ANALYSIS: COPENHAGEN CONFERENCE

International conferences by their very nature are not known to end up in failure, with zero results. But COP 15 -the fifteenth conference of parties to the UN Framework Convention in Climate Change (UNFCCC) -- distinguishes itself from other UN conferences in that its outcome is subject to interpretation.

The fact is that COP15 concluded Dec. 19 with an agreement to “take note” of the so-called Copenhagen Accord. Considering that many countries not only expressed deep disappointment with the outcome but also “determination to use it as a stepping stone to more rigorous action” senior UN officials have come up with an ingenious interpretation.

The agreement to “take note” was “formal acknowledgement” of the Accord “by consensus”, they insist. And this, in spite of the outright rejection by Venezuela, Sudan, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia -- countries not on best terms with the U.S. even under the Obama Administration.

This perceived consensus would create a procedure for individual countries to associate themselves with the “agreement”. UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Orr has gone one step further and predicted that the Copenhagen Accord would “advance the climate change negotiations”.

The creative minds of the UN bureaucracy remain undeterred by objections being raised by civil society organisations such as the Friends of the Earth International (FoEI). It is warning against the “false conclusion” that the UN climate conference has “adopted” the 'Copenhagen Accord'.

“The Copenhagen Accord announced on Dec. 18 by U.S. President Barack Obama was not adopted by delegates to the United Nations climate conference. Instead, delegates merely ‘noted’ the agreement's existence, giving it no force whatsoever,” maintains the FoEI.

Civil society organisations say that rich countries led by the United States are pressuring poorer nations to ditch the UN process and sign onto the Copenhagen Accord. They are threatening poor nations that refuse to sign on with the loss of their share of the 100 billion US dollars that rich countries have pledged to compensate for climate impacts the rich countries themselves have caused.

“UN officials are struggling to figure out what the Accord even means and how it is related to the UN process, but what is clear is that it was not approved by the 192 countries that are members of the UNFCCC. By signing onto the Accord, poor countries risk displacing the legitimate negotiation process taking place under the auspices of the UN,” cautions FoEI

With 194 Parties, UNFCCC has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 190 of the UNFCCC Parties. Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialised countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments.

The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.

FoEI chair Nnimmo Bassey said: “First the U.S. came to Copenhagen with nothing new to offer, and now it's trying to package the weak, flawed, unjust Copenhagen Accord as a replacement for the UN process -- and arm-twist poor countries into signing on.”

Bassey says that whereas President Bush ignored the UN process, now President Obama risks to torpedo it.

"Countries seeking a just and effective solution to climate change should not sign this illegitimate and distracting Copenhagen Accord. They should instead ensure a rapid return to the formal UN process to achieve a fair, strong and legally binding agreement as soon as possible within the next year.”

The next annual UN Climate Change Conference will take place towards the end of 2010 in Mexico City, preceded by a major two-week negotiating session in Bonn, Germany, scheduled May 31 to June 11.

Also the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) said: “The Copenhagen Accord was presented as ‘meaningful’ by some world leaders but was condemned by many for its lack of ambition and the process in which it was agreed. The UN climate conference agreed to ‘take note’ of the Accord on Dec. 19 morning, but it was not formally adopted.”

CONCEPTUAL JUGGLING

While conceptual juggling was at work, strong doubts persisted whether and what COP15 had achieved.

There is talk of a real deal having been sealed, foundation of a truly global agreement having been laid, of the launch of a new era of green growth, and an essential beginning. The conference hype continued unabated with all its contradictions and paradoxes.

Expectedly, some senior UN officials were at pains to clarify that though the conference was “perhaps not the big breakthrough some had hoped for, but neither was it a breakdown, which at times seemed a possibility”.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon explained to journalists: "Finally we sealed the deal. And it is a real deal. Bringing world leaders to the table paid off... We have the foundation for the first truly global agreement that will limit and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, support adaptation for the most vulnerable and launch a new era of green growth."

