Guest Author: Bettina Wittneben

The Copenhagen Accord is a beautifully written document and full of good intentions. I encourage everyone to read it. It can be found on the UNFCCC website, is quite short and touches on many of the contentious issues in climate change policy. Unfortunately, it is almost entirely lacking of any consequence or even content. Today, this document is literally empty: it contains two tables that are intentionally blank. Let’s have a closer look.

The WHAT

This is the first UN document that mentions the 2 degree target. This aim of keeping the temperature rise below 2 degrees from pre-industrial times has been championed by the EU and others for a while but was never formally adopted. Over the past year, however, voices have become stronger that temperature rise should really be kept below 1.5 degrees rather than 2 degrees to save human lives and many species from extinction. This challenge of the initial magic 2 degrees target might actually have made it acceptable for mainstream politics to acknowledge a 2 degree target rather than going with the more stringent 1.5 degree target. How we can prevent temperatures from rising above 2 degrees globally and what that means in terms of limiting greenhouse gas emissions today remains unresolved. It is a comfortable goal for policy makers, because it remains fairly vague. That is, of course, not according to the IPCC report which prescribes a radical reduction of emissions urgently to stay below 2 degrees. But who will be held liable when temperatures surge beyond 2 degrees? Will the signatories to the Copenhagen Accord be dragged in front of an environmental court? Right now, we are already at a one degree temperature increase. It is almost a farce that the agreement states to review a 1.5 degree goal in 2015. By then, given that we are not lowering emissions, it is difficult to imagine that we would be able to keep temperature rise below 1.5 degrees.

Further figures are in relation to funding adaptation and mitigation measures in developing countries. The sum of $30bn is to be provided within the period from 2010 to 2012. This money is to be new and additional and to be provided by industrialized countries. This figure is similar to what has been promised by the EU and the US earlier in the negotiations.  More significantly, the agreement promises developing countries $100bn per year starting in 2020. This money, however, is to “come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance.” After the financial crisis the imagination is left to run wild on what alternative sources of finance could be. This latter money is to be managed through a newly established Copenhagen Green Climate Fund. Note here that the Adaptation Fund of the Kyoto Protocol took more than a decade to set up, even though its financial implications are not as wide reaching as this new fund.

The reporting requirements of the Copenhagen Accord are not very different from what the Convention set out 17 years ago. The frequency of reporting has increased since then  (from ‘periodically’ to ‘every two years’) but the content of national reports by rapidly industrialized countries do not require more stringent attention as emphasised by the US and exact guidelines are to be decided on within the Conference of Parties process.

The Copenhagen Accord also appeals to the forces of the market. “We decide to pursue various approaches, including opportunities to use markets, to enhance the cost-effectiveness of, and to promote mitigation actions.”  It is a very hollow commitment to the belief that the market will lower costs of mitigation action. After a decade of experimenting with market mechanisms and debating their flaws, falling for fraudulent behaviour and being exposed to years of arbitrage, this sentence seems to be a weak declaration that market approaches to climate action can still be seen as useful.

Surprisingly, the Kyoto Protocol is mentioned in the agreement. “Annex I Parties that are Party to the Kyoto Protocol will thereby further strengthen the emissions reductions initiated by the Kyoto Protocol.” Does that mean that somehow, miraculously, the emission reductions promises delivered for information purposes only to the Copenhagen Accord next month will transform into a second commitment period? It is not clear.

The WHO

Here, the writers of the Copenhagen Accord take a rain check: watch this space after 31 January 2010. Until then, countries have time to enlist (literally, sign up to the currently empty list) and express their intentions. Industrialized countries need to state their emission reduction goal for 2020 and the baseyear they calculate that on. Developing countries need to state their mitigation actions, including a wish list of actions that need financing from the wealthier nations.

The SO WHAT

• Countries still need to sign on.
• Emission targets still need to be set.
• Mitigation actions in developing countries still need to be declared.
• The finances still need to be sorted out.
• The extent of the market mechanisms still needs to be determined.
• The reporting still needs to be improved.
• The planet still needs to be saved.

The Copenhagen Accord does not go beyond the Kyoto Protocol. More ambitious targets including a broader group of countries, more stringent rules on the market mechanisms and limits to using credits as alternatives to reductions could have all been negotiated under a second commitment period. Was it really necessary to start with a new agreement from scratch?

