Over the last few months, hopes that a breakthrough in UN negotiations might be forthcoming by next year’s meeting in Mexico have begun to fade. First, Senator Lindsey Graham, a key Republican vote for energy legislation, withdrew his support for passing energy legislation in the U.S. this year. This of course delays progress domestically in the U.S., and it also severely hampers the U.S.’s ability to negotiate effectively at the international level. The decision by a number of moderates in the U.S. Congress (most recently Evan Bayh) not to run for reelection weakens prospects for any meaningful energy legislation. And this is probably why BP, Conoco Philips and Caterpillar announced they were not renewing their participation in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a business and NGO coalition advocating for legislation to reduce carbon emissions. They see no reason to bother.

On the 18th of February Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change announced he’d be resigning later in the year, a strong sign that chances for an imminent breakthrough by the next meeting in Mexico were slim. Then Connie Hedergaard, the former minister for energy and climate in Denmark and president of the UN negotiations in Copenhagen, now European Commissioner for Climate Action, said she didn’t feel an outcome would be reachable by the next UN climate meeting in Mexico. In her view, a new treaty would probably have to wait until the following meeting in 2012 to be hosted by South Africa, one of the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), a coalition widely which is viewed as a lynchpin in the talks.

What about forests and wilderness? The forests debate did gain prominence and momentum in Copenhagen and in particular in the Copenhagen Accord: there is now broad recognition that forests need to be a part of the climate change solution. At the same time, the forests debate continues to be plagued with problems, including the recurring issue of distinguishing between natural forests, which are valuable in sequestering carbon and in climate change adaptation (and provide many other benefits, social and biodiversity related) – and plantations, such as oil palm plantations, which have very few carbon or biodiversity benefits.

Common sense would require safeguards to prevent valuable natural forests from being converted to vast, monoculture palm plantations, but to date it has not been possible to reach agreement on language that will prevent this absurd outcome. A recent draft EU biofuels and bioliquids sustainability scheme includes language that would recognize industrial plantations, including oil palm as forested areas. This demonstrates once again how hard it is to achieve the right result on this issue, despite broad agreement from the scientific and conservation community – as reflected in the Mensaje de Merida – that converting natural forests to plantations is an extraordinarily bad idea. Getting oil palm plantations off the table for carbon credits will be an important sign that countries are finally getting serious about protecting forests.

The question on everyone’s minds now, after emerging from the Copenhagen whirlwind is where are we exactly? Achieving consensus in Copenhagen would have meant finding some way to reunite, or at least establish coherence between the two UNFCCC negotiating “tracks”, which have been in place since the climate talks in Bali over two years ago. But bringing the two tracks together turned out to be a bit more elusive than anticipated.

What are the two tracks? One negotiating track is for countries that have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and believe the way forward is to extend the Protocol for another five year “commitment period” after the first commitment period ends in 2012. In essence that would mean that developed countries would sign up for new emissions reductions targets and developing countries would continue to be off the hook – free of any binding emissions reductions commitments. They didn’t cause this crisis: in their view the developed countries that got us where we are now should hurry up and put money on the table to fix the mess.

A second negotiating track is for countries that have not signed Kyoto – i.e. the U.S. – or countries that believe that a new protocol replacing Kyoto is the way forward. The catch in this second negotiating track is that developed countries are arguing for a new protocol that includes binding and verifiable emissions reductions commitments for fast-developing countries that are major carbon emitters e.g. China and India. This is something that countries like India and China have adamantly refused to consider, especially in light of the very weak emissions reductions targets and financial commitments that developed countries have put on the table.

But after two weeks of furious negotiations in Copenhagen, the tracks did not come together. The fundamental impasse over money and who would have binding emissions reductions targets remained and the talks were gridlocked. Anyone who has ever harbored conspiracy theories about UN power grabs would have been immediately reassured by the intense dysfunction in Copenhagen. The UN does not work without consensus.

And so the result at the end of the two weeks was the Copenhagen Accord, a last minute rabbit pulled out of a hat, apparently in large part by President Obama’s refusal to just let things be. Only a handful of countries negotiated and signed onto the Accord, and it emerged as something of a red-headed step child of the climate negotiations. Many countries complained the Accord was not negotiated in a transparent way and boycotted it, and so the UNFCCC was left to politely “take note” of the document at the end of the conference. Then, with only partial endorsement of the Copenhagen Accord, the UNFCCC had no choice but to announce that it was extending the two tracks for another year. So now, in effect, there are three tracks. And no one is quite sure which train to board.

