Indonesia is the world's third biggest CO2 emitter, owing to its forestry emissions. According to the World Bank, its emission figures for 2007 are 3 billion tons of CO2 per annum (about half that of the US), and this is mostly from illegal logging and palm oil plantations for biofuels.

Indonesia is the best example of how key it is to preserve the world's rainforests.

For a population of 230 million, many of whom live under the poverty line, this means the carbon footprint per capita is 11.1 tons p.a. (which is 2.2 tons more than EU emissions).

Indonesia emits 5 times as much through deforestation than other means (energy production), so its emissions problem could be addressed rapidly without a radical transformation of its economy, but simply through forestry preservation. This would bring its emissions down to about 450 million tons p.a.

In Copenhagen the UN-REDD programme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in developing countries) is going to play a key role in determining emission cuts in countries like Indonesia (as well as other smaller rainforest-owning countries). However, UN-REDD is still at its infancy. At the moment it has only 7 programmes, with a trust fund of $37 million, which was only set up a year ago. This is loose change to even start addressing the problem.

Indonesia has a project approved in the UN-REDD framework for $5.6m and the province of Papua New Guinea another one for $6.4m. Potentially Indonesia should be the main recipient of these funds together with Brazil.

The REDD trust fund is at the moment smaller than the budget of a round-of-the-mill Hollywood movie.

These are tiny figures to create any form of incentive for a country where the palm oil industry is growing at 13% p.a. and there are huge financial interests to continue with deforestation and the drainage of peatlands.

Papua's forests in the island of New Guinea have a vast wilderness spanning 42 million hectares, and its carbon sink capacity is comparable to the EU's annual GHG emissions. At the current rate of deforestation (such as is experienced in Bormeo and Sumatra), most of it will be gone by 2030. This is what we stand to lose - it will cause an alarming reduction of the Earth's capacity to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere.

My concern with UN-REDD funds is that this system can only work if the government officials involved make good use of the funds. Indonesia's notoriously corrupt regime is a doubtful candidate to carry out this task and the likelihood is that forest degradation will continue, with or without the REDD subsidies.

Illegal logging is directly correlated with poverty, and the root causes of it have to be addressed. Otherwise loggers are bound to move away from protected areas and carry on logging elsewhere. This activity is virtually impossible to police in large areas of forest.

Indonesia needs to articulate a credible proposal to be a worthy recipient of UN-REDD funds. It must eradicate both illegal and legal logging and confine land conversion to areas of shrub and grassland, where palm oil can be produced, not through the depletion of rainforests. Once it can show it can manage its rainforests as protected carbon sinks and ultimately as financial assets then the case for UN-REDD funds will be a no-brainer.

Brunella

Just a quick reflection on the prospects of a deal in Copenhagen. A Sunday afternoon is a perfect time to recap the positions of the different countries and conjecture how likely it is for them to find a converging position.

What will happen if they don't? Kyoto comes to an end in 2012 but if there is no agreement on a new treaty there is in principle no reason why countries wouldn't agree to extend the validity of Kyoto, particularly to enable the continuation of CDM and carbon trading. Developing countries would vastly favour this outcome (particularly because it lets them off the hook re emission reductions), but realistically they are aware that climate change is serious, and they realise they need to participate in curbing emissions at home and turning to low-carbon technologies to continue their economic development.

China and Brazil are two examples of developing economies with a high degree of scientific awareness of climate change issues. In particular Brazil - they pioneered some global warming prediction models that have been widely used in the scientific community. The Chinese also, contrary to popular belief, do not need convincing that global warming is happening, and if they appear irresponsible to the world by building one coal fired power station after another every single week it is more to do with the fact that they believe that the onus is on the countries with the largest cumulative share of carbon emissions (read US and UK) to bear the burden of the cost of climate change mitigation.

The problem with this logic is that the centre of gravity of where the culprits are located coincides with the centre of gravity of debt in the world. The United States can ill afford to fund China's path to decarbonisation, let alone the United Kingdom (even less now that it is not a world power as it was in the times that it used to be a hugely pollutant industrial pioneer) and if China cannot show some flexibility on this, especially in view of its huge trade surplus and foreign reserves north of  $2.2 trillion then it is difficult to find a point of convergence.

