Independent Diplomat

RMI / CLIMATE CHANGE

Since 2009, ID's multi-faceted work on climate change has focused on providing diplomatic support, advice and technical assistance to the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) in navigating diplomatic processes on climate change, including negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 

Working inside the negotiating room, ID has helped those countries with the most to lose from climate change to become better informed, more coordinated and diplomatically more effective as an important voice in the negotiations, in turn enhancing the chances of a more ambitious, legally robust and environmentally credible post-2012 climate regime. 

ID's work with RMI and AOSIS has included a leadership role in discussions on ‘mitigation' (i.e. emissions reductions) under the UNFCCC negotiating track, and debate on the ‘legal form' for the post-2012 climate regime, including the future of the Kyoto Protocol.   

ID's work with RMI has also included active leadership in, and technical support for, the emergence of the increasingly influential Cartagena Dialogue for Progressive Action. This new and unique grouping of about 30 progressive developed and developing countries from all regions of the world has worked to circumvent the north/south divide that has for too long characterized international diplomacy on climate change, and was crucial to achieving the key compromises that led to the much-needed Cancún Agreements at COP-16 in Mexico. After successful meetings in 2010 in Colombia, the Maldives and Costa Rica, the Cartagena Dialogue met for the first time in Malawi in early March 2011 to take further steps towards forging a new international consensus on climate change.

Leveraging ID's in-depth experience with matters on the agenda of the Security Council, ID's work on climate change has broadened out to include advice to UN Missions on options for accelerating efforts to address the climate change / security nexus, as first recognized in UN General Assembly resolution 63/281 and further developed in the Secretary-General's follow-up report on the issue (UN Doc A/64/250).  In this vein, ID has worked with the RMI Mission to the UN in New York to co-host with Columbia University's Climate Change Law Centre an international conference in May 2011 titled ‘Threatened Island Nations: Legal Implications of Rising Seas and a Changing Climate'.  ID's climate change expert, Dean Bialek, presented at the conference.    

 

Other work

ID was commissioned in mid-2009 to produce a number of national economic and political analysis briefs for use by senior staff of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) International in the lead up to various global and regional head of state meetings in the context of international climate negotiations in 2009.

ID was commissioned by the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity in late 2010 to produce and present a strategic analysis of international forums to address the growing problem of ocean acidification, including possible avenues for international litigation.