One feature of the Copenhagen Accord is that it set a date of January 31 for countries to consider the Accord, and decide whether they wanted to sign on and pledge their emissions reductions commitments in the Accord’s annexes. The UNFCCC issued a release yesterday announcing that 55 countries, representing 78% of global emissions and including most major economies, had signed on and pledged emissions reductions. Of course, the pledges (which are non-binding anyway) don’t get emissions down to a level necessary to avoid a 2°C as the Accord calls, for even if all the countries lived up to their commitments. That awkward reality aside, Yvo de Boer the UNFCCC Executive Secretary characterized the pledges as an important development newly invigorating climate negotiations.

So is the Copenhagen Accord the right train to board? There are certainly those who see no reason why the stalemate over money and emissions targets won’t play out exactly the same way in Mexico at the next UNFCCC meeting as it did in Copenhagen. Informal talks will continue in the coming months in different venues, for example at G8 and G20 meetings, so we may get a better gauge of what to expect from world leaders soon. But if that reasoning is correct, and the completely non-binding Copenhagen Accord is currently the only viable track, then prospects for a strong, new climate agreement in the near future are dim. That also means that prospects for a big boost to wilderness conservation from a new climate agreement won’t be forthcoming any time soon. It’s still far too early to give up on that possibility. But it’s an important reminder that we need to push the wilderness agenda at all levels and in all venues. National and State/Provincial level efforts are crucial, as is the Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP 10 this fall in Nagoya, Japan.

Even the handful of countries that engineered the Copenhagen Accord acknowledged that the Accord was only one step in a still unfolding process. Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, looking not very pleased at his press conference after spending much of the last ten hours in a “stuffy” room, called the Accord a “letter of intent.” So what actually happened at COP 15, and just as importantly what comes next?

One of the core issues before delegates at COP 15 was what constitutes a safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations: 450 parts per million or 350 ppm? On this central point, the Copenhagen Accord is silent, missing a golden opportunity to establish 350 ppm as the objective. Maybe silence on was the best that could be done – at least the Accord didn’t set the level at 450ppm, which would have been a disaster.

The Accord states that its objective is to keep global temperature increases below 2°C – and holds open the possibility that a future review of the Accord will indicate the need to set the bar at 1.5°. That would be encouraging except for the fact that the review isn’t until 2016.

To stay below the 2°C threshold the Accord says that industrialized countries will reduce emissions by at least 80% by 2050. But 2050 is a long way off, and the Accord doesn’t say precisely when global emissions must peak. The science tells us that emissions must peak between and begin to decline between 2013-2017, but the Accord’s standard is simply “as soon as possible”.

On the critical question of which countries must reduce their emissions in the short term – and by how much – the Accord is as vague and non-binding as could be: it merely invites countries to inscribe their pledges of emissions reductions in the Accord’s annex by the end of January 2010. It will be interesting to see which countries do so, and what they sign up for. The good news is that for the first time, most countries, including the U.S. and many developing countries that have no obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, are willing to make public commitments to targets – these commitments won’t be binding even if they are added to the Annexes, but they will have at least symbolic value. The bad news is that analyses indicate that the commitments on the table won’t keep us below 2°C…

On finance, the accord confirms $30b in funding for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries over the next three years, pledges to raise $100bn annually for climate change mitigation by 2020, and calls for a High Level Panel to assess possible sources for adaptation funding. It also calls for a Copenhagen Climate Fund will be established under the Convention’s Secretariat. These sums are inadequate, but at least they represent movement towards something concrete.

On the issue of forests, the Accord recognizes the “crucial role” of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries, which is good, strong language. A decision by the COP specifically on REDD+ provides an additional ray of hope, making it clear that conservation must be part of the solution for climate change. The decision also mentions the importance of promoting activities that benefit biodiversity because those activities “may complement the aims and objectives of national forest programmes and relevant international conventions and agreements.”

That language is a far cry from the Mensaje de Merida, which calls for close integration in the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework on Climate Change. But it is the first time that this language has crept in to the UNFCCC’s decisions. Despite the somewhat convoluted articulation, it is a minor concession to common sense: the door has opened a tiny bit more to acknowledging the close link between biodiversity, wilderness and climate change.

