Bonn Climate Talks Part 8: The Chorus Grows

On Day 7 of the talks, the chorus is steadily growing to transform the forestry accounting framework with a goal to reduce emissions. The following countries have now all made public statements in supporting this goal:

• The African Group (53 countries);
• COMIFAC - the Central African Forest Commission (10 Central African countries);
• The Coalition of Rainforest Nations (13 countries in Africa, Caribbean, Central America and South America);
  
• India.
  

By contrast, developed countries continue to obfuscate with talk of 'proper incentives' and 'business-as-usual' management.

It becomes more and more clear each day that the "projection of forest management activities" in a country's baseline is absolutely foolhardy:

• it hides increased net emissions;
• it is based on unverifiable assumptions;
• it leads to wild inconsistency in baselines between countries.

In a negotiating session today on 'the numbers' - i.e. countries' overall targets to reduce emissions, several developed countries made it clear that they will only move to the upper end of the range of emission reductions they have offered if they get the LULUCF loopholes they seek. In this context, moving to the upper range becomes totally meaningless.

Closed-door negotiations resume again tomorrow and there will be three sessions in total this week.