The technology transfer advocated by developing countries (and spearheaded by India) for which the US, EU and Japan are supposed to foot the bill is widely expected to range anywhere between the low hundreds of billions of dollars to $1 trillion. This is less than 45% China's foreign reserves (and with an annual trade surplus of $300bn they will soon catch up), and although I am not suggesting that China ought to foot the bill for the entire global warming mitigation process (although it could afford to), there would be an objective case to suggest that it contributed, rather other western countries, who are almost on the brink of default or very seriously crippled by massive debt.

I think that Obama has already given the game away by announcing he will only show up for a photo-shoot. He knows that there will be no historic deal so he won't miss the party. It is a real shame, especially since the public expects so much from this meeting and so many delegates are going to travel there to trumpet their concerns. Copenhagen will simply be a declaration of intentions and it's only in 2010 when the real work must begin.

Brunella

India is one of the main CO2 emitters in the world but unlike other developing countries it does not want to set itself emission reduction targets. It is advocating a continuation of Kyoto, whereby developing countries are under no obligation to reduce emissions.

India's carbon footprint is 1.4 billion tons of CO2 per annum (that's 23.3% that of the US), but in per capita terms, India only emits 1.2 tons per inhabitant, which is per se a model of sustainability. The problem is that 400 million people are without electricity, and it is predicted that economic development will reach these people sooner than expected, so India's carbon footprint can skyrocket in the coming decades to China's levels or beyond if the generation of electricity and economic development moves forward with old technologies and fossil fuel burning.

Of course no one wants to halt economic development anywhere in the world. Our challenge must be to combat climate change while keeping the lights on. This also applies to the developed world. No one should listen to the greener-than-thou who advocate to turn the heating down and the lights off, and reduce your comfort levels; turning your standby off will make no difference to climate change if utilities keep on burning coal. Our small collective efforts have negligible impact and the onus is on governments to articulate energy policy to decarbonise the production of electricity. We as individuals cannot do it: it's beyond our control.

I think that India eyes with suspicion the West's insistence to curb its carbon emissions, and interprets it as an obstacle to its own development. After all India's share to cumulative carbon emissions is about 2%, so it bears no responsibility for global warming.

However there are signs of dissent within the Indian government, perhaps because they themselves predict their carbon footprint will grow exponentially if something is not done about it. A leaked letter from the Indian environment minister argues that it would be in India's interest to curb emissions.

The highly visible president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed has been relentessly advocating for a technology transfer from developed countries to developing ones to fund their development during a transition of a low carbon economy. It is not clear how astronomical these figures are, but they could be on the high end of the hundreds of billions of dollars, comparable only to last year's financial bailout. India and China are the two obvious recipients of this financial interest, and this will be a key negotiating element to find a convergence of targets.

The timing is however all wrong, with the developed world still recovering from the credit crunch and maybe on the eve of plunging into a second dip with problems such as Dubai looming and other countries finding it hard to meet their debt liabilities.

It's not the right time to write blank cheques to the developing world, and developed countries may find they simply cannot afford to foot the bill.

Brunella

I turn my attention to the main GHG emitter of the world, who is single-handedly responsible for one third of all cumulative CO2 emissions since 1850, the United States. Although in terms of annual emissions China has now overtaken the US (both are coasting around the 6 billion metric tonnes of CO2 emitted per annum), China's cumulative emissions since 1850 are less than 8%.

It can also be argued that the US as main importer of Chinese goods is running a huge bill in terms of indirect emissions, in addition to its own direct emissions, and therefore is party to China's annual emissions. Taking into account indirect emissions from the consumption of manufactured goods would put the US very comfortably on the top position of net emitter per annum as well as in cumulative terms. The US imports about one third of China's manufacturing output (followed by the EU and Japan, as close second and third net importers -according to figures of the CRS Report for Congress "China's trade with the US and the world" 2007) and therefore its indirect emissions are in the region of 1/3 of China's annual emissions, that is about 2 billion tonnes of CO2 - that gives the US a grand total of annual emissions (direct plus indirect) in the region of 8 billion tons of CO2 p.a.

The new US administration is certainly diametrically opposed to the previous one, but on emission cuts it is still guaranteed to fall short of expectations.

The news is that Obama will pledge to cut CO2 emissions by 17%, which is already considered by the EU "lower than we would like", but even that level of cuts might be immensely tricky to the US president to turn into law, overcoming all the hurdles of the US legislative complexities.

The EU is pledging to cut emissions by 20-30% by 2020 (compared to 1990 levels). That means that annual emissions would drop from today's 4.3 billion tons to somewhere between 3 to 3.4 billion. The US's pledge by contrast would mean a drop from today's 6 billion to 5 billion.

