Copenhagen deadlock?

Dec 14, 2009 Editorial

The first week of the Copenhagen climate change conference 2009 is over, with another week to go. In this first week it was expected that the technical representatives of the 190 odd countries that are participating would have not only identified the main contours of a possible agreement that would have been acceptable to their principals who would be jetting in this week, but also arrive at a substantive agreement that the agreement would be legally binding.

It is now very clear to all but the most incorrigible optimist that there will be no legally binding agreement on the commitments and actions of developed and developing countries respectively in the post-2012 phase of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) that is acceptable to all the parties.

Those who hope that US President Obama, who will be arriving on the last days, will be the knight in shining armour to save the day are deluded. With no agreement from the US Senate, Obama has no mandate to sign on any dotted line. At the very best, then we will have an agreement “in principle” with the promise to hash out the details before the end of 2010.

Copenhagen is expected to provide answers to three key issues: What legally binding carbon emission reduction targets will developed (Annex-1) countries commit to? What actions will major developing (non-Annex-1) countries take to limit theirs? How will the emission mitigation and adaptation to climate change by developing countries be supported and managed with finance and technology?

The major hurdle on the first issue is the absolute refusal of the major developed countries – with the US being way in front – of accepting that their historic responsibility for bringing the entire planet to this state of crisis is of their doing almost entirely.

That responsibility then has to be coupled with commitments to reduce their present emissions at a magnitude that can compensate at least somewhat for their historic profligacy in pollution.

The anaemic numbers that have been touted by the Obama administration are far from satisfactory to the developing world – and to add salt to the wound, as mentioned before, the former cannot unequivocally guarantee even that promise.

With China now overtaking the US (in the last few years) as the largest overall emitter – while not coincidentally becoming the world’s workshop, the US is balking at making cuts without robust Chinese commitments.

The Chinese, however, along with India and Brazil – the other large emerging economies – have announced major commitments towards both reduction of emissions as well as switching to cleaner sources of energy, which should put a lot of pressure on the Americans to put their money where their mouth is.

With the certainty of no legally binding agreement in sight by this weekend, there has been increased talk of a “politically binding agreement” – especially from the host country. Even before the summit, at the preceding Singapore meeting, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen had suggested: “Even if we may not hammer out the last dots of a legally binding instrument, I do believe a political binding agreement with specific commitment to mitigation and finance provides for a strong basis for immediate action in the years to come.”

A facade clearly, for when has a political declaration by heads of states ever become a binding instrument?

In fact, there is an imminent danger of a virtual termination of the Kyoto Protocol (which came into force in 2005), the dismantling of the Bali Action Plan (BAP) formulated at COP-13 in December 2007 as the guiding road map towards Copenhagen, and the undermining of the basic tenet of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR)” of the Convention (Article 3.1) on which the KP is founded and the BAP was formulated.

So where does this leave our LCDS that depends on REDD+ being agreed on in Copenhagen? There is now almost unanimous agreement for REDD+ even in the “political façade” and it is the funding that will have to be nailed down. So even if we have a “political agreement”, we should be in the money, one way or the other come next year.