That said, despite some encouraging language, REDD+ still has deep flaws: weak protections for the rights of indigenous peoples, no safeguards against logging in intact ecosystems, insufficient funding, and a high level of complexity which could delay implementation in many if not all countries. Nor did the Copenhagen Accord or COP 15 succeed in promoting protection of forests and wilderness areas in developed countries. In fact, had it not been for the heroic efforts of the NGO community, in particular WILD’s friends in the Ecosystems and Climate Alliance, the current perversities in the way developed countries deal with emissions from their forests would have been extended and even worsened.

So the Copenhagen Accord is a very, very weak document – extraordinarily weak for a Convention that has been in place for 17 years, and for a two year process that had such a strong mandate after the climate talks in Bali.

To make matters worse, the Copenhagen Accord is entirely non-binding, and despite its somewhat grand title, the Accord is not even a full COP 15 decision. The preamble merely states that the COP “takes note” of the Accord, which means that the Accord, as vague and non-binding as it is, doesn’t even represent a consensus view of the Conference of the Parties. It’s hard to imagine a UN body expressing its deep ambivalence on a given subject more clearly than that.

The Copenhagen Accord doesn’t quite represent a total collapse of the climate negotiations – but it’s close. The core objective of the UNFCCC – reaching a legally binding agreement that commits the entire global community to drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to bringing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to safe levels – remains a distant goal.

With no agreement within reach, COP 15 had only option available, which was to mandate the continuation of the two track negotiating process in place since Bali: one track working on an extension of the Kyoto Protocol (under which developing countries have no obligations, and which does not include the U.S.) and one track for an alternative climate agreement that would complement or maybe even supersede Kyoto. No one has found a way forward to bridge the developed country – developing country divide and merge these two tracks. Tuvalu and its partners in the Association of Small Island States that are so vulnerable to rising sea levels had the moral leverage to do so, and they gave it their best shot, but they failed. So the unsuccessful two track approach continues: deadlocked and in a weird state of suspended animation.

With Copenhagen ending in near disaster, it’s difficult to imagine how, in a mere 12 months, and with only one inter-sessional negotiation, this stalemate will be resolved. It’s even harder to see how the international community will find the conviction it needs to move beyond sterile language and cumbersome bureaucratic mechanisms, and towards a bold vision where the full power of nature and wilderness is harnessed for both mitigation and adaptation.

The Mensaje de Merida attracted as many signatories as it did – over 80 NGOs and counting, including most of the largest in the world – not to mention some of the world’s leading conservationists – precisely because it attempts to carve out a space for a straightforward idea in a negotiating environment where clarity of vision is too often absent from the agenda. The message is not complicated: we cannot reduce our carbon dioxide emissions fast enough and avert dangerous climate change unless we protect our planet’s wilderness areas. But it has not yet been heard. WILD and its partners need to keep promoting the Mensaje.

Maybe our leaders will go home and reflect over the winter holidays about the fact that 45,000 people registered to attend COP 15, and another 100,000 demonstrated in the streets. Maybe the stunningly bad news on melting ice sheets and arctic sea-ice decline will begin to sink in. Maybe now that they have a little more time on their hands they’ll think about the fact that despite the Kyoto Protocol, global emissions are over 40% higher today than they were in 1990, that the Copenhagen Accord is weak, and that a radical new approach is now necessary.

We should not give up hope that a new way forward will somehow emerge from the wreckage of COP 15. Political will can be unpredictable and the politicians are surely aware that after Copenhagen public opinion is not on their side and the news on climate change is only getting worse. President Calderon of Mexico came to WILD9 and spoke with conviction of the clear linkages between wilderness and conservation. He also has reportedly expressed his desire for a different kind of process than the one we witnessed careening out of control in Copenhagen.

But nor should we count on COP 16 in Mexico to provide the solution: COP 16 may go the way of COP 15, and if it does so, absolutely no one will be holding their breath until COP 17. Maybe the most important lesson from Copenhagen for our leaders is that they shouldn’t be waiting for a new climate agreement to protect wilderness areas around the world. With or without a climate agreement, the time for leadership on climate change and wilderness conservation is now.

But on the two most important points, the amount of emissions reductions countries will commit to, and the amount of finance that will be made available to developing countries, progress has been insufficient, and the hope of a last minute breakthrough was fading. A leaked document from the UNFCCC’s Secretariat indicated that the level of emissions reductions promised by countries in these negotiations wouldn’t prevent a dangerous rise in average temperature of 2°C – in fact, it would lead to an average increase in temperature of 3°C, a social and environmental disaster. And although the $100 billion USD in funding per year from 2020 onwards that developed countries are offering to raise for developing countries is a major step in the right direction, even that sum would fall well short of what’s needed.