The Bottom Line

All seemed lost in Copenhagen when the Copenhagen Accord was agreed on as a last ditch effort to come up with something that had the word ‘Copenhagen’ in it. Since many of my American colleagues already call the Kyoto Protocol the Kyoto Accord, this name seems most agreeable to an American public. Whether this document can be called a treaty is another matter. The climate summit in Copenhagen has been marred by poor organization, posturing and arrogance as well as the usual political divisions and struggles. After two years of almost continuous negotiating since Bali, we would have been left with nothing were it not for the Copenhagen Accord. The world leaders have saved the day – just not the planet. One thing is clear: there is a whole lot more work to do. Luckily. The climate conference caravan can now move on. We already have dates for the next COPs – see you in 2010 in Mexico and 2011 in South Africa. In the meantime, climate change will take its toll and irreversible climate chaos is becoming inevitable.

Guest Author: Bettina Wittneben, University of Oxford

Hopenhagen (Image by:/kallu)

I have to admit, seeing President Barack Obama finally walk up to the podium did make my heart beat just a little bit faster. After so much hype about his arrival – the potential visit in the first week, then a firm commitment to support the process personally in the second week and, yesterday, some rumours that he may not come after all – it was exciting to finally see him there. Agile, hopping onto the stage, adjusting the microphone, obviously fully comfortable in his role of addressing the world on the most important issue of our time. It is all too easy to rekindle your hopes when you see President Obama speak.

His tone of voice was serious yet hopeful. He spoke of climate change being science, not fiction (a comment most likely addressed to his home audience), of not wasting any more time by talking, and of taking action now. Of choosing the future over the past. He eloquently reiterated the US position:

1. All major economies need to declare to take decisive action. The US proposing to reduce emissions by 17% by 2020 and 80% by 2050.
2. Transparency in the reporting of emissions that leads to a credible treaty and accountability of the parties.
3. Financing of adaptation in the poorest countries, with the US contributing $10bn by 2012 for the fast start and later, in 2020, being part of a $100bn funding effort globally. This is contingent on countries signing a treaty that fulfils the first two aims.

This triple aim of mitigation, transparency and financing could be the backbone of a new treaty, says Obama, one that has gone further than any treaty before.

President Obama’s speech was very moving, motivating and makes one think: hey, why have they not all gone for this great deal that seems so honest and makes so much sense. Well, let’s look behind the words and see what is left when we boil down Obama’s speech to what the US is bringing to the table and what they are demanding of others.

Stop talking, start acting – It must be a slap in the face of the countries that have been serious about reducing emissions since signing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. The US has spent the majority of the past 17 years either openly blocking progress or complicating talks to absurdity. Surely not Obama’s personal fault, but he is speaking for his country in this forum. Nevertheless, it is a positive note and gives hope for the US finally coming around to accepting climate change as a global challenge.

Choosing the future over the past – This is a direct confrontation with countries like Brazil (whose President gave a passionate speech just minutes earlier) who argue that industrialized countries have been polluting the atmosphere for the past century and cannot tell newly industrialized countries to halt climate change. It depends on your definition of equity. It depends on whether you look at emissions as a flow or a stock. Looking at emission flows, we know that countries such as China and India will be emitting much more in the future; looking at emission stocks, we know that most of the dreadful stuff in the atmosphere is due to industrialized countries having burned fossil fuels to fire up their economies in the past. President Obama wants us to look at climate change as a challenge for the future, not a bundle of opportunist behaviour of the past.

Mitigation – It is indeed very comforting to hear the US speak of mitigation. After all these years of the Bush doctrine, that is very refreshing. However, the numbers Obama is bringing to the table are very low. In his speech, he neglected to mention that the 17% reduction refers to the baseline year of 2005, a year of strong economic growth and high emissions in the US. Usually, negotiators refer to the baseline year of 1990, which is the one used in the Kyoto Protocol. When calculating the proposed US emission cut on a baseline year of 1990, we get a mere 4% of emission reduction. This is well below the proposed EU target of 20-30% and even below the US target that Clinton’s administration signed in Kyoto in 1997. I looked it up – it was 7% then. When Obama says ‘all major economies’ he means China. China has proposed taking on a target, albeit an emission intensity target, which takes the edge off the argument that the US has used for years to justify its refusal to act on climate change. It is questionable, whether Obama’s meagre emission reduction target can be called ‘decisive action’ and hence complies with his own first major aim.

