Will Tianjin climate talks build on COP15?

At the ongoing UNFCCC conference in the coastal city of Tianjin in northern China, negotiating parties are expected to use this last opportunity prior to their Cancun gathering to establish common ground for producing a climate agreement in Mexico in two months' time.  

Some progress has been made after the first three-days of negotiations, especially in shared visions and adaptation framework. Much of the talks focused on finance, technology and capacity building, making the Tianjin event appear pragmatic and productive. Less progress has been seen in the mitigation front, meanwhile loud calls for more balanced mitigation commitments have been aired.  

On the finance issue, doubts and uncertainty still remain about effective delivery of the support pledged by the developed world in Copenhagen to assist the developing world in combating climate change.

The 2009 Copenhagen Accord outlined two significant funding commitments from developed countries to finance adaptation, REDD + and technology transfer in the developing world. The first is a "Fast Start" investment of US$30 billion over three years. The other is a long-term commitment of US$100 billion per year by 2020. 

Contributing countries of the "Fast Start Finance" agreed that the funding would be "new and additional." However, there is a lack of a standard for the definition of "additional", and each donor nation has proposed its own definition.

Addressing this issue, China has pointed out that some committed finance stem from overseas development assistance of donor nations and thus does not meet the criteria of "new and additional".

At the same time, some less developed countries also challenged the scope and equity of the outflow of the Fast Start finance. They argued that those middle-income developing countries, which are not large enough like China and Brazil to have attractive climate projects, and meanwhile are not poor enough like Ethiopia to be given enough attention, fail to benefit from the Fast Start finance.

China was even cited to support this argument as 80 percent of CDM funding goes to five countries, 60 percent of which alone goes to China. 

In response, some experts from donor nations said that lack of capacity in some countries to deliver climate projects cannot justify the receipt of financial support. Though it has been said Fast Start finance will mainly support countries which are making efforts in low-carbon transition and those which are planning to pursue similar paths. But transparency and lack of criteria in finance allocation make many countries doubt its effectiveness, and whether it be properly supported by developed nations.

The fourteenth session of the AWG-KP and the twelfth session of the AWG-LCA are taking place from Monday 4th to Saturday 9th October 2010 at the Tianjin Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center (MJCEC), Tianjin, China.