As deadline nears, much left up in air

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With well less than 48 hours to go before world leaders were due to endorse a sweeping climate-change deal, it was hard to tell whether there was more bedlam and tension outside the negotiating hall or inside.

Outside Copenhagen's suburban Bella Center, about 4,000 campaigners attempting to hold a "people's assembly" within the summit grounds were stopped by police. As clashes broke out, Danish police said about 260 protesters were detained. Amateur videos showed the police beating some protesters with batons.

Inside, the mood was equally cheerless. Delegates and observers from 193 countries complained about near fruitless negotiations that went almost round the clock as Friday's deadline draws near. That's when Stephen Harper, Barack Obama and leaders from 191 other countries are to formally agree to make significant cuts to greenhouse-gas emissions to take the edge off global warming.

"At this stage in the negotiations, it's unusual for so much to be left uncertain, and for so much to be left to be determined by the heads of government and state," said Elisabeth DeMarco, an emissions-trading lawyer at Toronto's Macleod Dixon who has attended many climate summits.

Negotiating documents published on the website of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change show entire paragraphs, even pages, of text "bracketed," the term used by negotiators to determine areas where no consensus exists. They include the maximum temperature-increase goal (1 C, 1.5 C and 2 C were the options), the rich countries' emissions-reduction target by 2050 (the range was 75 to 95 per cent) and, crucially, almost all areas of funding to fight climate change.

At a summit news conference Wednesday, John Kerry, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and a proponent of clean-energy legislation, urged negotiators to reach agreement on short- and long-term funds to fight climate change. "The most important thing is short-term finance," he said.

A global deal on paying for international adaptation and mitigation measures is considered a core element of any new climate-change agreement because it would help establish a value for carbon worldwide. The new carbon "assets," as they have been called, could in turn be used to help finance the funds.

The fear is that the absence of global financing and carbon markets could lead to the creation of a series of disjointed regional or bilateral (country-to-country) markets with the potential for trade barriers. "Absent an agreement on financing, Canada is more likely to face tax adjustments, like border taxes, on any energy and emissions-intensive exports," Ms. DeMarco said.

In fact both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate climate-change bills under consideration authorize tariffs on Canadian exports of energy, such as oil from the Alberta oil sands, unless certain measures are taken. They would include adopting an emissions reporting and verification scheme comparable to any used in the United States. A global deal on financing and carbon-asset markets, whether it is reached this week in Copenhagen or some time in the future, would help remove the incentive to create regional markets.

The funding debate centres on two efforts. The first is a short-term, or "Quick Start" (also called "Fast Start") fund worth about $10-billion (U.S.) a year, starting next year and ending in 2012. The second is a long-term fund worth about $100-billion (U.S.) a year. The larger fund's contributions would come from both public and private sources.

Dirk Forrister, the former chairman of the White House climate change task force under president Bill Clinton, now the managing director of Natsource, an emissions and renewable energy advisory firm, said Quick Start was causing a lot of grief this week. Developing countries, he said, consider the fund too small and want to make sure they have considerable control over how and where the money is spent. The rich countries want to make sure the fund's "governance" suits their value-for-money needs.

Both Mr. Forrister and Mr. Kerry said getting the Quick Start fund designed and launched is important because it would set the template for the long-term fund. "Money [for Quick Start]is a show of good faith," he said.

All was not lost on the financing front in Copenhagen. On Wednesday the United States, Australia, France, Japan, Norway and Britain agreed to dedicate $3.5-billion (U.S.) of public financing to the REDD program - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Whether the amount was new money, or money diverted from the proposed Quick Start fund, was not immediately clear.

As the stalemates on funding and other big issues dragged on Wednesday night, delegates and environmental groups concluded only furious negotiations by the heads of government, notably Mr. Obama and his Chinese and European counterparts, could save the summit. "There is a lot of mistrust between the parties, a lot of history that needs to be overcome," said Gerald Butts, the president of WWF-Canada. "Only the leaders can overcome those barriers."