Options for the Outcome

by Samuli Sinisalo

The last 48 hours of Durban are at hand. Decisions are going to be made, one way or another.

On the future mandate, the LCA working group on legal options for the outcome, came up with a conference room paper yesterday. That paper specified four options for the LCA outcome from Durban. And as we well know, most Kyoto proposals are conditional on what comes out from the LCA.

Option 1 on the paper is: a new protocol to the Convention, pursuant to Bali Action Plan and the Cancun Agreements. Negotiations would be started in 2012, and completed by COP 18 or latest COP 21. The protocol would include mitigation for all parties as targets and/or actions, with MRV and market mechanisms. The protocol also covers adaptation, technology transfer and finance. LCA working group would be extended until the completion of the new protocol.

Option 1bis requests the LCA to complete through a legally binding instrument/outcome. My interpretation of this is, that it is very similar to option 1, but the outcome would not be called a protocol.

Option 2 requests the LCA track to complete through a series of decisions, pursuant to Bali Action Plan and the Cancun Agreements.

Option 3 requests the LCA to continue negotiations.

Option 4 is no decision.

This is more or less where the negotiators finished their work. The issues are not forwarded on to the ministerial level. From here on decisions and progress cannot be technical, but political decisions need to be made.

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