Moving beyond Copenhagen

COPENHAGEN—Despite all-night efforts for two weeks by delegates to hammer out a global deal, which brought together 110 world leaders, the summit ended on Saturday with a political agreement and a loose commitment to develop the details over the next 12 months.

Global leaders, including US President Obama and President Arroyo, who arrived in windy and snowy weather in Copenhagen on Saturday, left the summit without a breakthrough; rather, a political declaration called “Copenhagen Accord,” containing mainly a statement of intent to tackle climate change and giving the mandate to extend the negotiations into next year in Mexico City, was announced.

Delegates from more than 192 nations said collapse in the negotiations and failure of the meeting was due to the wide gaps that remained in the positions of developed and developing countries on greenhouse-gas emissions targets and finance, which some say also deepened distrust between the two worlds.

This meeting is, according to scientific studies, the last opportunity in those days for action to contain global warming below the temperature limit of 2°C. It’s a threshold beyond which significant risks are emerging for many unique and threaten systems as biodiversity, oceans and coasts.

But according to the final three-page document announced, which would not be binding in international law, the mandate that the legally binding treaty would have to be completed by the end of 2010 was dropped.

The document also stuck to previous goals, including one of limiting world temperature increases to a maximum of  20 C above pre-industrial times in order to avert impacts such as floods, heat waves, species extinctions and rising ocean levels.

“We shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 20 and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change,” the final text said.

Civil society moves beyond Copenhagen

Civil-society groups said  world leaders must now tell the public how they plan to fix climate change locally, adding that the outcome will outrage the millions of people who have called on governments to seal an effective deal in Copenhagen.

“We will not give up the struggle. We have to move on beyond Copenhagen,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. “The inability to resolve this tension reflects the inadequacy of political systems to respond to the task before us.”

A “post-COP 15” is set in Bonn next year, and later in 2010, a “post-COP 16” in Mexico.

Corpuz adds that while many are “extremely disappointed” on the outcome of the climate talks, the process would help countries understand what went wrong and what countries can do.

The agreement that countries aim to reach at the United Nations-backed climate summit was supposed to set the rules for international action on climate change when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.

As a last-ditch effort to avert the collapse of the talks, a group of about 25 countries sought agreement on a political statement setting out critical elements, key among them is the mobilization of $30 billion in the next three years to help poor countries cope with climate change, and a scaling up to $100 billion a year by 2020. The accord also sets no overall emissions targets for rich countries. During the two-week discussions in the Danish capital, the developed world, including the United States, refused not only to accept “deep and ambitious” emission cuts, but also tried hard to junk the Kyoto Protocol to evade their responsibilities.

On the other hand, the developing block countries, including India, China and a large number of G-77 countries, refused to budge from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that relies on the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” and Kyoto Protocol that asks the rich nations to cut down the emissions.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol was never ratified by the US, and made no demands on developing countries, notably China.

However, the US resolved one of the final key issues on Thursday by agreeing to a global goal on financial assistance from the rich nations to poorest nations of $100 billion by 2020.

But Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, made it clear that the price of the US signing a deal would be for China and other developing countries to agree that their emissions curbs should be internationally monitored.

“If there is not even a commitment to pursue transparency [on emissions cuts], that’s kind of a deal-breaker for us,” she said.

Showdown of powers

IN the two-day high-level summit, 110 world leaders lined up and delivered their speeches, including President Arroyo.

Arroyo said the Philippines looks upon the negotiations in Copenhagen with a critical sense of urgency, the country being one of the top 12 countries at greatest risk from climate change.

“We top the list of nations most in danger of facing more frequent and more intense storms as the impact of climate change intensifies,” Arroyo told world leaders during the plenary. “Tropical storms of historic scale have inflicted devastation and a tragic loss of lives upon our country.”

She said two recent typhoons cost the government $4 billion, or 2.7 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). “Our major food regions lost 8 percent to 10 percent of their GDP because over 600,000 hectares of farmland were destroyed, while the industrial areas lost 6 percent to 8 percent. These same typhoons affected more than 9 million people and killed more than 900.”

The President stressed in her speech that leaders, including her, “cannot afford to leave Copenhagen without a deal, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.”

“For an equitable outcome, developed countries need to lead in reducing emissions. A robust financial mechanism must also be established to meet the costs of adaptation for developing countries and for effective development and transfer of technologies,” Arroyo said.

Obama’s pitch

AS soon as Obama was about to talk, all ears were glued to the monitors scattered inside the Bella Center, the venue of the meeting—all hoping that he would recharge the slow pace of the negotiations. But many were disappointed as he offered nothing new on the US commitment on how to tackle global warming.

In his speech, Obama stressed that he did not come to Copenhagen to talk, but to act.

“Being the world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, America has a responsibility,” Obama said in a plenary. “America will continue to move toward a green economy but we will be stronger if we act together.”

Obama reiterated that the US has offered financial package to poor countries and to cut its emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, which represents a 4-percent reduction from 1990 levels.

Obama hoped that the other major world polluter that relies heavily on coal-burning power plants, spewing greenhouse gases for its energy needs “will stay and will be part of finding a solution.”

He told the heads of state and governments that it is imperative with a “mechanism to review whether we are keeping our commitments, and to exchange this information in a transparent manner.” Without such accountability, any agreement would be “empty words on a page.”

Finally, he urged world leaders to “choose action over inaction; the future over the past—with courage and faith, let us meet our responsibility to our people and to the future of our planet.”

Obama later gathered with his counterpart from China, with European Union leaders and a group of emerging countries named BASIC, including Brazil, South Africa, India and China.