Of course, there has been progress in Copenhagen, and if this had been a negotiating session with less lofty expectations, participants would probably be fairly happy with the results. One area of progress has been on a mechanism for protecting forests in developing countries, referred to as “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation” or “REDD+”. This mechanism will likely generate agreed upon text, and just as importantly, some financial commitments. It will likely be presented as one of the key outcomes of the sessions in Copenhagen.

But even the $3.5 billion USD in fast-start financing over three years that has been pledged for this mechanism by developed countries is far below what it should be – at least $10 billion USD and ideally in the $25 billion USD range. And much more could have been done to protect forests immediately without waiting for a REDD+ mechanism to be implemented. Peru’s commitment to end deforestation by 2020 provides the kind of leadership and vision that have been sadly lacking until now in Copenhagen. And the fact that developed countries are manipulating the accounting rules for emissions from their own forests, while asking developing countries to submit stringent verification procedures on REDD+, is deeply disappointing. It’s fair to say the hypocrisy of this approach has not gone unnoticed.

The sad truth from a wilderness perspective is that right now, the Copenhagen outcome seems to be a partial success for forests and other ecosystems in developing countries, combined with a very unsatisfactory result for wilderness areas in developed countries. And if we don’t get an aggressive set of global emissions reductions targets, it won’t matter anyway because many of the forests and other intact ecosystems we should be protecting will likely dry up and burn, or otherwise deteriorate.

Copenhagen was a step forward, and the 110 or so politicians lining up to take the stage today will have some good news to share. But unless a miracle takes place over night, Copenhagen will not produce the hoped for historic breakthrough, and the overall result will be disappointing. What needs to happen on the last day in Copenhagen is one of two things. A commitment by negotiators to work through the weekend and into next week until they can hammer out a better result. Or a commitment to regroup and reconvene in six months to finish the job. Greenwash and hyperbole from the politicians are unacceptable, and most people who care about the planet’s future will find any attempt at greenwash deeply insulting and inflammatory.

Tuvalu is a small island nation in the South Pacific. No part of Tuvalu is more than 4 meters above sea level. For Tuvalu there is nothing remote or theoretical about climate change. Rising sea levels aren’t something they can adapt to – it’s something that simply wipes the country out. And so, exasperated by the horrifyingly slow pace of negotiations in Copenhagen, Tuvalu decided to take matters into its own hands.

One of the key questions before negotiators in Copenhagen is the “legal form” of the outcome. Will an entirely new climate agreement be generated, or will the existing Kyoto Protocol simply be extended?

This legal form issue has far reaching implications because large developing countries, such as China and India, have no obligations to reduce their emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Developed countries want a new agreement specifically because they want to see India and China included; they argue (correctly) that solving climate change isn’t possible without them.

China and India are willing to make emissions reductions, but don’t want to be legally bound to do so – at least not until industrialized countries make deep emissions cuts of their own and provide the funding necessary for developing countries to deal with climate change. They argue (also correctly) that the US is not bound in any way to reduce emissions because it hasn’t even bothered to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and Canada, which did ratify Kyoto, made a mockery of its obligations (Canada is supposed to be 6% below 1990 emissions levels by 2012 but is currently 29% above). As a result, they are waiting for leadership and financial commitment from industrialized countries.

Until now, neither side has been willing to back down in this elaborate game of chicken, and with the clock ticking away in Copenhagen and no one blinking, Tuvalu decided it couldn’t wait any more. It forced the “legal form” issue into the open by making a proposal for a new climate treaty that would encompass everyone, while at the same time preserving much of the structure from Kyoto. Then it courageously insisted that its proposal be officially considered. Because Tuvalu’s proposal suited neither side, proceedings in the plenary sessions of the two “tracks” of the negotiations ground to a halt. Technical deliberations in working groups and subsidiary bodies continued, and eventually Tuvalu allowed the plenaries to restart. But Tuvalu is still insisting that its proposal be considered, a ticking time bomb in these negotiations which could bring about a total collapse of the talks.

What does this have to do with forests and wilderness? While Tuvalu was making desperate pleas for progress in the plenary sessions, work was ongoing on a deal to provide funding to developing countries for protecting their tropical forests. The terms of that deal are not complete, but the language on tropical conservation (under the REDD+ mechanism) looks promising. Much work remains, and many questions are yet unanswered, but there is real enthusiasm that protecting tropical forests could be one of the positive outcomes of Copenhagen.

