By Falk Schmidt
IHDP Academic Officer

Bali, December 4, 2007- The United Nations is hosting a climate change conference on the Indonesian island of Bali from December 3-14. The conference is presided over by Indonesian environment minister, Rachmat Witoelar, with support from the UN's climate change secretariat. Delegates from over 180 nations, together with observers from intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations, have met to negotiate a new pact to succeed the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. The main goal of the Bali conference is to get underway negotiations on a new international climate change agreement. The Bali conference is not expected to deliver a fully negotiated and agreed climate deal, but aims to fullfil the extremly important task to set the necessary wheels in motion. Parties need to agree on the key areas which the new climate agreement should cover, such as mitigation (including technology options as well as avoided deforestation, where industrialised nations pay rainforest-rich nations to protect their forests to offset greenhouse gas emissions), adaptation, technology and financing. They also need to agree on when the talks and negotiations will conclude so that the new climate change deal can be ratified by national governments before the end of 2012. Other important issues will be under negotiation in Bali, including adaptation to climate change, the launch of a fund for adaptation, reducing emissions from deforestation, issues relating to the carbon market, and arrangements for a review of the Kyoto protocol.

It was in this context that the IHDP Secretariat, UNU-IHDP convened two side events in Bali. One on “Vulnerability, adaptation, resilience: cutting-edge science for informed decisions”, which also got full coverage by the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB). Please see: http://www.iisd.ca/climate/cop13/enbots/4dec.html

Falk Schmidt, Academic Officer from IHDP, introduced the Programme to the participants and highlighted IHDP's cross-cutting theme on Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Resilience. He also gave a presentation on behalf of Lydia Dumenil Gates, Global Water System Project (GWSP). His presentation was followed by Shobhakar Dhakal, from the Global Carbon Project (GCP), who introduced the project that aims to develop a comprehensive, policy-relevant understanding of the global carbon cycle, encompassing natural and human dimensions. Linda Stevenson, Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change (APN), and Neil Leary, SysTem for Analysis, Research and Training - two partner organizations of IHDP – were also present at this side event. They made a strong statement for Global Environmental Change research for the ongoing negotiations on climate change.

The second side event convened by IHDP was about the "Earth System Governance: Theories and Strategies for Sustainability". The event - jointly organized with ICSU - introduced both findings of the Institutional Dimensions Project on Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) and ideas on the new IHDP core project on Earth System Governance (ESG), which is the successor of IDGEC. It is expected that the project will be launched at next year’s IHDP Open Meeting, in New Delhi, India and that its findings will contribute to some of the most important governance challenges for the next year. How to govern large-scale changes? How can we design a post-Kyoto climate regime? How to improve the existing instruments and make best use of synergies and various linkages instead of further increasing the fragmented governance structure for issues of global environmental change in general and climate change in particular?, These are some of the questions that will be central for the project on Earth System Governance. Oran Young, chair of IHDP and former chair of IDGEC, Frank Biermann, chair of the planning committee for ESG, and Diana Liverman, chair of the ESSP joint project on Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS), also took part in this side event. Karsten Sach, German Ministry for the Environment and chief negotiator for climate change, commented on the input provided and kick-stared a discussion on the ways and means to achieve more successful science-policy interactions. Both events attracted the attention of participants from Science and Practice. They were very useful to get in touch with various stakeholders of IHDP and a first step for new and increased collaborations.

With the Kyoto protocol due to expire in 2012, a new international climate change deal must be put in place in time to ensure that necessary action is undertaken immediately. The UN says that this year's scientific report from the its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has "made clear beyond doubt that climate change is a reality", which poses a serious threat to the future development of the world's economies, societies and ecosystems. According to the IPCC, if no action is taken on greenhouse gases, the earth's temperature could rise by 4.5C or more. The effects of climate change are being felt already, the panel says. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average and adverse effects on human activities are documented. Impacts of warming have also been observed in other regions and sectors, in particular on ecosystems. As glaciers retreat, water supplies are being put at risk. And for populations living in dry lands, especially those in Africa, changing weather patterns threaten to exacerbate desertification, drought and food insecurity. Other regions are expected to suffer from floods, sea level rise and extreme weather events. "We cannot go on this way for long," the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has said. "We cannot continue with business as usual. The time has come for decisive action on a global scale."

The Kyoto protocol is an international and legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It came into force in February 2005 after being agreed at a 1997 UN conference in Kyoto, Japan. A total of 174 nations ratified the pact to reduce the greenhouse gases emitted by developed countries to at least 5% below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

SOURCES: http://www.iisd.ca/climate/cop13/enbots/