UN climate role may weaken, say experts

COPENHAGEN—A weak UN climate deal, agreed on Saturday after two weeks of talks pulled back from near collapse, underscored the vulnerability of a process depending on consensus and may mark a diminishing UN role.

The principal negotiations took place among about 30 countries and the biggest breakthrough involved just five—the United States, China, Brazil, South Africa and India.

The final deal was not legally binding and left it for countries to choose to participate—all but four or five were expected to do so—marking a departure from its umbrella UN climate convention.

“I don’t think it’s the end of the UN’s climate role but it’s a new model inside of it,” said Jennifer Morgan, director of the World Resource Institute’s climate and energy program.

She “absolutely” supported the role of heads of state. World leaders flew in for the final days of the meeting and President Barack Obama was instrumental in breaking the deadlock.

“I think that’s the story of this conference. Heads of state came in and crafted a deal a bit independently of the UN process. There’ll still be many roles for the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to fulfill.”

The UN climate change secretariat would help monitor actions by developing nations to curb greenhouse gas emissions, one of the thorniest issues at the UN conference, as one example of its future role, she said.

UN process

UN decisions have to be made by unanimity, between countries as different as the United States and the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu with a population of just over 12,000.

That rule threatened to derail the Copenhagen conference, as developing nations insisted any text be reviewed in a plenary session of 193 countries.

Sources said the Danish hosts were reluctant to do that, fearing it would take too long for the whole group to draft one text, leading to days of lost negotiation. On the last night, a plenary meeting illustrated exactly that problem of reaching unanimity on a final text.

It needed the direct intervention of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to rescue the Copenhagen Accord. Ban mediated with reluctant countries, including Venezuela and Bolivia.

Way is unclear

Saturday’s decision supported a “goal” for a $100 billion annual fund by 2020 to help poor countries fight climate change and recognized the scientific view of the importance of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

But it did not spell out the important stepping stones—global emissions targets for 2020 or 2050—for getting there.

Nor did it identify a year by which emissions should peak, and pledges were made voluntarily and without tough compliance provisions.

The head of the Nobel-winning UN panel of climate scientists said the outcome of the summit was a start but urged countries to work quickly towards a legally binding pact.

Need to move quickly

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), described the Copenhagen pact as “an agreement that will really not be the final word.”

“We will have build on it, we will have to make sure it moves quickly towards the status of a legally binding agreement and, therefore, I think the task for the global community is cut out,” he told the NDTV news channel.

“We really have to move on rather quickly to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. There is growing evidence of the impacts of climate change and if we delay action these impacts are going to become much worse, far more serious,” he warned.

Pachauri said doubts persisted among countries about possible conditions attached to climate change funds promised by developed nations to help them switch to low carbon technology.

Western pledges

So far, the United States has promised to contribute $3.6 billion in climate funds for the 2010-2012 period, with Japan contributing a total of $11 billion over the same period, and the European Union, $10.6 billion.

The UN’s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, said it was exactly the job of a multilateral process such as the United Nations’ to forge a solution to a global problem, which may impact the least politically powerful first.

“You could argue that it would be far more effective to just address climate change in the G-20,” whose members account for most carbon emissions, he said.

“[But] it’s not correct from an equity or from an environmental point of view” because that would exclude many countries “already on the front lines of impacts of climate change.”

Other options

The countdown to a final deal involved 28 nations, sources told Reuters, including developed countries such as the United States and Europe, big emerging economies, India and China, and small island states Grenada and the Maldives.

The flawed Copenhagen outcome demonstrated the “underlying weakness” in the UN climate process, said Andrew Light, coordinator of international climate policy at the Center for American Progress.

“We need to start investigating other options, or at a minimum start using some alternative forums,” he said, suggesting the G-20 and the Major Economies Forum.

But several developing countries vehemently supported the role of the United Nations, exactly because it preserved their voice.

“You won’t get an agreement involving only a limited number of countries,” Brazil’s climate change ambassador Sergio Serra said.

“Perhaps on some occasions they can be a driving force to mobilize the others, but they will never close a deal by themselves, because this deal will lack legitimacy. So the UN will certainly remain at the heart of it.” Reports from Reuters and Agence France-Presse