Transparency – Now that China has come forward with a target, the US has a new complaint: are they really going to do it and how do we know? Both the Convention and the Protocol require industrialized countries to report their emissions according to agreed-upon methodologies. These emission inventories are checked by UN staff.

Developing countries have been cut some slack and can report their emissions in any way they want and at any time they want. They do receive guidance from the UN but are not checked rigorously. Having said that, some industrialized countries have in the past failed to report adequately and timely. Given these previously agreed upon rules, countries such as China could take on targets but would not be monitored. The US, as an industrialized country and a member of the OECD, is under much more stringent requirements to report emissions. So, Obama’s requirement number two is firmly aimed at newly industrializing countries. It is a demand, not an offer.

Financing – Hilary Clinton already announced the large number of $100bn by 2020 yesterday. It turns out that this is not something the US administration will provide, but something that the US proposes to be part of as a global effort, both from governments and industry. It is supposed to be raised through public and private partnerships. It is a relief to see that President Obama was able to underscore that with a promise of a more concrete $10bn by 2012, similar to the EU amount, to support adaptation efforts by the most vulnerable in a fast start programme. But here is the hook – it is conditional to signing an agreement that the US deems ‘decisive’. Basically, it is a bribe for the least developed countries and other vulnerable states to pressure China to bow to US demands.

Mitigation, transparency and financing – Even with all its faults, the Kyoto Protocol already contains these three elements. Why not just ratify that and build on it to make it a better treaty in its second commitment period?

Overall then, Obama brings very little to the negotiation table: a mere 4% cut in emissions and some money if conditions are met. The only reason one can be excited about this is that, for once, they are not entirely blocking the process from the start. Asking China to open its books to UN evaluators is the gamble that Obama is willing to take to save the planet. If climate change is such a real concern to the country, why is the US not moving ahead with more ambitious plans to be part of the solution?

COP 15 Commentary by Guest Author: Bettina Wittneben

Activists in Copenhagen fight for climate justice (Image by: ronniehall)

Bob Dylan’s 1963 classic about floods and rising oceans is taking on new meaning in Copenhagen. The song has become a bit of a theme song for climate action. For the first time in its seventeen-year history, the United Nations climate summit is being bombarded with massive protests inside and outside the conference centre.

Inside the conference centre, representatives from poor countries and small island states have managed to halt the negotiations to bring attention to their needs. These groups of countries have in the past been treated with much care and given special allowances by the UN, but really, they were merely seen as the moral voice at the negotiations, the victims and the ones who will lose out. Tuvalu has always had the power to make negotiators face the detrimental impact of their decisions, for example, when their delegate pointed out that the two degree target proposed by the EU will mean Tuvalu will disappear. This sort of statement caused a sober response and a solemn pause in the negotiations – for about five minutes. In Copenhagen, these countries are refusing to remain in the victim’s role. They are not willing to be treated as children alongside a much more important adult game. They are standing up and speaking out.

This sense of renewed courage is also vivid in some of the main environmental nongovernmental groups. It is unusual to see so many protests staged inside the summit. Indigenous peoples are being encouraged to speak out, climate change victims put on the megaphone. Protesters have even been able to climb up on centre stage of the negotiations voicing their concern. They have matured from the main group organizing the famous NGO party at half time of the negotiations to taking a stance even if it is uncomfortable.

Outside, the cold temperatures have not been able to freeze activists’ anger and frustrations at the slow pace of international climate action. There are solid calls for payment of the ecological debt, setting ambitious, science-based emissions reduction targets and abolishing false climate solutions such as offsetting, nuclear power or clean coal. The number of arrests must be in the thousands by now but activists still managed to approach the conference centre in great numbers in an attempt to take over the talks.

Civil society has now been effectively barred from observing the climate talks. The Danish police are stepping up the defences of the climate bureaucracy. They have already brought out the pepper spray, police dogs and batons. There are still the water cannon that are rumoured to have been purchased before the summit. A meeting of over one hundred heads of state in the coming days will require high levels of security, at least for the ones on the inside.

Will these two sets of climate protest merge? Today they almost did. The crowds inside and outside the summit wanted to unite but were held back by police. Some of the delegates inside the summit have defected to the alternative summit outside because they are frustrated by the negotiations. Perhaps pushing NGOs outside of the confines of the summit will expose them to the more radical thoughts at Klimaforum.

Which one of the two protest movements will create enough momentum to change our collective path into climate chaos? Will the heads of state come out strong in support of climate change mitigation and adaptation? Will the alternative platform gain so much strength that its solutions will ripple through grassroots movements across the globe?

