UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies SBI-10 and SBSTA-10
MARITIM HOTEL, BONN, GERMANY
31 May - 11 June 1999
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Briefing for 8 June

EU will press for inclusion of 'Review of Adequacy' at COP-5
Speaking at a special event at the subsidiary bodies Tuesday, senior delegate Yvo de Boer (Netherlands), said the European Union would press to have an item on the review of adequacy of UNFCCC commitments included on the agenda at COP-5. The EU will cite rule 16 in the Rules of Procedure to press the case for inclusion on the grounds that an issue not completed at one Conference of the Parties (i.e. COP-4) must be taken up at the following COP. Commenting on the state of climate change negotiations, Mr. De Boer added a call to "get the environment and emotion back into the debate because it is getting very depressing."

G-77/China present initial submission on CDM
The G-77/China reached agreement on the CDM and presented an initial submission to a reconvened meeting of the joint contact group on the Kyoto Mechanisms. Business at the subsidiary bodies was suspended for over two hours after a second bomb scare, which resulted in an evacuation.

The G-77/China submission on the CDM proposes that:

  1. Decisions on principles must be decided first.
  2. A share of the proceeds from certified project activities should be used to meet costs of adaptation. For this purpose, inter alia, a CDM adaptation fund should be established.
  3. Equity must apply to all aspects of the CDM based on equitable developmental rights and balanced regional activity.
  4. Design and implementation of the CDM must not compromise the modification of longer-term trends in GHG anthropogenic emissions and concentrations. All the mechanisms must be supplemental to domestic action.
  5. Capacity building is central for ensuring wider participation and should be incorporated in all CDM project activities
UNFCCC on the move?
 The Netherlands has formally announced its offer to host COP-6 in the Hague and took the opportunity to draw attention to the significant financial implications for the host country. In another development, the Head of the German delegation, also representing the EU at the subsidiary bodies, has announced that a feasibility study is under way to determine whether the UNFCCC and other international bodies hosted in Bonn will occupy the German parliament building once Germany’s seat of power transfers to Berlin.
Photos and RealAudio from 8 June

Negotiating sessions

SBI Chair Kok Kee Chow discussed the various elements of his synthesis report on approaches to the Protocol mechanisms.

India, on behalf of the G-77/China, introduced the Group's initial position paper on the Clean Development Mechanism at the joint contact group on mechanisms.

The UK, on behalf of the EU, makes an intervention on the draft conclusions on research and systematic observation

The EU and China discuss amendments to a paragraph in the SBSTA draft conclusions on research and systematic observation.

Special event: CDM- Methodologies for Baseline Identification
Convening organization: CC:Forum

Left: CC:Forum brought together Xuedo Lu (Ministry of Science and Technology, China, far left), Jane Ellis (OECD, second from the right) and Sivan Kartha (SEI-Boston, far right), to discuss methodologies for baseline identification in the context of the CDM.

Special event: Nuclear - Clean and Sustainable Energy
Convening organization: International Nuclear Forum

Presenters at the Nuclear Forum

Post-event interviews:

Dr. Henning Rentz, RWE, Germany, one of the presenters on nuclear energy, talks to Jeff Anderson about Germany's Kyoto Protocol commitments

E-mail: henning.rentz@rwe.de

Dr. Murray J. Stewart, President and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Association, discusses the nuclear industry's position on the Kyoto Protocol and Canada's role as a world leader in nuclear technology.

E-mail: stewartm@cna.ca

Special Event: "How to achieve balanced global participation in the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC"
Convened by the Stockholm Environment Institute and Climate Network Europe

To foster global dialogue and support the participation of developing countries in the negotiations, the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) is planning to hold a series of debates on how to achieve global and environmentally, socially and economically balanced participation in the climate change regime. The series was launched Monday evening with a special event chaired by Amb. Bo Kjellén (Sweden, right). During frank exchanges, negotiators and observers discussed the future of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, equity and convergence possibly leading to per capita entitlements, developing country participation, hyping the CDM, and the need for a politically negotiated upper limit for dangerous levels of emissions in the context of a review of the adequacy of existing commitments.

List of speakers:

Mbarek Diop, Conseiller Technique du Président de la République du Sénégal

Elsa Kelly, Embajador, Director General de Asuntos Ambientales Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Comercio Internacional y Culto de Argentina.

Agust P. Sari, Director, Pelangí Indonesia and technical advisor to the Indonesian negotiating team at the subsidiary bodies.

Richard D. Morgenstern, Senior Economic Counselor, Office of the Under Secretary for Global Affairs at the United States Department of State.

Mr. J. Palmisano, Enron, UK

Yvo de Boer, Head of Climate Change Department, Deputy Director for Air and Energy, Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment of the Netherlands.

Bill Hare, Greenpeace

Fernando Tudela-Abad, Secretaria de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca, Mexico.

Luiz Gylvan Meira Filho, President, Brazilian Space Agency.

Question and answer session moderated by Amb. Kell�n, followed by a short summation by each of the participants

Special event: IPCC special report on aviation and the Global Atmosphere
 Convening organization: Germanwatch and The German NGO Forum on Environment and Development

Manfred Treber, Senior Climate Advisor at Germanwatch, discusses the results of the IPCC special report on aviation and the global atmosphere.

E-mail: manftre@hotmail.com

Please refer to our previous coverage of the IPCC Report on Aviation and the Global Atmosphere for more information

Miscellanous: Compendium of evaluation tools

Co-author Joel Smith on his "Compendium of Decision Tools
to Evaluate Strategies for Adaptation to Climate Change"

The compendium is available at http://www.unfccc.de/program/techno.html as a PDF document

The compendium is published by the Netherlands Climate Change Studies Assistance Programme
of The Vrije University in Amsterdam.

BP's contribution to unraveling the complexity of climate change

A Climate Change CD-ROM game has been published by British Petroleum Educational Services. The game is described as "an exciting and innovative simulation" created with the help and guidance of environmental and educational specialists to help users understand climate change.

Right: a screen-shot from the BP Climate Change game

Place orders with BP Educational Services:
E-mail: bpes@bp.com
Web site: http://www.bpes.com/


Second bomb scare

 

Delegates evacuate the Maritim Hotel for a second time in six days due to an anonymous bomb threat telephoned to hotel and Secretariat staff.

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� Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 1999. All rights reserved.