"The Copenhagen Accord may not be everything that everyone hoped for, but this decision of the Conference of Parties (COP) is a beginning, an essential beginning."

To back up his claim, Ban said results had been made on all four of the benchmarks for success that he laid out during the special leaders' summit on climate change held in New York last September.

"All countries have agreed to work towards a common long-term goal to limit the global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius; many governments have made important commitments to reduce or limit emissions; countries have achieved significant progress on preserving forests; and countries have agreed to provide comprehensive support to the most vulnerable to cope with climate change."

Ban said these commitments had been backed up by 30 billion US dollars of pledges for short-term adaptation and mitigation measures for poorer countries, and further commitments to raise 100 billion US dollars by 2020 to achieve those goals.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) chose to be cautious: “The litmus test of developed countries' ambitions will, in a sense, come immediately. If the funds promised in the Accord start flowing swiftly and to the levels announced, then a new international climate change policy may have been born."

Steiner stressed that the Copenhagen Accord represented a compromise of differing national and economic interests among States large and small, rich and poor.

“Trying to take over 190 countries through the same door towards a more cooperative global warming policy has proved challenging but ultimately possible and do-able. Time will be the true judge as to whether 19 December 2009 was indeed an historic date for accelerating a response to combating dangerous climate change and for more sustainable management of economically important ecosystems, such as forests,” argued Steiner.

LETTER OF INTENT

“We must be honest about what we have got,” said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer. “The world walks away from Copenhagen with a deal. But clearly ambitions to reduce emissions must be raised significantly if we are to hold the world to 2 degrees,” he added.

“We now have a package to work with and begin immediate action,” said Yvo de Boer. “However, we need to be clear that it is a letter of intent and is not precise about what needs to be done in legal terms. So the challenge is now to turn what we have agreed politically in Copenhagen into something real, measurable and verifiable,” he added.

Bonn-based UNFCCC secretariat argued in a statement Dec. 19: Because the pledges listed by developed and developing countries may, according to science, be found insufficient to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees or less, leaders called for a review of the accord, to be completed by 2015.

The review would include a consideration of the long-term goal to limit the global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.

Heads of state and government also intend to unleash prompt action on mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries and capacity-building, the statement said.

To this effect, they intend to establish the .Copenhagen Green Climate Fund. to support immediate action on climate change. The collective commitment towards the fund by developed countries over the next three years will approach 30 billion US dollars.

For long-term finance, developed countries agreed to support a goal of jointly mobilizing 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries.

“In order to step up action on the development and transfer of technology, governments intend to establish a new technology mechanism to accelerate development and transfer in support of action on adaptation and mitigation,” the UNFCCC statement informed.

MULTIPOLAR

COP15 distinguished itself for another reason: The Danish presidency -- that shifted midstream from Environment Minister Connie Hedegaard to Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen -- was confronted with a situation unknown in the history of climate negotiations since 1995 when the first climate conference took place in Berlin.

Not to speak of the problems of its own making, the Danish presidency had to deal with the wide spectrum of a multipolar world represented by a large diversity of prime ministers and presidents. And it could not -- just as probably no other presidency of an unprecedented summit like the one in Copenhagen could have.

With this in view, UN Assistant Secretary-General Orr said the Copenhagen conference may have “topped the list” for complexity. It was also the largest gathering of heads of state and government in the history of the UN: 119 world leaders attended the meeting. It was joined by delegates representing 194 countries attended the conference.

The two-week-long climate negotiations in the Danish capital -- preceded by two years of preparatory conferences since the Bali Roadmap was agreed in Indonesia in December 2007 -- were crowned by emotional debate and direct diplomacy in which heads of state and governments were personally engaged.

COP15 also set itself apart in that less powerful states in economic and political terms refused to line up behind an agreement the U.S. President Barack Obama had hammered out with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, President Lula de Silva of Brazil and President Jacob Zuma of South Africa.

[Source: IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters]

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Ramesh Jaura is chief editor of IDN-InDepthNews and GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES that belong to the GLOBALOM MEDIA group.