Author(s):Oscar Reyes
Copenhagen Climate Talks (Credit: Department of Energy & Climate
Change)
So the rumours were true. For the past week, it was an open secret that the
Danish government had already drafted a “political declaration” that could
form the major outcome of the UN Climate Change Conference now that a
full-blown international agreement is off the cards. The draft text has now
been leaked, sparking outrage amongst Southern delegates and civil society
organisations.
“The Copenhagen Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change,” as the draft is titled, would introduce percentage-based emissions
targets for all except the Least Developed Countries, fatally undermining
the Kyoto Protocol, which draws a line between industrialised Annex 1 states
and the Majority World. The text also suggests that financial and
technological support measures in non-Annex 1 countries, an underlying
principle of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), should
now be made conditional to their ability to meet complex emissions
monitoring requirements.
The UNFCCC quickly attempted to limit the damage, putting out a statement
from Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer that declared that the draft was a
“decision paper put forward by Danish Prime Minister,” while maintaining
that it was not a “formal text” of the UN negotiating process.
But the leaked text met with an angry response from many Southern delegates.
Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairperson of the G77 plus China grouping of
132 developing countries, said that the Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke
Rasmussen had failed in his role as a neutral host and had instead “chosen
to protect the rich countries.” The emergence of the draft text was also met
by an impromptu protest from members of the Pan African Climate Justice
Alliance, who marched through the Bella Centre chanting “Two degrees is
suicide, One Africa, one degree.”
*Democratic deficit *
Concern stems not simply from the contents of the draft text, but also the
secretive and biased way in which it came about. The COP Presidency, which
is held by host country Denmark, is mandated to craft compromises based on
painstakingly negotiated drafts. In this case, the Presidency stands accused
not only of overstepping the mark, but of hopping, stepping and then jumping
over it, pre-empting UN decisions with proposals lifted in part from text
discussed at the Major Economies Forum, an initiative closely tied to the
G20 grouping and chaired by US President Barack Obama.
As Meena Raman, Honorary Secretary of Friends of the Earth Malaysia,
explains, “The leaked draft Copenhagen Agreement violates the democratic
principles of the UN and threatens the Copenhagen negotiations. By
discussing their text in secret back-room meetings with a few select
countries, the Danes are doing the opposite of what the world expects the
host country to do. The Danish government must stop colluding with other
rich nations. Instead it must take as a starting point the positions of
developing countries - which are the least responsible for climate change,
but who are most affected by it.”
Raman Mehta from Action Aid India decried a “betrayal of trust” on the part
of the Danish government.
*More “hot air” on reductions*
The draft text is weak and vague in its overall ambitions. In reiterating
the goal of holding global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above
pre-industrial levels, the text sets a global reduction target of 50 per
cent by 2050, of which 80 per cent should come from the industrialised
world. These figures look distinctly unimpressive when tracked back to
existing per capita emissions, however, with one estimate suggesting that
they would allow Northern industrialised countries to continue outpolluting
the Majority World by a factor of 3:5.
The short-term proposals are ostensibly more ambitious, with a suggestion
that global emissions should peak by 2020. But the same passage of the text
misleadingly claims that this peak has already been reached in “developed
countries collectively.” This is based on the latest UNFCCC figures, which
show that Annex 1 countries are now on track to meet their Kyoto Protocol
commitments, but a closer look reveals that this is achieved on the basis of
“hot air” emissions resulting from economic collapse in the former Soviet
bloc in the early 1990s. Emissions elsewhere in the developed world have
continued to rise. The projections for 2020 are further massaged by counting
a large volume of “emissions savings” from carbon offsets made in the global
South as part of Annex 1 emissions figures.
*Strings attached*
Whereas the Bali Action Plan emphasises that developing country actions will
be “supported and enabled” by technology, financing and capacity building,
the draft suggests that these measures would be “subject to robust
measurement, reporting and verification.” This inversion implies that the
support measures could be withheld unless monitoring is externally approved.
Instead of placing an obligation on industrialised countries to repay and
restitute their climate debt, this makes any support measures conditional to
a series of complex technical asssessments.
Just as significant is what the text does not include. There are no numbers
on long-term financing, and there is no suggestion that these will be
forthcoming in Copenhagen. The only figure offered is a projection of $10
billion per year of “fast start finance”, a scaled-down version of a plan
first presented by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown in late November. But
Lumamba Di-Aping was dismissive: “Ten billion dollars will not buy
developing countries’ citizens enough coffins,” he said.
*A growing market *
The flip side of this lack of financial commitments is a commitment to scale
up carbon markets as part of any agreement. The cap and trade proposals
currently passing through the US would allow up to 1.5 billion tonnes of
carbon offsets per year to displace the need for domestic emissions
reductions, a demand that is over seven times larger than the existing
supply of offsets through the UN's Clean Devopment Mechanism (CDM) and Joint
Implementation scheme.
Although the language on carbon markets remains vague, talk of “an effective
and orderly transition from project based to more comprehensive approaches”
signals a framework that would introduce a broad range of new offsets, from
“sectoral crediting” through to measures aimed at Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).
“With developed countries offering so little by way of public finance,
developing countries are being sent a message that support for offsetting
mechanisms is their only real choice to access funds” says Payal Parkeh, a
climate scientist with International Rivers.
*A coalition of the unwilling*
What the “Copenhagen Agreement” leak signals, above all, is a lack of
ambition on the part of industrialised countries to make emissions
reductions at home or meet their financial and other obligations to the
South. “Despite the hype, the talk of ´Hopenhagen´, the supposed political
will to ´get it done´, this set of negotiations might be no different than
anything that has come before” concludes Rhiya Trivedi, a member of the
Canadian Youth Delegation to Copenhagen. “It could be just another round of
the North-South divide and power struggle.” Business as usual, in other
words.
www.carbontradewatch.org
The article appears in the Climate Chronicle
*newspaper published at the Copenhagen climate talks.*
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