Positive Incentives for Climate Change Action: Some Reflections

The Action Plan agreed in Bali in December 2007 provided a structure, timelines, building blocks and key words to accelerate the negotiations on a future climate change regime. Despite this progress, however, positions between the different parties remain far apart. With the aim of developing analytical tools, increasing understanding and framing the key trade-offs in order to start narrowing this gap, the European Climate Platform (ECP) held a small high-level meeting in Madrid on 17 & 18 April 2008. The event brought together senior negotiators, policy-makers, researchers and stakeholders from both developing and developed countries Background papers served as an introduction to the discussions, enabling the participants to go beyond the well-trodden paths and brought to light some interesting pointers and several new ideas. This report presents the main themes and conclusions from the seminar.
It covers four areas:
• the state of the negotiations;
• an analytical framework for identifying “measurable, reportable and verifiable” mitigation commitments by developed countries, i.e. implementation of Art. 1(II) b of the Bali Action Plan;
• the potential for a bottom-up approach for India and
• the weakening rationale for the Annex I/non-Annex I differentiation in globally trading energy-intensive sectors and global sectoral approaches.