As a ballpark figure, our atmosphere is receiving more than double the amount of CO2 than it can process through its natural carbon cycle. In order for us to stabilitise the CO2 concentration therefore all countries need to cut emissions as a matter of urgency by 50%, at least. Given that developing countries do not have ambitious targets, if at all, the US and EU need to have aspire to more drastic cuts.

If all countries cut their emissions by 50%, this would mean that the US annual emissions should drop from 6 billion tons to 3 billion, and the EU's from 4.2 to 2.1 billion. The EU pledge of cutting emissions to the 3-3.4 billion level leaves us with an excess of 0.9-1.3 billion with respect to what should be the target reduction, and the US pledge leaves us with an excess of 2 billion tons. This means that between the US and the EU an excess CO2 of over 3 billion tons of CO2 will be emitted per annum between now and 2020 (even if the pledges they advocate where carried out right now, rather than gradually between now and 2020).

Brunella

From today our blog becomes daily in the countdown to Copenhagen, and we will discuss the issues as well as the shifting positions as leaders try to converge to an agreement.

Today China has announced that it will reduce its "carbon intensity" by 40-45% by 2020. What this means is not that it will reduce carbon emissions. We will see much of this kind of game of words, that is the staple of politicians, in the following days.

"Carbon intensity" is amount of emissions produced per unit of GDP, typically measured in metric tons of CO2 per $1m of wealth creation. At the moment China emits 1,046 tons of CO2 per $1m of GDP, compared to 475 tons by the United States and 285 by the United Kingdom. This means its economy is vastly reliant on dirty energy and is so inefficient that it emits twice as much as the US and more than 3 1/2 times as the UK to create the same amount of economic output.

China's commitment to cut its carbon intensity by 40-45% means that by 2020 it will emit about 420 tons per $1m of GDP, which is just a touch below the US but still 50% more inefficient than the UK at the present time.

In terms of real emissions, China has yet to state when its emissions will peak (it's expected it will be around 2020, though it could be later), and what rate of cuts will follow thereafter. It is impossible to predict what will be China's position in 2050 and the rate of cuts from 2020 to 2050 unless we have some idea of the magnitude of the peak of emissions that will be reached. At its current rate of growth, it's predicted that China's economy will double by 2020, so if we extrapolate emissions and then subtract 40% in reduction in carbon intensity, then it would be expected that from 2009 to 2020 China's emissions will grow by 10%. That is 6bn tons of CO2 too many (and soon to become 7bn) that are emitted to the atmosphere every year.

It's not particularly what I call an express route to decarbonisation.

Brunella

With a few weeks to go to Copenhagen, participants are preparing the ground to accept a declaration of intent rather than a landmark agreement on climate change mitigation.  

A big meeting such as the one scheduled for December at Copenhagen is bound to produce few surprises.

For the last weeks and months, the environment ministers of the main GHG emitters have been holding talks, negotiating positions and recriminating one another, so at this stage everyone knows where they stand and what they are likely to expect.  We know that rich countries have little hope of meeting ambitious emission cuts without a complete rethinking of their energy policy, i.e. abandoning oil, gas and coal immediately and embracing nuclear energy with the urgency and determination of a military operation. There seems to be little sign of that.

We can't expect either promises of huge cash injections to developing countries to walk away from cheap coal and decarbonise their economies and avoid deforestation, particularly as most first world emitters are sinking faster than the Titanic under mountains of debt.

So the planets are aligned for everyone to look at each other, moan about all that and conclude that it can't be done.

The simple message will be diluted in the complexities of the background noise. There will be thousands of attendants representing hundreds of countries, including lobbyists, NGOs, activists, civil servants. All but the most high-profile key players will have very little visibility, although the majority of the participants will be there simply to be in the thick of it.  Politicians will be there to try to cut the best piece of the cake to suit their interests, or walk if they can't, NGOs to scream away their various messages, but the entire cacophony will be distilled in the simple conclusion that we are sleepwalking into disaster if we do not fundamentally change and reorganise our infrastructures, and particularly our energy production worldwide.

It is clear that something has to be done.

Kyoto expires in 2012 and a new treaty needs to be agreed to continue from that date. It now looks likelier than ever that 2010 will be a busy year for the main emitters to forge the agreement that won't happen next month.

Brunella

brunella@carbonica.org