As the last entry in our series about remote sensing and climate change, we offer a rundown on COP-15. Overall, the meeting did not deliver on most of the major aims:

– No deadline for a legally-binding agreement
– No greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets for 2020
– No goal for reducing global emissions by 2050
– No deadline for global greenhouse emissions to reach their peak
– No mention of aviation and shipping (specific sectoral agreement)

But that’s not to say COP-15 was a failure. There was some progress on monitoring, reporting, and verification; REDD; financing; and technology transfer. Details on each of these topics follow.

Monitoring, reporting, and verification: China, India, and other developing nations are to publish their emissions curbing commitments in annexes to a new global agreement. They would then communicate progress to those goals according to internationally agreed upon standards.

REDD: On deforestation, there should be the “immediate establishment of a mechanism, including REDD-plus” to mobilize capital from developed countries for “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” and enhancing “removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests”.

Financing: Developed countries are to “support a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries”. This funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance. There will also be 30 billion dollars made available over the 3-year period of 2010 to 2012, balanced between climate change adaptation and emissions mitigation. Further, a new UN Framework Convention on Climate Change mechanism called the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund will be established to support funded “projects, programs, and policies” on mitigation, REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity building, technology development and transfer.

Technology transfer: A new technology mechanism will also be established to further accelerate technology development and transfer under a country-by-country approach. (This is in contrast to the existing CDM which takes a project-based approach.)

So what does this mean for remote sensing? Without a binding agreement, it may still be too early to tell. But cautiously speaking, it appears we are headed down a path where REDD (or REDD-plus) will be properly funded, which means the remote sensing technologies we discussed last week will be used to help measure and monitor forest carbon.

This, along with the emphasis on technology transfer holds real promise. By increasing the number of users skilled in the science and application of geospatial data, climate change policy can impact countless other areas of a developing nation’s existence, from infrastructure planning to emergency response to economic development. Now that’s something to be optimistic about in the New Year.