At the same time, everyone is keenly aware that the impasse between developed and developing countries has not yet been resolved. And it has escaped no one’s notice that Obama has made encouraging comments on tropical forest conservation from Oslo. Will conservation of forests become a bargaining chip as a result of its new-found political significance, and if so, will it be bargained away or hopelessly watered down in the interests of a larger deal?

For now, nobody knows. On Saturday negotiators agreed that they had done all they could and had not been able to resolve their differences . It is now up to the ministers who are rushing to Copenhagen for the second week of the talks to try to salvage the negotiations and preserve the deal on tropical forests and wilderness. If they don’t succeed, it will be up to the heads of State a few days later to do their best.

The planet desperately needs the world community to reach an agreement, and forests, both in developed countries and developing countries must be part of the deal. We cannot avert dangerous climate change without protecting the planet’s remaining wilderness areas.

WILD has been doing its part as a voice for wilderness in Copenhagen. The Mensaje de Merida, launched at WILD9, has been sent to dozens of government Parties, and WILD has been holding meetings with government delegates all week to review the Mensaje. WILD’s partners at the Ecosystems Climate Alliance and Conservation International, both of whom were well represented at WILD9 have been very instrumental in helping us get this statement in front of government officials. NGOs viewing the Mensaje in Copenhagen are also adding their names as sponsors.

In a hard-nosed, high-stakes, and often deeply cynical negotiation process in Copenhagen, maybe some negotiators will seek a little inspiration from the wilderness. As they are saying here in Copenhagen – there is no plan(et) B.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the flagship international convention for protecting, wilderness and the diversity of life on this planet. It’s the only international mechanism that addresses biodiversity writ large (as opposed to treaties focusing on individual species, or individual biomes such as wetlands) and it’s also the only treaty that focuses on establishing a comprehensive global network of protected areas, including wilderness protected areas. The CBD is the key mechanism for promoting international cooperation on protecting nature.

It’s also a treaty in desperate need of an injection of energy and enthusiasm. The global community is about to miss the 2010 biodiversity reduction targets set under the CBD and the CBD’s work is badly overshadowed by climate change negotiations. Despite the urgent need to prop up the CBD and make it a much more effective global platform, the US has yet to ratify the treaty. To make matters worse, we are one of only three countries that has failed to do so. How did this come about?

In the summer of 1992, the community of nations gathered in Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED – often referred to as the “Earth Summit”). The 1980s had seen an increase in concern over global environmental degradation – prompted in part by alarming coverage of the burning Amazon forest in international media – and a consensus had emerged that something had to be done. UNCED was chosen as the place and time where the global community would unite to craft a comprehensive global response to the planet’s environmental ills.

Three United Nations conventions emerged from this landmark gathering: The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). These three conventions, usually referred to as the Rio Conventions, were a major breakthrough. They were clearly imperfect documents – and unfinished because they required, and will continue to require supplementary protocols. Nevertheless, the Rio Conventions provided a framework for an integrated response to global environmental decline. They represent a remarkable political consensus.

The US ratified the UNFCCC and UNCCD, but did not ratify the CBD. The US’ concerns were that CBD provisions calling for technology transfer to developing countries could threaten US intellectual property interests, and that the obligations for financial aid under the CBD were vague. These concerns, however, were not shared by other developed nations: the vast majority of countries signed and ratified the CBD. In fact, as of a few weeks ago, only the US, Iraq, Somalia and Andorra had yet to sign on. With Iraq’s accession to the CBD in late July, the US, Somalia and Andorra are now the only remaining holdouts. The graphic below illustrates this strange reality.

Fortunately, there are signs that the Obama Administration is considering pushing for ratification of the CBD. That will of course require the cooperation of the US Senate, and prospects for success are still unclear. With a little luck, however, the US may finally be able to join the CBD in the near future. The US already makes major contributions to international conservation efforts, so acceding to the CBD will not place a significant new burden on government resources. Instead, it will send a powerful message that the US stands united with the global community to protect the diversity of life on earth and our planet’s remaining wilderness resources. The US, Somalia and Andorra is an exclusive club – but membership in the CBD would be much, much better.

This is not to say that offsets are entirely a bad thing, or should be taken off the table. The fact remains that we need to make deep cuts in emissions quickly and one way to make deep cuts quickly and in a cost effective manner is to use offsets, including protecting large wilderness areas in the tropics. However, the point is how, or more precisely when offsets are used: they should only be available to developed countries after those countries have achieved deep reductions in domestic emissions. In other words, if a country successfully reduces its carbon emissions below an aggressive initial target, making offsets and trade-able permits available to help it reduce emissions even further would seem to be an acceptable approach. But offsets should not be the starting point.

