The long and winding road to Bali

Global talks on climate change have yielded some progress and much frustration since the earth summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Jennifer Rankin gauges levels of expectation for the Bali event.

"We have to face up to the dire implications of the warnings scientists are sounding. They point to the prospect that this planet may soon become uninhabitable for people…The industrialised world cannot escape its primary responsibility to lead the way in establishing this partnership and making it work."

It could be a draft of one of the many speeches that will echo around the conference rooms of Bali. But in fact these words were spoken in 1992 by Maurice Strong, the secretary-general of the Rio earth summit. At that meeting, countries signed up to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000, a goal that turned out to be hopelessly optimistic.

International meetings on climate can have a depressing circularity for both observers and participants. Last year’s conference (CoP12) in Nairobi was regarded as achieving very little. It was seen as a ‘holding’ CoP with little in the way of substantial agreement. But researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in the UK think that progress was made in some areas. They write that "some limited confidence building was also achieved on post-2012 mitigation…however it appeared that most parties were not ready to set out their negotiating stalls in public at this stage, preferring to gain a sense of the position of other parties, in preparation for the real negotiations whenever they may be". In contrast, CoP11 in Montreal (2005) was seen as much more successful, because it engaged business leaders. Around 9,500 people attended the Montreal CoP and 5,900 attended Nairobi.

At least 5,000 people are expected to attend the two-week long jamboree in Bali, which also includes fringe events where non-governmental organisations and governments will present ideas in a less formal setting. Aside from the tropical climate, the Bali conference will be a familiar scene for seasoned EU summiteers, with its fine-sounding speeches, procedural points, backroom deals and a rich soup of acronyms. Although Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian president, is expected to attend, it is unlikely that many other heads of state or government will, because Bali is a staging post in the process rather than the endgame.

At Bali, countries will also have some substantive discussions about the areas that the mandate for negotiations on a post-2012 regime is likely to cover. These are mitigation (cutting emissions), adaptation (adapting to unavoidable climate change), technology and financing, and deforestation. The meeting is also expected to lead to the launch of a fund for adaptation.

Bali highlights

3 December: Conference opens

Election of Rachmat Witoelar, environment minister of Indonesia, as president of CoP13/MoP3

5 December: Presentation of report by UN’s IPCC

12-14 December: High level segment of CoP13 with statements from environment ministers and non-governmental organisations

Past summits

1988 Toronto - not a formal summit, but a "call for action" 48 countries agreed to reduce CO2 emissions by 20% by 1998

1992 Rio earth summit - set a target to reduce emissions to 1990 levels

1994 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change established

1997 Kyoto Protocol establishes targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions for developed countries and arrangements for emissions trading

2005 Kyoto Protocol comes into force, first Meeting of the Parties in Montreal

2007 (March) EU spring summit - leaders agree to 2020 targets

(June) G8 summit in Heiligendamm

(September) First major economies meeting on energy security and climate change

2008 CoP14 Poznan, Poland

2009 CoP15 Copenhagen, Denmark - unofficial deadline for agreeing a successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol

Global talks on climate change have yielded some progress and much frustration since the earth summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Jennifer Rankin gauges levels of expectation for the Bali event.