Uncertainty prevails as UN climate summit opens

Dec 07, 2009 News

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By Neil Marks in Copenhagen

The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen opens today with the UN top climate change official expressing confidence that the meeting would deliver a comprehensive, ambitious and effective international climate change deal; but there is prevailing skepticism that that is not likely.
“Within two weeks from Monday, Governments must give their adequate response to the urgent challenge of climate change,” said Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change.
Insiders say what will emerge out of the two-week meeting is a “political agreement” and not a legally binding deal that would make the planet cooler.
That is a bargain, Connie Hedegaard, Danish Minister for Climate and Energy and the President of this conference, is contemplating.

If the world fails to deliver a political agreement at the UN climate conference in December, it will be “the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century,” she is quoted on the Danish Government website as saying.
But a political agreement means nothing; that would end up being all talk. It is a legally binding agreement that is desired.
The United Nations Environment Programme has a much more optimistic outlook and suggested yesterday that the world is within striking distance of a U.N. deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions enough to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
“For those who claim that a deal in Copenhagen is impossible: they are simply wrong,” Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), said as delegates gathered for the two week event.
“We are in closing range of a deal.” he told a news conference ahead of the 190-nation talks.
UNEP and British climate change expert Nicholas Stern said in a report adding up commitments to date that the gap between countries’ strongest proposed greenhouse gas cuts and what is needed may be only a few billion tonnes.
The report said that the world should aim for maximum emissions of 44 billion tonnes a year in 2020 to have a chance of limiting a rise in world temperatures to a widely accepted benchmark of no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.

Current promised curbs on emissions proposed by developed and developing nations would be enough to limit emissions to 46 billion tonnes by 2020, if fully implemented.
In recent days and weeks, countries including the United States, China, India, Brazil and Indonesia have laid out new targets mean to slow climate change that may bring more droughts, floods, heat waves and rising sea levels.
The report said that current world emissions are about 47 billion tonnes a year. Without any curbs, emissions would rise to the mid-50s or higher by 2020, the study said.
By contrast, many experts say pledges made so far are not enough to reach the benchmarks that have been set for averting the worst of climate change, such as ensuring that global emissions fall after 2020.
There is no clear word on when President Bharrat Jagdeo will arrive in Copenhagen.
Jagdeo has been pushing his Low Carbon Development Strategy and getting a lot of global attention for it. The strategy is a model to show how forest-rich countries can use money if they are paid by rich nations for keeping the forests standing.
If there is no agreement, there could be good news for Guyana and its push for countries with standing forests to be rewarded for the climate services they provide, such as sucking in the carbon dioxide emitted by industrialized nations.
A mechanism to fund countries for Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) seems the most likely to be included in any decision that could be termed a “success” if these talks collapse and a decision is made to finalise an agreement next year.
“Negotiators now have the clearest signal ever from world leaders to craft solid proposals to implement rapid action,” de Boer said at a pre-conference media briefing.
Referring to numerous emission reduction pledges that developing and developed countries have made in the run-up to the summit, the UN top climate change official said there was unprecedented political momentum to clinch an ambitious deal in Copenhagen.
“Never in 17 years of climate negotiations have so many different nations made so many firm pledges together,” he said. “So whilst there will be more steps on the road to a safe climate future, Copenhagen is already a turning point in the international response to climate change.”
Yvo de Boer spoke of three layers of action that Governments must agree to in the course of the coming two weeks: fast and effective implementation of immediate action on climate change; ambitious commitments to cut and limit emissions, including start-up funding and a long-term funding commitment; and a long-term shared vision on a low-emissions future for all.
As of 2010, immediate action will need to begin on reducing emissions, adapting to the inevitable effects of climate change, delivering adequate finance, technology, reducing emission  from deforestation in developing countries and capacity-building.
According to de Boer, developed countries will need to provide fast-track funding on the order of at least US$10 billion a year through 2012 to enable developing countries to immediately plan and launch low emission growth and adaptation strategies and to build internal capacity.
At the same time, developed countries will need to indicate how they intend to raise predictable and sustainable long-term financing and what their longer-term commitments will be.
Stressing the issue of immediate action, Michael Zammit Cutajar, Chair of the Ad Hoc
Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention said: “Copenhagen must be a success that delivers the promise of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, that will change the way we act and cooperate in addressing climate change.”

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