IBON International Climate Updates No. 3
Bangkok Climate Change Conference

Reference: Maria Theresa Nera-Lauron, Peoples' Movement on Climate Change | This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

(BANGKOK, Sept. 1, 2012)—There is probably nothing more compelling and interlinked and yet increasingly pitted against each other in the ongoing climate negotiations than the twin imperatives of equity and ambition.

Equity is at the core of the UN Climate Convention, and Parties have an obligation to uphold this tenet. This means acknowledging that developed countries, which have contributed the most to the climate crisis, have a historical responsibility to take the lead in cutting emissions, as well as to provide finance and technology to developing countries (and their peoples) who are suffering from the impacts of climate change. This is in keeping with the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities” (CBDR) agreed upon in 1992.

IBON International Climate Updates No. 2
Bangkok Climate Change Conference

Reference: Maria Theresa Nera-Lauron, Peoples' Movement on Climate Change | This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

(BANGKOK, August 31, 2012)—“To kill, or not to kill,” while millions more are dying with the impacts of climate change. This seems to be the undercurrent yesterday at the Bangkok Intersessionals of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

At the Contact Group meeting for finance, developed countries, particularly the Umbrella Group composed of the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan and supported by the European Union, Switzerland and Mexico, raised a number of procedural questions for continuing to tackle climate finance at the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA). Arguing that every finance issue has an appropriate forum where each of the different finance issues can be addressed, they put forward the view that the LCA’s work on finance should end this year, as mandated by the Durban outcomes. Having a number of meetings on finance at the LCA, to these countries, is a “misallocation” of time.

IBON International Climate Updates No. 1
Bangkok Climate Change Conference

Reference: Maria Theresa Nera-Lauron, Peoples' Movement on Climate Change | This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

(BANGKOK, August 30, 2012)—Hopes for meaningful outcomes that would lead to collective efforts by the international community to address climate change were echoed by developing countries at the opening of the international climate negotiations at the UNESCAP in Bangkok, Thailand.

Over the next week, the Bangkok Intersessionals will see intense discussions on contentious issues around the Durban Platform, which calls for a second period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol (starting January 1, 2013 and ending on December 31, 2017 or 2020) for developed countries to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

At the opening plenary Madame Rose Diouf, Chair of the Ad hoc Working Group on Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP), welcomed delegates and said that as it was just a few months away from the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP) 18 in Doha, Qatar, Parties need to successfully complete the work and “start exploring areas of compromise as to reach a solution.”

APRN Statement
on the outcomes of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20)

Reference: Lyn Angelica Pano, General Secretary | This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN) reaffirms the resounding calls that were made in Rio against corporate green economy on the one hand, and for system change on the other, to achieving sustainable development. It joins the call to the suffering majority to build solidarity and intensify collective action against control of the world’s resources by the exploiting few.

It is an undeniable fact that the environmental, social, and economic crises that the world now finds itself in are all caused and continue to be aggravated by corporate greed. Yet, at the recently concluded Rio+20 Summit, the same corporate greed, beautifully packaged as Green Economy, was peddled as the solution to these crises.