So what does that mean for wilderness protection? Reducing and eventually eliminating the roughly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions that come from tropical forests is still an urgent priority, but it will be necessary for the global community to find some additional financial mechanisms beyond market mechanisms to make this happen, at least in the short term. Fortunately, there are a number of options for filling the funding gap.

One option is to use a “hybrid” mechanism, i.e. auction revenues from cap and trade systems to pay for wilderness protection – an approach several countries have already taken or plan to take (Germany and the US for example), and one which could produce billions of dollars. Another is to use a fund-based system, increasing bilateral and multilateral development assistance. This would certainly help, and is especially important for the institution and capacity building necessary to protect tropical forests. But traditional overseas development assistance is unlikely to provide funding at the necessary scale. Another is a proposal to use taxes on international aviation and maritime industries, which also has good potential, but which of course will be fiercely opposed by those industries.

It’s not yet clear exactly what the mix will be. But there is no question that there are ways to make funding available. We absolutely need to act quickly, and wilderness protection must be part of the solution – we can’t avoid dangerous temperature increases unless we protect wilderness. But the need to act quickly should never be used as an excuse to make developing countries bear the brunt of emissions reductions.

The key conclusion of the report is that human induced climate change is already impacting the United States, and that our early actions today are critical to reduce the severity of the changes we will experience in the future. The longer we wait, the harder it gets, and the worse off we are. The list of impacts predicted in the report by the end of the century under worst case scenarios is all too familiar – we’ve seen it in the IPCC reports and we’ve heard it from Al Gore: expanding dead zones in coastal marine areas, flooding, more droughts, threats to agriculture from changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, and also from disease pathogens, pests and weeds expanding their ranges, fisheries shifting northwards, decreases in freshwater availability, increases in wildfires etc. etc. Maybe one of the more dramatic pieces of information was that under the “higher emissions scenario” large parts of Texas, Arizona and California could experience over 100 days over 100 degrees by 2080. The drastic implications for wilderness and wildlife – and definitely not just polar bears – are very troubling.

We can only hope that the release of this report, along with the threat of having the Environmental Protection Agency regulate CO2 as a pollutant, is part of a concerted strategy to place increasing pressure on Congress to pass climate change legislation by the end of the summer – and for the Senate to support the new climate agreement that the U.S. will negotiate in Copenhagen this December.

Unfortunately, to date the signs are very mixed for strong climate legislation. Under H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act (or “ACES”) proposed by the House, the U.S. is targeting emissions reductions of 17% by 2020. By contrast, the European Union is targeting a reduction of 20% by 2020, and is willing to up that to 30% if other developed countries follow suit. The difference between 17% and 20% doesn’t seem too bad – until you consider that the EU is aiming for reductions below 1990 emissions levels, while the U.S. is only aiming for reductions below 2005 levels. Those inclined to see the glass half full argue that while the U.S. target is too low, the activities called for in the bill will in fact lower emissions considerably more – maybe to as much as 17% below 1990 levels, which would be much better, and they also point to commitments to much deeper cuts by 2050.

From a wilderness standpoint, the U.S. legislation does a good thing – it recognizes that protecting forests around the world is a great way to fight climate change. So ACES sets up an auction system for emissions permits and uses 5% of the revenue from these permits to help fight deforestation internationally. Given auction revenue is expected to be in the 60 billion dollar range, this would amount to roughly 3 billion dollars – a significant ratcheting up of the U.S. has contribution to international conservation efforts. 1% of auction revenues (scaling up to 4%) would go to helping countries adapt to the impacts of climate change, which could also involve conservation benefits if these measures involve nature-based adaptation projects.

But the U.S. is only auctioning 15% of its emissions permits. 85% will be given out for free, greatly reducing the incentive for emissions reductions. It may not be realistic politically to ask for more. But think of how much more we could do for our wilderness areas around the world, for all the people who depend on them, and to fight climate change if we set more aggressive targets and auctioned even just 30% of the emissions permits. Based on the report just released by the White House, it turns out we would benefit here in the United States as well.

A key issue for conservationists – for everyone in fact – is whether the post-Kyoto agreement will recognize the important role of forests, and wild nature generally, in preventing climate change and helping life on earth adapt to the effects of rising temperatures. There have been a few positive signs lately that a new agreement will include a more comprehensive approach regarding forest protection. REDD has been elevated from a mechanism designed to finance sustainable forestry, to a mechanism that can finance conservation as well. Though REDD designs under discussion continue to have serious flaws, this is important progress.

