC reports are due in 2014 and 2014 and will focus on sea-level change, climate variability and regional effects.