The good news is that there is momentum – perhaps for the first time since climate action was called for at the UN over twenty years ago. Climate change melancholy is over. It is time to roll up the sleeves and get a-workin’.

Guest Author: Bettina Wittneben, University of Oxford

Queue of COP15 participants waiting to register outside the Bella Center (Image by: Ruth Brandt)

The United Nations Climate Secretariat has acted on its threat – access to the Copenhagen climate summit will be restricted starting tomorrow. Observer organizations, such as my own, the University of Oxford, will be restricted in terms of how many participants can be allowed into the conference centre for the rest of the week. Forty thousand officially registered participants are being limited to a group of fifteen thousand participants who will actually be allowed access to the site of the historic climate negotiations. That means that many of the observer organizations can only bring in less than half of their delegates. The rest are to enjoy the day in Copenhagen city.

The UNFCCC secretariat has always prided itself in providing for a very public and transparent process. Many of the negotiations can be followed online in real time and all official documents are accessible to the public. The UN climate secretariat has over the years made an effort to save documents on accessible CDs, distribute brochures explaining the process and its mechanisms. This is the first time that observer organizations are told to stay outside of the process, at least partially, at a time when climate change is topping the agenda of so many diverse organizations across the globe.

The reasons are understandable. A conference centre can only hold so many bodies before provisions for personal health and security cannot be granted any longer. Nevertheless, this innovative move sends a clear, yet perhaps unintended message: Some people are in and some are left out.

Who is in, then? Of course, country delegations. After all, they are the ones negotiating any Copenhagen outcome. Or are they? It is up to each country to bring the people it deems important to have at a climate summit.

Extremely poor countries receive UN support to bring at least one delegate. Does that mean all country delegates are at the negotiating table? Absolutely not. Brazil, for example, brings several hundreds of delegates, many of whom are NGO or industry representatives. All acting in the interest of Brazil, certainly, but many in this group would not dare to ask for a seat at the negotiations. I talked to representatives from the Brazilian sugar cane biofuel industry who came as part of the Brazilian delegation – they thought COP was like an early Christmas treat for them! So many potential customers in one building!

Country delegations can also include advisors who do not even carry a passport to the respective country. As long as the government approves, they are in. Also, the governments in Copenhagen are not always democratically elected carrying the views and interests of the majority of their country’s people at heart. Governments more interested in backing a military regime or the ones run by corporate interests are more than welcome to attend the summit. Even countries who have over the past 17 years made no effort to ratify even the UN Convention on climate change will be attending the summit – such as the Vatican as the country of the Holy Sea.

Who else is in? Intergovernmental organizations, such as the World Bank, and finally the registered observer organizations that now have been given restricted access. For the latter, the UN secretariat leaves it up to the focal point, the person in direct contact with the UN, to decide who can get in and who is left out. Now these organizations face difficult decisions. Do they allow the seasoned climate negotiation observer into the sacred halls of the conference, or the innovative newcomer with fresh ideas? Does the person on payroll get selected first or the one who put in the most personal effort to travel to Copenhagen?

Isn’t this matter a simile for our real struggles in climate change? On our planet in 2050, wrenched by the unpredictable climate change impacts that we can still prevent now, there will be people who are in and those who lose out. Like with the climate summit, it helps to have good contacts in government. That will help grant access to cherished resources, such as fresh water, or shelter from floods and storms. Like with the climate summit, it will be those in power who can decide who stays dry, fed, healthy and secure.

This year for the first time, issues of climate justice are being championed on the centre stage at the climate summit. Countries such as Tuvalu, the Maldives and Bangladesh are fed up of simply being set aside as the moral voice of the summit. They are angry and many people are angry with them.

These countries are still at the summit, but will they also gain access to Planet Earth in a few decades?

Climate justice is not only an issue across countries but also within countries. An increasing number of people will be living in fuel poverty in many Western countries. People may need to turn down the heat because a warm home cannot be afforded any longer when fuel prices increase. Living space is reduced when houses are flooded that are not insured. Small businesses cannot afford climate change adaptation measures.

Will keeping (part of) civil society out of the confines of the negotiations be successful? Grassroots organizations hammering out a Peoples’ Declaration on Climate Change at the alternative Klimaforum in Copenhagen may decide to ignore the UN’s cutting back of civil society participation and take matters into their own hands. Only broad participation across and within countries will allow for a just and effective climate treaty to emerge.