It is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But at least it is the end of the beginning. – Winston Churchill, 1941
Ah, but for a Churchill to help us tackle climate change. Sadly, not even President Obama – otherwise a master of inspirational rhetoric – could put the ‘hope’ back into ‘Hopenhagen’ as the climate talks drew to a close this weekend.
So where do we now stand? Planet saved or world in crisis? I won’t beat around the bush – things aren’t great. The Copenhagen Accord is a weak and timid document that lacks many of the crucial details that observers were hoping for. The Danish organisers wanted this conference to be remembered as historic: it will be, but not in the way they dreamed of. Rather than a decisive summit, think Munich 1938, with Chamberlain waving his flimsy piece of paper in the face of the gathering storm of fascism. Or as this sharp cartoon has it, Versailles 1919, when world leaders sowed the seeds of an earlier global crisis.
On the other hand, many people – myself included – invested too much hope in what Copenhagen could realistically achieve. I’ve been planning and preparing for the talks for so long (since last December, in fact) that I’ve been too keen to view it as a seminal moment, if only to get some closure. But as the dust has settled today I’ve tried to get some perspective on what’s happened. So let’s take a closer look at what has emerged after two weeks of wranglings, coffee-fuelled late nights and a lot of talking.
First of all, what we have in the Accord is not a legally-binding agreement, nor even a political statement approved by all countries. It took Ed Miliband’s last-minute intervention this morning to get it approved as a UN document but it carries no obligation upon countries to sign up, and various Latin American and African countries are overtly hostile to doing so. The Accord sets no clear process for how to continue negotiations, and since we have now concluded COP15 without fulfilling the provisions contained in the (legally binding) Bali Roadmap, we are entering uncharted waters. The world is drifting loose.
On the subject of targets, the Accord is most disappointing. A statement committing Annex I (developed) countries to 80% cuts by 2050 was removed at the last minute – which is bizarre, since the G8 have already agreed on this target in a previous communique. As for 2020 targets, all that the Accord contains is a blank table at the back, awaiting submissions from each country “by 31st January 2010″. This do-it-yourself, fill-in-the-blanks approach doesn’t inspire confidence after two years of talks, but at least it sets a deadline for submissions. If there’s one ray of sunshine, it perhaps suggests an early passage of the US climate bill through the Senate, in order for the US to submit proper targets.
On finance for mitigation and adaptation, the Accord does much better. We’ve got $30bn of ‘fast-track funding’ promised yearly between 2010 and 2012, in order to kickstart work to decarbonise and build resilience in developing countries. Good stuff, and good also that the US (again, last-minute) bought into the pledge to secure the longer-term funding target of $100bn annually by 2020. Interestingly, the Accord sets up a High Level Panel to investigate sources of funding: this could include Tobin taxes on the banking system, a levy on maritime and aviation bunker fuels, or auctioning of excess AAUs, to name a few options.
Perhaps the most contentious issue that has hung over the Copenhagen climate talks is burden-sharing: who bears the most responsibilities for cutting emissions. Ultimately this is a standoff between the US and China, as the world’s two biggest emitters and biggest powers. China is still nominally a developing country (with plenty of poverty within its borders) but Western countries are increasingly loathe to treat it as such. The US rejected Kyoto because it didn’t bring in China, and Obama has pressed hard in Copenhagen for China to submit to international monitoring of its emissions reporting. The Chinese, for their part, continue to resist absolute emissions caps, but have set a carbon intensity target for 2020 that meets IPCC recommendations.
The Accord includes a number of other provisions, but the most important one is the review date. Thankfully, this reached the final draft, ensuring that the agreement and international progress will be reviewed by 2015 at the latest. However, given the Accord’s limpness, this is less meaningful than it could have been. It could also be too late to do anything by then: the IPCC recommend that global emissions peak by 2015.
So much for the slim content of the Accord. What of the process that produced it? Extraordinarily, despite two weeks of intense dialogue in Copenhagen and two years of talks preceding it, the Accord itself was thrashed out in the last two days outside of the formal UN process. The crucial meeting, according to the Guardian, was a 90-minute almost-accidental meeting between the American, Chinese, Indian and Brazilian heads of state. So much for inclusiveness: this sounds like Great Power machinations as usual. On the other hand, it’s clear that the UNFCCC system of consensual decision-making, whilst allowing small states to have a voice – such as Tuvalu – is very slow (hence Papua New Guinea’s proposal on day one to adopt decision-making by voting). Maybe we should be re-evaluating our basic approach to global governance, and moving to have a directly elected chamber for the UN. Or perhaps, as Bolivian President Evo Morales has suggested, we ought to hold a global referendum on how to tackle climate change.
Obama has emerged from Copenhagen diminished in stature, with many former supporters feeling bitter. I was disappointed too by Ambassador Di-Aping, the head negotiator for the G77 block whom I met at the talks, when he alleged the provisions in the Accord amounted to a new Holocaust; it was an unnecessary comparison. But our own Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband emerge from Copenhagen as the good guys. They appear to have done everything they can; let’s hope the UK can continue to lead in 2010, starting with committing unilaterally to 42% cuts by 2020, in order to encourage the rest of the EU to go to 30%.
Most of all, Copenhagen has demonstrated the strength of civil society’s response to global warming. Just as at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, a huge panoply of NGOs and social movements gathered in the city over the past fortnight, forging closer bonds as a result of the experience. But NGOs’ exclusion from the last days of talks was frustrating and unfair. On the other hand, we can’t escape some self-criticism: the alternative summits organised by civil society, such as Klimaforum, have proven very disconnected from the UN process and more concerned with blaming governments than coming up with better solutions. And whilst I enjoyed taking part in the mid-week actions to create a ‘people’s assembly’ on the fringes of the Bella Centre, I couldn’t pretend it presented a serious challenge to the established system.
Where next? A ‘COP-bis’, or special midway summit, has been scheduled to take place in Bonn in June 2010. If used productively, the next six months could see further details agreed upon that are missing in the current Accord. Domestically, the UK has an election scheduled to take place sometime between March-May 2010. We have some exciting ideas brewing for how to use this opportunity to push climate change up the political agenda: watch this space!
And perhaps, instead of reaching for Churchillian rhetoric for inspiration, we should remember one of the great man’s earthier phrases. Legend has it that, during the height of the Blitz, he would end every phone call with the cryptic words ‘KBO’. When asked what it stood for, he replied: “Keep Buggering On.”