More recently, negotiating text recently released by the UNFCCC Ad Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action had strong language on the importance of using ecosystem based adaptation to build the resilience of vulnerable ecosystems and species “including through an ecosystem-based approach to adaptation.” This is the first time that ecosystem-based adaptation language has been included in official negotiating text, and given that what makes its way into negotiating text tends to stay in, this is a significant step in the right direction.

This is welcome but incremental progress. A recent study by MIT should provide some motivation for doing better. Adding new and better data to their Global Integrated System Model and re-crunching numbers since they last ran the model in 2003, researchers found that median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is now projected to be 5.1°C higher than 1990 levels, more than double the projection of 2.4°C in the 2003 study. The MIT study also projects concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2095 of 896 parts per million. To put this in perspective, scientists are currently debating whether a safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide should be 350 or 450 ppm, with growing support for 350 ppm (see 350.org). In other words, under business as usual emissions we are easily exceeding the worst case scenarios anticipated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: without rapid and deep emissions cuts, we are headed for disaster.

We also know that we can’t reduce global emissions to an acceptable level fast enough without reducing , or better yet eliminating the roughly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions that come from deforestation and degradation of tropical forests. There are signs this message is starting to get through to government negotiators, but the upcoming UNFCCC intersessional negotiations in Bonn in early June will be an important test. It’s not a test we can afford to fail.

Wild nature and wilderness areas – on land and sea – are critically important from a climate change perspective: they keep large amounts of carbon locked up, they absorb carbon out of the atmosphere, and they help people, plants and animals adapt to the effects of climate change.

The role of tropical forests in particular has received much attention in recent years as new data indicated that about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions came from tropical deforestation – more than the entire transportation sector worldwide. This prompted conservationists to point out that saving tropical forests could not only take a big bite out of greenhouse gas emissions, it could also generate massive social and biodiversity benefits. Why not reward the countries, and in particular the local communities and indigenous peoples who have been good forests stewards, sometimes for centuries or even millennia? Providing an incentive to protect tropical forests would save endangered species, support often impoverished communities, and help solve the climate crisis, all at the same time The mechanism proposed for accomplishing all of the above was called REDD, which stands for Reducing Emissions for Deforestation and Degradation.

Unfortunately, early versions of REDD design didn’t focus on conservation – they focused more on sustainable logging. The rationale from the forest sector was that if you improve logging practices and log forests selectively you can reduce emissions. In some cases that’s true, but a number of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change led by the Coalition of Rainforest Nations argued that we could do better: the debate shouldn’t just be about logging more effectively and releasing a little bit less carbon, it should be about protecting the vast carbon stocks locked up in forests. REDD shouldn’t act as a subsidy to industrial logging companies – it should focus on maximizing these carbon stocks and providing the social and biodiversity benefits this planet desperately needs.

Fortunately, this message seems to have been heard. Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, recently emphasized in a talk at the United Nations Forum on Forests in New York City that REDD really needed to be “REDD+” i.e. REDD had to include conservation and the enhancement of carbon stocks in existing forests, not just sustainable management of forests. This shift has also been reflected in official UNFCCC documents. Parties to the UNFCCC are moving in this direction as well. It represents important progress in the fight against global warming.

REDD+ is an improvement but by no means a perfect solution – fundamental challenges with REDD design remain, including but not limited to the sustainable forestry issue mentioned above. How to reward countries financially for their conservation efforts, how to build technical capacity so that countries can measure their forest loss and degradation accurately, and how to ensure that the rights of local and indigenous communities are respected are all critical challenges. Failing to address any one of these concerns could drastically reduce REDD’s effectiveness, or keep it from working altogether.

REDD is also just a partial approach: it only addresses incentives for conservation in tropical forests, so it does not maximize the carbon sequestration potential of natural systems worldwide – nor their social and biodiversity benefits. That said, it is an important part of the solution, and leaving conservation out of REDD would have been a monumental missed opportunity. It now looks as if REDD+ is safely in place for the climate talks in Copenhagen this December, where parties will negotiate a framework for a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. That’s an important step in the right direction – for people, for biodiversity, and for our climate.

