JO Magazine

Even with lowered expectations, the un climate change conference in Denmark appears to have fallen short of almost every major goal. Will there be a 'next time'?

Words by Nicholas Seeley.

AFTER MONTHS OF HYPE and political rhetoric, of rapidly rising and falling expectations, the much-anticipated COP15 climate negotiation in Copenhagen seems to have yielded next to nothing.

The final result was the Copenhagen Accord, a loosely-worded document produced by a small group of large emitters, which made few concrete promises and was not fully endorsed by the 193 parties to the negotiations.

Most observers quickly pointed out that the 1,300-word accord reached by China, Brazil, South Africa, India and the United States was non-binding, and described its language as “murky” or “a sketch.” Barack Obama himself noted that the accord was a political document and not a treaty, according to The New York Times. And nations that felt left out of the final negotiating process, including many in Europe and most of the developing world, have condemned the agreement in remarkably strong language.

Images

Lumumba Di-Aping, the chief negotiator for the largest group of developing countries, said the accord set “the lowest level of ambition you can imagine,” according to The Guardian. “It’s nothing short of climate change skepticism in action,” he said.

Some global leaders have still claimed victory for the accord, describing it as “meaningful,” or a necessary first step. But at the end of the conference, the 193 nations that participated agreed only to “take note” of the accord, a move that calls into question whether this meager document is really a first step toward anything in particular.

DOES THE COPENHAGEN ACCORD mean anything? Prior to the negotiations, JO ran a story summarizing a number of different views of what might qualify Copenhagen as a success. (See “Heated Talks,” December 2009.) On almost every major point where experts said agreement was needed, the Copenhagen Accord falls short.

After weeks of contentious wrangling between developing nations and developed ones over who’s going to cut emissions most, and first, legally-binding global emissions targets seem farther away than ever. Even the agreements that are made in the document seem watery. “We shall … on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change,” reads the first point of the three-page document.

While the parties to the accord “agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required,” the targets are, at best, vague and uneven. Developed nations do commit to reducing their emissions, individually or jointly, by at least 80 percent by 2050. (At press time, it was not clear whether that reduction was from 1990 levels, or 2005, or the present.) No targets are set for developing nations, including India and China—now the world’s largest emitter—though the language of the accord suggests that they will undertake their own efforts to reduce emissions.

On the issue of aid to developing countries, the accord is similarly sketchy. It does call for developed nations to commit to $30 billion in assistance for the developing world in the period 2010-2012—a much smaller sum than many were hoping for. In the longer term, the accord says, developed nations “support a goal” of raising $100 billion dollars a year by 2020, though where the money will come from remains unclear.

On the question of international monitoring of emissions, the document again offers little. During the conference, China vehemently rejected the idea of international emissions monitoring, calling it an affront to its national sovereignty. The text of the accord appears to commit developing nations to reporting their own emissions, something some commentators have interpreted as establishing a monitoring regime; others have said the exact opposite.

Nor does the accord set any firm date for actually concluding negotiations on a final, binding climate agreement.

The World Wildlife Fund called the accord a “half-baked” text with “unclear substance.”

“Well meant but half-hearted pledges to protect our planet from dangerous climate change are simply not sufficient to address a crisis that calls for completely new ways of collaboration across rich and poor countries,” said the fund’s climate director, Kim Carstensen.

In September, the Council on Foreign Relations’ senior climate researcher, Michael Levi, suggested in an article in Foreign Affairs that specific national policies to reduce emissions, and mechanisms to encourage them, would be the best outcomes from Copenhagen—but it seems these too have been put off indefinitely.

The prime example is REDD, an agreement to prevent deforestation (which is a major cause of CO2 emissions) by paying countries to conserve their forests. On December 15, The Times reported that an agreement was nearly finalized, and called REDD “the most significant achievement to come out of the Copenhagen climate talks.” But on December 19, the Associated Press reported that the plan had been scrapped.

Meanwhile, a UN report leaked to The Guardian in mid-December said that while most nations have committed in principle to keep global average temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius, the emissions cuts offered at Copenhagen mean that temperatures are likely to rise 3 degrees or more— with substantially more destructive results.

GIVEN ALL THIS, IT’S hard to see how to interpret Copenhagen as anything other than a failure (and a failure with its own huge carbon footprint). But there are rays of hope, though they seem thin amidst the flood of negative reactions.

Some academics have expressed optimism over the fact that, for the first time, all the world’s largest emitters have signed on to a document agreeing that global warming is a problem that can be intervened against, and setting a goal of keeping global temperature rises below 2 degrees.

