OneWorld.net (U.S.)

LONDON, Jan 10 (OneWorld.net) - Next stop on the road to the climate change summit in Copenhagen in December is Bonn in March (Mar. 29-Apr. 8).

Participants are expected from most national governments, international organizations, and a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), though there will be fewer NGOs than flocked to the recent jamboree in Poznan.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and chief wrangler of 192 nations working to develop a single agreement on climate issues. © UNFCCCThe meeting will give governments (working both individually and within regional or economic groups) another chance to put proposals on the table for inclusion in the text to be negotiated -- and, it is to be hoped, agreed -- in Copenhagen. The outcome will in effect be the first draft of a Copenhagen agreement, which will be tabled in June.

The meeting could provide the first formal indication of what the new Obama administration wants to see -- or not see -- in the Copenhagen deal.

A second, larger, more important meeting takes place in Bonn Jun. 1-12. About 2,000 participants are expected. They will whittle down and rationalize the draft agreement, producing what one UN source describes as "the first draft of the real thing." A European Union suggestion for ministerial participation, to give the meeting added weight, has received little support.

Another two-week meeting -- the date for which will be fixed in March -- will be held in September or October. With the summit looming, this meeting will be more "technical," focusing on reaching agreement on specific words and phrases and on narrowing options in the text.

If progress is slow, another technical meeting might be called either in August or October.

Two other key events will feed into the process: the G8 summit of industrialized countries on the Italian island of La Maddalena in June (with Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, and South Korea in attendance), and a one-day heads of state (or government) summit as a side-show at the UN General Assembly gathering in September.

Heads of state will also use the opportunity provided by the General Assembly speech-making to have "small bilaterals," face-to-face, one-on-one discussions between themselves that could iron out differences and agree compromises on contentious issues. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will probably send emissaries to heads of state before the meeting, drawing attention to points that need sorting out.

Ideally, an informal consensus among leaders at this informal summit in New York will provide guidelines and impetus for officials responsible for finalizing the text to which  politicians will sign up in the final days of the Copenhagen summit.

Although the aim at Copenhagen will be to agree a single document, negotiations during the year will be on two tracks:

• firstly, between industrialized countries on mid-term cuts (that is, by 2020) in global warming emissions that they will agree to make under the Kyoto Protocol, and how the reductions can be achieved -- use of renewable energy or nuclear power, for example; at the same time, the other Protocol signatories will be discussing how ambitious they are prepared to be in setting emission reduction targets;

• secondly, the 192 countries taking part in the Copenhagen negotiations (including the United States, which has not signed up to Kyoto) are focusing on the "building blocks" on which an overall agreement will be based: adaptation to climate change, mitigation, transfer of technology (to help developing countries switch to climate-friendly development), and finance.

The aim is that the two negotiating tracks will come together in an agreement specifying the targets of industrialized countries, the financial and technological support to developing countries to enable them to reduce their emissions without curbing their efforts to fight poverty, and the institutions that will deliver the support. Officials servicing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change say that not all the technical details need to be resolved at Copenhagen, but these three elements must be agreed for the conference to be termed a success.

The agreed outcome will then need to be ratified so that it can enter into force in 2013, the year after the expiry of the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol.

OneWorld.net: Latest News, Groups Working on Climate Issues Worldwide