Other leaders who met with Obama were Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, France President Nicolas Sarkozy  and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, among others.

The China factor

China said it was committed to transparency, but it remains unlikely that its plans to submit its emissions only to domestic monitoring would be enough.

He Yafei, the deputy foreign minister, said China was prepared to make its actions open, and to engage in “dialogue and cooperation” over its reporting of its emissions-reduction measures.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on the other hand, said that “time is against us, let’s stop posturing.”

“A failure in Copenhagen would be a catastrophe for each and every one of us. We must shift into top gear in this conference or we will be heading straight for catastrophe. We are not here to convene a conference on global warming, we are here to make decisions,” Sarkozy said.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez slammed the developed countries, including the US, saying that “the rich countries of the north helped bankers, the big banks. I’ve forgotten the figure, but it’s astronomical.”

“What they’re saying on the streets is that ‘if the climate was a bank they would already have saved it.’ I think it’s true. If the climate was a capitalist bank, one of the biggest ones, they would have saved it,” Chavez said, showing his disappointment on the possible failure of the talks.

“There is an imperial dictatorship in this world, and we continue to denounce it. There is no democracy in the world. The destructive model of capitalism is eradicating life.

“We need to consume less and distribute more. Climate change is certainly the most devastating environmental problem of the last century—droughts, hurricanes, floods the rising sea level, heatwaves and so on,” Chavez stressed.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, in his short speech, said, “I fear a triumph of inaction over action. The truth is that unless we all act together—because we are all in this together—there will be limited prospects of development because the planet itself will no longer sustain it.”

Rudd branded the conference as “on the verge of letting down all of the little children of the world.” “Everyone here will be judged as an individual for what we do or we fail to do.”

Aram Ramesh, Indian environment minister, told the delegates that “by trying to shake Kyoto, rich countries are trying to shake one of the basic pillars on which the world had resolved to fight climate change.”

Developing nations want to preserve the Kyoto Protocol, the UN’s main tool to fight climate change. Some rich nations say Kyoto hasn’t worked and that a separate deal that binds all big carbon-emitting nations is needed. “Kyoto needs a number of oxygen cylinders. One of them is in the White House,” Ramesh told journalists.

Local governments must act

 Philippine Sen. Loren Legarda, who was part of the country’s delegation, said “there is life beyond Copenhagen,” adding that the local officials should now do their part to address global warming locally.

“We now have to work on how to assist our people on adaptation measures. That is why we have to put our act together and work on a doable solution to combat climate change in the country,” Legarda told the BusinessMirror.

Legarda added that the Philippines has to shift more to a low-carbon economy and focus on greater use of renewables such as solar or wind power.

Presidential Adviser on Climate Change Heherson Alvarez cited the need to strengthen the capacity-buil-ding of local officials in the country, especially on its risk-reduction disaster strategies.

The struggle for climate justice not over

Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace international executive director, said world leaders have failed to act on how to avert the catastrophic impact of climate change as the political agreement announced is “not fair, not ambitious and not legally binding.”

Naidoo said: “World leaders had a once-in-a -generation chance to change the world for good, to avert catastrophic climate change. In the end they produced a poor deal full of loopholes big enough to fly Air Force One through,” Naidoo said. “We have seen a year of crises, but today it is clear that the biggest one facing humanity is a leadership crisis.”

He said the thousands of people locked out and arrested during the two-week meeting now need to redouble their efforts to urge world leaders for climate justice.

“This is not over, people everywhere demanded a real deal before the summit  began, and they are still demanding it. We can still save hundreds of millions of people from the devastation of a warming world, but it has just become a whole lot harder,” Naidoo said.

Sneaky talks

Kate Horner, from Friends of the Earth group, lambasted what she called the “secret backroom declaration.”

“The US lied to the world when they called it a deal and they lied to over a hundred countries when they said would listen to their needs,” Horner said. “This toothless declaration, being spun by the US as an historic success, reflects contempt for the multilateral process, and we expect more from our Nobel prize-winning President.”

A first step toward a global deal

Timothy Wirth, president of United Nations Foundation, who was with Obama, Clinton and other US senators during the summit, stated that Copenhagen “ was always going to be a first step toward the global deal the world needs, and that’s what it turned out to be.”

“World leaders took the initiative to reset the course of the negotiations. For much of this year, the 192 governments involved in the process were struggling to find common ground,” Wirth said.

He explained that at the expert level, the work was complicated by deeply technical issues and high expectations. These factors, according to Wirth, led to a stalemate and forced world leaders to turn their attention to this “urgent and transformative challenge.”

“Fortunately, these leaders crafted this guide for next year’s effort. It offers a chance to restore momentum. The progress made in Copenhagen may turn out to be quite important, but it will ultimately be judged by whether the world can reach and ratify a new agreement in 2010.”

Wirth also applaud UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in showing his “great leadership, persistence and determination to drive the process.”

According to the Secretary-General, the game is not over yet.

“In total aggregate terms, developed countries’ commitments have not yet reached the scale of what science has recommended. This is not over yet,” he stated.

The Secretary-General said that US’ financial commitment is a “very encouraging result,” as it will have an important dynamic in the negotiations.

“I have been urging, as you may remember, that in addition to $10 billion annually up to 2012, the leaders should state their firm pledges for mid- and long-term financial commitment,” he said. “I have been urging to state an initial formulation of financial support packages and burden sharing formula and also the magnitude of this financial support. Now the idea of $100 billion is on the table.” –Imelda V. Abaño / Correspondent, Businessmirror