The Copenhagen climate summit fell victim to a cumbersome negotiating process involving 193 countries with very different political agendas that just didn't allow for a visionary agreement.
In the weeks leading up to the summit, global leaders downgraded expectations – from the conclusion of an international treaty, to a detailed and binding agreement that would include all the essential elements of a treaty. In the end, even that was too ambitious.
World leaders are simply too divided – by distrust and outright hostility, by economic competition and ideological fervour, by the dire need for development and recession-fuelled fears of economic decline – to have overcome their differences and concluded a firm deal.
What emerged instead was a kind of agreement in principle among the developed world and leading developing countries to rein in their greenhouse-gas emissions and an aim to keep global temperatures from increasing by more than two degrees Celsius, the threshold beyond which scientists say the most devastating impacts of climate change will occur.
Despite the warts and failures, however, the Copenhagen Accord does represent a significant – possibly historic – breakthrough.
For the first time, leading developing countries such as China, India and Brazil have agreed to rein in emissions as part of an international treaty aimed at battling climate change.
That achievement should not be underestimated, especially since only a year ago, the major developing countries insisted that they had no responsibility for cutting emissions, and that demands for such action represented an effort by the developed world to stifle their economic growth.
“The fact that you have all these countries signing on – countries that represent 85 per cent of global emissions – is key,” said John Drexhage, a former Canadian climate negotiator who monitored the summit for the International Institute for Sustainable Development. “We have them inside the tent now.”
Heading into the conference, United Nations climate chief Ivo de Boer had set out a series of ambitious goals, including commitment from developed countries to meet mid-term and long-term targets that would result in global emissions peaking prior to 2020, and falling to half of 1990 levels by 2050.
The developing world was demanding commitments for financing from the developed countries that would grow to several hundred billions of dollars by 2020, as well as the transfer of technology needed to cut emissions.
The United States – along with Canada – insisted the major developing countries such as China, India and Brazil needed to make commitments to reduce the emissions-intensity of their economies, and to have their actions and targets monitored and verified by an international body.
For the first 10 days of the two week conference, there was little movement on the key issues. Negotiators largely maintained the position that their countries had staked out going into the conference, and blamed others for the lack of progress.
U.S. negotiators were clearly constrained by political realities at home.
With controversial legislation pending in the Senate, U.S. President Barack Obama can anticipate a bruising political battle over climate change in 2010, just ahead of mid-term Congressional elections. The U.S. strategy at Copenhagen was designed more for domestic political consumption than for concluding a deal consistent with what the preponderance of climate science says is needed.
The U.S. committed to reduce emissions by 17 per cent below 2005 levels – the target in a bill that passed the House of Representatives – and would go no further.
Other countries took that cue and, unlike at Kyoto, there were never any negotiations at Copenhagen to extract more ambitious targets. Canada, for example, has had a long-standing target of reducing emissions by 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020, and offered not a percentage point more in Denmark.
As a result, leaders backpedalled on the global targets they were prepared to endorse. A draft agreement had leaders committed to a path that would reduce global emissions to half of 1990 levels by 2050, with an 80-per-cent reduction from the developed world.
But in the final hours late Friday, developing countries like China and Brazil insisted that commitment be removed, since it might suggest they would have to make up the difference in the shortfall caused by developed country targets.
With an eye to domestic audiences, U.S. negotiators were particularly aggressive with China, including Mr. Obama when he arrived on the last day.
If he is to win passage of climate legislation now in the Senate, Mr. Obama has to persuade Americans that the Chinese are also taking on commitments, and that there will be oversight to ensure those pledges are met.
One victim of the Copenhagen summit may be the UN process itself. It was clearly not possible for the 193 countries to achieve the kind of consensus required by UN summitry.
The ultimate agreement was fashioned among the United States, European Union, China, India and Brazil and then put to the broader conference. (Unhelpfully, Mr. Obama briefed the U.S. press on its contents before it was tabled.) Many countries objected to it for various reasons; Sudan said it would condemn millions to die in Africa from the effects of climate change, comparing it to the holocaust of Nazi Germany.
Indeed, the UN conference did not approve the agreement, but merely noted it, with the view of using it as a platform for formal agreement in 2010.
To turn the accord into a binding treaty, major countries will have compromise on their long-standing disagreements, and overcome hurdles thrown up by others. The agreement in principle is a long way from being a done deal.
