South Africa’s Environmental Affairs DG Joanne Yawitch – who spoke with Engineering News Online from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Bonn, Germany – said on Thursday that she was confident that “we will come out of Copenhagen with an architecture of what the Climate Change regime will look like."

“I am still very confident that one will get a second Kyoto Protocol commitment period, with new numbers,” she said.

She cautioned, however, that she was “less optimistic” that the financial framework for developing country support would be finalised.

The Bonn meeting formed part of the “long and complicated” discussion about numbers and what greenhouse-gas emission targets developed countries should take, ahead of the planned Copenhagen climate-change gathering later this year.

South Africa had agreed in principle to taking mitigation actions, but with the proviso that finance and technological support be extended by rich countries. Those targets and reductions would then be measured, reported and verified.

“Our big concern, is that at this stage, there is no real financial package on the table,” said Yawitch.

She added that for the last year there have been very vague and unsatisfactory commitments as to what would be put on the table.

“The other major issue for South Africa is that we would want to see adaptation to the impact of climate change getting a much bigger priority.

“It really is a big African and developing world issue, because even if one got radical emission targets coming into play, we live with what is in the atmosphere, and it is having, and will continue having, a big impact on Africa going into the future,” Yawitch outlined.

This would require a financial architecture that would allow developing countries to do things like building dykes or fortifications to hold back the rising sea levels that were anticipated as a result of global warming.

“Developed nations will need to realise the primacy of the issues for the developing nations,” she stressed.

The Bonn talks would probably continue into Friday night, with Saturday, June 16, being a deadline for the tabling of legally binding amendments and updates ahead of the Copenhagen meeting.

“So, I think by tomorrow [Friday] there should be some text on the table – we are hoping. I’m pretty certain it will be,” Yawitch said.

In the run-up to the Copenhagen meeting in December, there would be another three technical negotiating meetings, set for August, October and November.

“Things will only really start moving from August, but with possibly more discussion around the reduction targets for the second Kyoto Protocol commitment period - it is starting to get serious,” Yawitch noted.

Participants in the Bonn round spent much of their time poring over the text produced at the Bali discussions in December 2008.

“Out of that, the textual negotiations will start again in August in Bonn. So, slow progress at a technical level, but there are still some very big differences in how things should be moving forward,” Yawitch explained.