If you tend to view the glass as half empty, there are plenty of reasons to view these talks as a disappointment. First, current negotiations may be aiming at the wrong stabilization levels for carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Until now, keeping carbon dioxide levels at 450 parts per million to limit a temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels has been the consensus objective. But a number of delegates in Poznan (including Al Gore) argued that 450 ppm is too high, and that the target, as noted by NASA scientist James Hansen, should really be 350 ppm. Complicating matters further, the Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, noted that a rise of 2 degrees Celsius might itself be too much, leading to serious environmental impacts.

Nor was there any agreement reached on how much developed countries would need to reduce emissions below 1990 levels to achieve a 450 ppm – not to mention a 350 ppm – target. Negotiating these emissions reductions will now have to wait until the meetings in Copenhagen at the end of 2009, when the U.S. will be expected to play a leading role in the negotiations. Of course, even with all the good will of the new Obama administration, whatever his administration negotiates will have to pass muster with the United States Senate (and do so with a two thirds majority), and the Senate may well be reluctant to ratify any new climate agreement that doesn’t include binding reductions from developing countries such as Brazil, India and China. So while negotiators pledged to switch to “full negotiating mode” in 2009, some participants are already questioning whether Copenhagen will yield the necessary results.

Little progress was made on the role of nature conservation in a future climate agreement. Discussions on the carbon benefits of avoiding deforestation – often referred to as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation or “REDD” -remained at the level of a Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and have yet to be elevated to the UNFCCC’s Ad Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action, where decisions on policy mechanism can begin to be made. A well designed REDD mechanism, which focuses on all carbon rich natural environments including but not limited to forests, could have enormous implications on the planet’s wilderness and biodiversity in addition to a range of social and climate benefits. The fact that these discussions have not yet moved to a higher level is very disappointing.

Finally, the announcement of an Adaptation Fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change was nothing new: the fund has been in place for some time, but legal problems, which have now been resolved, were preventing its full operationalization. In any case, the fund only represents a small fraction of the financial assistance necessary to help countries adapt to climate change impacts.

At the same time, if you view the glass half full, you can certainly argue that this meeting could not have produced much without the presence of the Obama administration’s negotiating team, and in the middle of a serious economic downturn: the pledge to move negotiations into high gear and to start producing actual negotiating text by March is about as much as could be hoped for. And a number of countries did chose to announce unilateral emission reductions target, including Mexico which pledged to reduce emissions by half by 2050, and Brazil, which promised an enormous reduction of 70% by 2020. The EU promised 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, and agreed to go to 30% if a global agreement on this target could be achieved. The EU, India, China, and Brazil also announced support for 25-40% reductions below 1990 levels for developed countries. Finally, there also seems to be a consensus that conservation has a key role to play in any global climate solution, even though the devil is in the details regarding how to set up an equitable and effective mechanism for maximizing the role of forest protection.

We will have to wait for the next round of meetings to see whether negotiations have indeed entered a new, more urgent phase. In the meantime, our carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase, we may be aiming at the wrong target, and our climate and our wilderness hangs in the balance.

We are pleased to be able to report that his document contains a number of important breakthroughs.

• First, it defines a protected area as an area set aside primarily for nature conservation. While protected areas may have other key management objectives, including promoting sustainable development, these other objectives are only valid so long as they do not undermine the nature conservation goal. Achieving consensus on this point provides much needed clarity for protected area professionals – in our view it represents a major step forward.
• The new guidelines (as well as a resolution) also emphasize that all protected area categories make valuable contributions to conservation, and that the choice of protected area category should be based on local context/conditions. In effect, this prevents Category 1b – Wilderness from ever being marginalized within IUCN. There have been efforts in the past to emphasize certain protected area categories over others as a matter of policy, and this will no longer be possible.
• Finally, the wilderness protected area category was updated. The essence of a wilderness protected area – an area that is mainly biologically intact, does not have industrial infrastructure, and that is protected so that people may experience wild nature, was clarified and strengthened. The next text for Category 1b wilderness provides flexibility on several key points. It continues the policy that wilderness designations are in no way incompatible with indigenous peoples living traditional lifestyles. It also provides flexibility on the issues of how large and how intact an area must be to qualify for a wilderness designation.

Given that this document is not likely to undergo any new revisions until the next World Conservation Congress in four years at the very earliest, IUCN will have a strong protected areas and wilderness policy for the foreseeable future. IUCN has asked WILD to prepare a more in-depth IUCN publication on wilderness to supplement the new management guidelines, which will allow WILD to continue to advance wilderness policy within IUCN and around the world. We will be in touch with the Wilderness Task Force going forward on this publication.