Much time has passed since the end of the Copenhagen climate meeting (COP 15), but there is still widespread disagreement about what, if anything, was achieved at what was billed a “historic moment” in humanity’s struggle to reign in the specter of human induced climate change. Historic the moment may well be, but possibly for different reasons than the organizers originally envisioned.
During his closing press conference, UN Climate Chief Yvo de Boer noted that the “the agreement (Copenhagen Accord) is “politically important, demonstrating a willingness to move forward. It brings together a diversity of countries that have put in place a letter of intent with the ingredients of an architecture for a response to climate change…but it is not legally binding.”
Contrast this UN doublespeak with comments made by China’s chief negotiator Su Wei who flatly announced that “this is not an agreed accord, it is not an agreed document, it is not formally endorsed or adopted.” This characterization is reaffirmed by the first sentence of the Decision of COP 15 which states, “The Conference of Parties (COP), takes note of the Copenhagen Accord of 18 December 2009.” The two and a half page document then goes on to describe what the member states would have agreed to if the Accord had been adopted. To be fair, most national delegations did support the Accord, but the COP decision-making process requires any final agreement to be adopted by consensus, which did not happen.
An “unprecedented deal” as Obama declared, it was not. It may be “an important step” but that is not what was supposed to happen in Copenhagen. The 1992 Rio Convention was a first step, as was the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. The December 2007 “Bali Roadmap” committed the world’s leaders to deliver a legally binding post-2012 architecture that would guide businesses and governments towards a low carbon future within two years. We are still waiting.
One of the most damaging results of COP 15 is that the all but a select few world leaders were shut out of the final negotiating process. Around 120 presidents and prime ministers attended the Summit, but only a small handful was involved in crafting the actual Accord. Previous drafts crafted and negotiated by thousands of researchers, officials and activists who worked 20 hour days to fill in the details of complex proposals to strengthen carbon markets, set meaningful emissions reduction targets and create a new framework for reducing deforestation in developing countries (REDD) were largely ignored by Obama and friends. This served to further deepen the sense of distrust that developing countries and citizens worldwide feel for the UN climate regime. Those who had hoped that Obama would miraculously save the day were sorely disappointed.
The big winners in Copenhagen were China and other developing countries interested in avoiding making mandatory commitments to reduce emissions. The Kyoto Protocol only requires developed country signatories to take concrete steps. The rest of the World essentially gets a free pass. Without a formal legal/regulatory framework, developing countries can make “aspirational” claims about future emissions without fear of retribution. Some use the term “symbolic politics” to characterize the tendency of politicians to make bold statements without substantive follow through. A less charitable name for it is “green washing.”
To be fair, mitigating and adapting to climate change is something that most developing countries cannot afford to do on their own. Less wealthy nations also rightly insist that developed countries should pay for damage done by past emissions. Hearing their cries for help, Hillary Clinton parachuted into town on the next to last scheduled day of the conference bearing tidings of great joy, a promise to marshal $100 billion in yearly climate related aid by 2020. $100 billion sounded like a nice round number, a sound bite that lit up the newswires. However, few details were given about where this aid will come from. Similar promises have been made before. One neat little trick that donor countries like to play is to take existing official development assistance (ODA) and “reclassify” it as environmentally related aid. Overall outlays do not increase; they just gets used differently for things like saving rain forests rather than building schools or feeding the hungry.
Clinton promises that some of the money will come from yet to be developed mandatory carbon trading markets in the United States and elsewhere. Carbon trading is already a reality in the European Union (EU). The main benefit of a carbon market is that it integrates the social and environmental costs associated with GHG emissions into the price of doing business. The present EU price for one tonne of CO2 equivalent emissions is about 11 EUROs (12/21/09). Putting a price on carbon provides businesses with an incentive to reduce emissions, usually through increased energy efficiency or switching from high carbon (coal or oil) to low carbon (solar or wind) energy sources. Governments can use their own cut from the proceeds generated by carbon trading to make additional social and environmental investments (like providing more help to developing countries). However, in order to make this system work, governments must first establish legally binding rules and regulations to guide market operations and establish emissions caps for large firms. COP 15 was supposed to establish a framework for setting up these markets. If businesses do not know the rules of the game, they will not make necessary investments to reduce their emissions.
So, where does this leave us? A majority of world leaders established a set of nonbinding aspirational goals to combat global warming. Some of these goals are more robust than previous statements. Click here for a full list. Certainly research interest in and public awareness of global warming has increased. These are all steps in the right direction. However, without a clear, legally binding global accord, these steps alone will not get us to where we need to go. Historians, and our progeny, will remember Copenhagen. But the jury is still out on whether it will be recalled as a positive turning point in our collective response to confront climate change or a failed last ditch effort in humanity’s accelerating slide towards uncontrollable global warming.
Jonathan Harrington