Hopenhagen or Brokenhagen: Copenhagen Accord leaves some satisfied, many more disappointed

A deal was reached in Copenhagen between the major emerging economies and the United States (the BUICS)…It is being called the Copenhagen Accord.  I think no one is quite certain what to make out of the result.  Some have called it an absolute failure (particularly from the EU and G77 perspective).  Some have called it an initial beginning step.  I suppose is it is a mixture.  President Obama swept in at the last minute cut a quick deal with China, Brazil, India and South Africa.  The United States will try to make minimal reduction targets, and will work to leverage 100 billion a year by 2020 for developing countries mitigation and adaptation finance.  In exchange the emerging economies will begin to account and report their emissions and try to achieve intensity reductions. It is good that these countries are joining the international regime, but many see it as just too little too late. The manner in which the accord was agreed completely subverted the negotiation process of the past two years.  The accord, which most nations merely ‘took note of’ does not follow the format laid out in the Bali Action Plan, and does not address many of the important issues.  Every other country was left to either accept it or to be dissatisfied, but that is neither a democratic nor a consensus based process.  The BUICS might as well have had their own meeting in advance, made their agreement and come to the negotiating table to present their intentions.  In the end that is what the COP amounted to.  The accord does give some certainty to REDD, directly recognizing the importance of the program, and linking it to a planned $30 billion fund which should operate between 2010 and 2012.  Considering that this was one of the few things most countries agreed on; it is a significant achievement.  Hopefully the absence an international agreement (not just a BUICS agreement) will not leave the program struggling to find life.  As President Obama concluded, ‘we still have to work for a legally binding agreement.’

In other words COP15 has pushed the real work into the indefinite future and wasted a golden opportunity to do something more substantive.  All of the world’s leaders had come to the table and the whole world was watching.  In the end this didn’t matter. In explaining the need to break from the Kyoto Protocol, avoid legal obligations and commit the developing world, President Obama explained in a press briefing that, ‘We [the US] were coming with a clean slate because we had been on the sidelines for many years. The Kyoto Protocol and other accords called on developed countries to engage in mitigation activities and to help developing countries with finance.’  The agreements left no responsibilities action for developing countries. While there are very poor agrarian countries, there are also emerging industrializing countries like India and China. Leaving them out of an agreement was unacceptable to the United States and led to the fundamental split in perspective that deadlocked the negotiations.  President Obama is correct that the agreement brokered by the BUICS cut the deadlock an achieved a compromise between these perspectives.  But he is not correct that the United States was coming to Copenhagen with a clean slate.  Our failure to engage for the past 12 years left us undoubtedly behind the rest of the developed world, but this doesn’t make our slate clean; it makes it inadequate.  No great leader ever led standing behind and waiting on others to act.

It was a pleasure to follow this experience and to better understand how international political negotiations take place.  Many of the delegates and even commentators to the blog called for action outside of international decision-making institutions.  As demonstrated by this COP the construction of a climate regime at the international level is tedious and slow.  Yet it is an important first step in that it sets the guidelines or the goals countries will try to achieve.  No country (the United States included) can ignore climate change.  Green growth has now become the only plausible model of development, and publics around the world are now paying attention. Despite the disappointment of the absences of an agreed legal or at least political commitment, the United States, China and India have finally dipped their toes into the water of the climate change regime.  While it is not the same as diving in and swimming, these countries will eventually submerge completely (hopefully figuratively and not literally).  In the meantime, it is up to all of us to do what we can from the grassroots.  Change begins with one turned light switch, one recycled article, one un-purchased product, one living tree at a time.  Thank you for allowing me to share this experience with you.

Cheers,

Janelle Knox-Hayes

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