The Copenhagen Accord
For close to two weeks in December, most of the world focused its attention on Copenhagen, Denmark, as delegates from 192 countries along with UN officials participated in the UN Climate Change Conference. The first week produced no tangible result, but plenty of dire predictions. The lack of progress was severe enough to warrant some leaders such as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to change travel plans and arrived earlier than scheduled.
Even the presence of so many world leaders did not provide the impetus to overcome the gulf of differences between the developed nations on one side and the developing and underdeveloped nations on the other. Among the confusing day-to-day turn of events, it took a big push on the second last day of the Conference to kick start the climate talks again–a pledge by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the United States would help raise $100 billion by 2020 to fund climate-change mitigation and adaptation measures in the poor and developing nations.
This pledge, however, didn’t bridge the gap between the two camps. As the final day in Copenhagen was drawing to a close without any sign of an agreement, many were ready to write off the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference as a failure. Heading into the final day, the climate talks were in disarray. But, an eleventh-hour agreement was reached between the United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. With this big gathering of international political leaders all under the same roof at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, no leader wanted to go home empty-handed, with nothing to show the crowd.
However, this agreement, called the Copenhagen Accord, falls far short of many countries’ expectations. In fact, some leaders were in apparent frustration. The European Union (EU) leaders met well into the night before finally accepting the agreement.
The Copenhagen Accord is a broad political framework, not legally binding; whereas, the Kyoto Protocol is a binding international treaty. The Accord needs more work but contains enough to provide some foundation towards a fuller, more detailed and legally binding deal later. In essence, the Copenhagen Accord agrees to hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius (2°C) but includes no targets for carbon emissions reductions for specific countries. Rich, developed countries jointly pledged to raise $30 billion (U.S.) over three years starting in 2010, with the goal of raising $100 billion (U.S.) a year by 2020, to fund climate-change mitigation and adaptation measures in the poor and developing nations. The independent verification of emissions issue was made conditional, which allowed poor or developing countries that do not take international financing to avoid international monitoring to ensure no gaps between reported and actual emissions. This was the key compromise of the Accord, where China and the U.S. bridged the gap in order for any agreement to go ahead. China considers outside scrutiny and monitoring as an intrusion upon its sovereignty. The Copenhagen Accord agrees that developed countries would “commit to economy-wide emissions targets for 2020″ to be submitted by 31 January 2010. Developing nations would “implement mitigation actions” to slow growth in their carbon emissions, submitting these by 31 January 2010. The agreement establishes a Copenhagen Green Climate Fund “to support projects, programme, policies and other activities in developing countries related to mitigation” and establishes a Technology Mechanism “to accelerate technology development and transfer.” The agreement calls for “an assessment of the implementation of this Accord to be completed by 2015… This would include consideration of strengthening the long-term goal”, for example to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees.
According to a confidential UN assessment, already agreed upon emissions cuts pledged by countries would place the global temperature rise of at least three degrees Celsius. Most scientists studying global warming say that temperature increases should be held to a maximum of two degrees from levels prevailing in pre-industrial times. Here are what the major countries agreed to:
- U.S., a 17 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020.
- China, a cut of 40 to 45 percent below “business as usual” by 2020, that is, judged against 2005 figures for energy used versus economic output.
- India, 20 to 25 percent cut from 2005 levels by 2020.
- European Union, 20 percent cut from 1990 levels, and possibly 30 percent, by 2020.
- Japan, 25 percent cut from 1990 levels by 2020.
Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, we shouldn’t be surprised by the outcome because the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference was just as much about the economy as the environment. To the attending countries, their economic well-being were of paramount importance. The fact that on the second last conference day U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton needed to pledge a joint goal of $100 billion of funds for poor and developing countries in order to get the process back on track is a good testament.
Canada’s position has made it clear that the economy is an issue when it said it’ll follow the United States because Canada didn’t wanted to over-commit itself and hurt its competitiveness in the U.S. market.
Looking at this context, one can see why most of the developed nations such as members of the EU wanted the 1990 emissions level to be the baseline while the developing nations insisted upon a 2005 baseline. In the long run, both may be meaningless because the leading economic power of the future will be the country with the most viable green technologies and alternative energy sources.
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Was not elected as the leader of the party, is that not correct? Inherited the role — admittedly in part because there was no challenge when Blair retired?