And long-time climate reporter Andrew Revkin, in The Times, said the accord was “nonetheless significant in that it codifies the commitments of individual nations to act on their own to tackle global warming.” He also quoted some environmentalists who said the report was a first step toward a better deal, and that it would help individual nations commit to making progress on their own measures to combat climate change. Several countries did promise new emissions cuts in the run-up to Copenhagen, even if those cuts are not ensconced in a treaty, and not likely to keep warming below 2 degrees.

US Senator John Kerry told Revkin he hoped the accord would push the US Congress to pass its own climate change legislation, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, along with other world leaders, have insisted that the conference was not a failure.

Ban also told reporters that the deal was a good start toward final negotiations. “It may not be everything we hoped for, but this decision of the Conference of Parties is an essential beginning. … The importance will only be recognized when it’s codified into international law. … We must transform this into a legally binding treaty next year,” he said, according to the BBC.

But other observers have worried that reaching that legally binding agreement could take years, if it materializes at all. And many have pointed out that it’s not just the product of the Copenhagen talks that was fraught, but the process itself.

The crafting of the accord by an exclusive group of large nations has left many smaller and developing countries alienated. At one point, most of the developing world actually walked out of the conference over fears a deal was being cut behind their backs. Nor was the final accord welcomed by smaller nations.

“The developed countries have decided that damage to developing countries [from global warming] is acceptable,” Di-Aping told The Times.
The fact that the conference parties did not endorse the final accord only adds to the sense that the process is breaking down.

“Many involved in the process here suggested this would be the last time that 193 nations would gather in this way to negotiate such a complex accord,” Revkin wrote. This, along with the lack of a set date for final negotiations, has stoked worries about whether an effective agreement can ever be achieved by the UN.
“It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen,” John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, told The Guardian.

FACED WITH AN AGREEMENT that seems to have fallen below even the lowest expectations, and a negotiating process with a weak track record and an uncertain future, a common reaction has been despair. Many environmental and aid groups were quick to slam the Copenhagen Accord in notably apocalyptic language.

Lydia Baker of Save the Children told The Guardian that world leaders had “effectively signed a death warrant for many of the world’s poorest children. Up to 250,000 children from poor communities could die before the next major meeting in Mexico at the end of next year.”

“This is the United Nations, and the nations here are not united on this secret back-room declaration,” Kate Horner, from Friends of the Earth, told the paper. “The US has lied to the world when they called it a deal and they lied to over a hundred countries when they said they would listen to their needs.”

The atmosphere outside the conference on the final day was one of frustration and disappointment. Thousands of protestors turned out for the event, which was marked by clashes with the police and increasingly desperate attempts at civil disobedience, including several efforts by protestors to actually get inside the Bella Center, where the conference was being held.

“Civil society has been excluded from a discussion vital to humanity’s survival,” said the protest group Climate Justice Action, in a statement issued at the end of the event. “NGOs have been excluded from the summit, protesters arbitrarily arrested and organizers targeted.”

“We need to be marching together, not retreating together,” said one US activist. “The COP has failed, and we have the perfect chance to express our rage at what’s happened. Why aren’t we doing that?”

In The Washington Post, columnist Anne Applebaum criticized the climate of apocalyptic fear that was developing around global warming—one that in many ways appeared strikingly similar to the fear of nuclear annihilation that was stoked at the height of the Cold War.

“Among the tens of thousands demonstrating outside the climate change summit, some were carrying giant clocks set at 10 minutes to midnight, indicating the imminent end of the world,” Applebaum wrote. “Near the conference center, an installation of skeletons standing knee-deep in water made a similar point, as did numerous melting ice sculptures and a melodramatic “die-in” staged by protesters wearing white, ghost-like jumpsuits.”

Applebaum’s column was prompted by a 9-year-old refusing to do his homework, because “by the time I’m grown up, the polar ice caps will have melted and everyone will have drowned.” But she isn’t the only observer to worry about growing despair and nihilism in the face of governments and institutions that seem incapable of taking effective action on issues that many people see as urgent, even existential.

UK columnist George Monbiot expressed similar worries in a recent NPR interview, and speculated that despair may be feeding the growth of the kind of climate change “skepticism” that either denies that the globe is warming or says that man’s actions don’t play a part in it.

What is clear is that after a year of climate change hard-liners like Danish climate minister Connie Hedegaard portraying Copenhagen as humanity’s last and only chance, its failure has left a profound vacuum in the discussion about what, if anything, can be done to better manage Earth’s resources.