Fossil of the Day Awards – Wednesday

Fossil of the Day Awards – Wednesday
Bonn Climate Negotiations

Bonn, Germany, June 10, 2009: CAN International awarded its Fossil of the Day award to the following country judged best at blocking progress over the last day of negotiations.

Third place: Australia, for making a very unhelpful intervention on REDD at the first formal meeting to discuss, among other things, a possible REDD mechanism. Instead of strongly asserting that REDD should be about protecting forests and avoiding deforestation, they focused their discussion of the scope of REDD on Afforestation and Reforestation and the enhancement of carbon stocks. Translation? Promotion of the plantation forest agenda.

In the absence of safeguards, Australia’s proposal would cause a devastating loss of natural forests due to money and carbon credits going to plantations, not forest protection.

Second Place: New Zealand and Japan, For seeking to remove numbers for aggregate Annex 1 targets at an informal meeting of the AWG-KP. Not only has Japan offered a weak national target and New Zealand not offered a target at all, they have both tried to remove any reference to aggregate target numbers from the Kyoto Protocol negotiations. They need to stop trying to get off the hook and agree to strong action to tackle climate change. No numbers is an unacceptable outcome.

First Place: Russia, for saying nothing on national 2020 emission targets. On Monday, Yvo de Boer urged Japan and Russia to set their 2020 targets. Japan complied, though with a weak goal. Even worse, Russia completely ignored the request. Russia ignored not only Yvo, but NGOs and those around the world, who are waiting for annex I countries to set 2020 emission targets.

Furthermore, at today's SBI contact group meeting to formalize text on arrangements for intergovernmental meetings, Russia objected to language stating that "all meetings should end by 6 PM... but may, in exceptional circumstances, continue to no later than 9 PM." Russia claimed that meetings running beyond 6 PM would put a strain on their delegation. This from a country whose repeated interventions kept the closing plenary at COP 11 in Montreal going well beyond midnight!

Has Russia considered that it is perhaps their lack of a 2020 target that, among other things, is forcing negotiations to go past 6 PM?

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The Climate Action Network (CAN), a coalition of over 450 NGOs worldwide dedicated to limiting climate change to sustainable levels, regularly judges and presents three 'Fossil of The Day' awards to the countries who perform the worst during the past day’s negotiations at UN climate change conferences. The Fossil-of-the-Day awards were first presented at the climate talks in 1999, also in Bonn, initiated by the German NGO Forum; the ceremonies are now hosted by the global youth climate movement and Avaaz.org.

ENDS

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