COP6 Suspended - Status of Negotiations Unclear

Bill Fang

After nearly three years of negotiations since the Kyoto Protocol was adopted – with its promise of flexible measures in the form of market mechanisms (emissions trading, joint implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism) and land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities – the sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP6) was unable to reach agreement in The Hague, the Netherlands, on a set of rules and guidelines for its implementation. Despite grueling, all-night sessions at the Ministerial level by the three main groups (the Umbrella Group, the European Union [EU], and the Group of 77 [G77] and China) time ran out on the two-week conference on November 25, 2000 as the Parties reluctantly agreed to suspend COP6 and reconvene in May or June 2001.

The decision to suspend COP6 was contained in a document (FCCC/CP/2000/L.3) entitled "Conclusion of the Session," which was adopted after several amendments. It says that the COP decides to suspend its sixth session and it further requests the COP6 President, Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, to "seek advice on the desirability of resuming that session in May/June 2001 in order to complete work on those texts and adopt a comprehensive and balanced package of decisions on all issues covered by the Buenos Aires Plan of Action." (Launched at COP4, the Buenos Aires Plan of Action [BAPA] is contained in eight decisions addressing financial mechanisms; technology transfer; implementation of Articles 4.8 and 4.9 of the Framework Convention on Climate Change [FCCC]; and Articles 2.3 and 3.14 of the Kyoto Protocol; activities implemented jointly; the market mechanisms; compliance; and policies and measures. A ninth decision at COP4 concerned LULUCF and is commonly associated with the BAPA.)

Apparently, results were potentially close at hand for some issues, but in the end, the gulf was too wide and economic interests too important for the Ministers to conclude even a partial deal with details postponed to COP7. The long-sought "package deal" proved far more elusive than most everyone anticipated before COP6. In the final hours of COP6, early in the morning of November 25th, the EU (led by United Kingdom Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott) and the Umbrella Group (led by U.S. Under Secretary of State Frank Loy) reached a tentative agreement on several Annex I issues without participation of all of the EU or the G77 and China. The key Annex I issues covered by the agreement reportedly included limitations on the use of LULUCF activities, limitations on emissions trading, and compliance issues.

The full EU rejected the proposed deal orchestrated by the U.S. and the U.K. However, even if the proposed deal had been accepted by the entire EU, there is no indication that the G77 and China would have agreed to it. In essence, the Parties can be said to have concluded separately or collectively that "no deal is better than a bad deal" or a deal that could not be explained at home. While there was some progress on implementation details at the 13th session of the FCCC subsidiary bodies (SB-13), Part II (which occurred during the first week in The Hague), the package of rules and guidelines also remains substantially incomplete because of a lack of agreement on the political issues by the Ministers.

There has been no decision yet on when "Part II" of COP6 will occur. Jan Pronk, the Dutch Environmental Minister who is serving as President of COP6, is to work in a "transparent manner" on a new date. Reportedly at the behest of President Clinton, delegates from the eight Umbrella Group countries, seven EU members and the European Commission met in Canada for several days the week of December 4 to try to work out a partial deal addressing key political issues among Annex I Parties. These meetings were not successful and Undersecretary Loy rebuffed suggestions for a larger Umbrella Group-EU meeting in Oslo, Norway, in late-December, asserting that "without additional convergence between the parties on important issues, a further ministerial meeting would not be useful at this time."

In any event, intersessional meetings are likely before the resumed COP6 convenes, and Parties have until January 15, 2001, to submit comments on the 14 conference room papers (CRPs), with Pronk’s November 23 "Note by the President of COP6" functioning as "political guidance." (The CRPs and the "Note by the President" can be found at www.unfccc.de/resource/cop6.html – follow the link for "CP documents." As of this writing, the CRP on LULUCF is not yet available.) Pronk had issued his 14-page Note the night before COP6 was officially scheduled to close in an attempt to facilitate agreement on four major groups of issues: capacity-building, technology transfer, implementation of FCCC Articles 4.8 and 4.9 and Protocol Article 3.14, and finance; the market mechanisms; LULUCF; and compliance, policies and measures, and accounting, reporting and review. In addition to Pronk’s Note, thirteen CRPs are available, each containing options, brackets and blank sections. The status of these texts is somewhat unclear because they refer to earlier texts prepared at SB-13, with those texts also remaining on the table.

Bill Fang is deputy general counsel of the Edison Electric Institute and a vice-chair of the Section’s Climate Change and Sustainable Development Committee.