ANALYSIS:NOBODY really knows the full story about what happened during the crucial last day of the Copenhagen climate summit; even the participants are still trying to piece it all together. There were so many meetings, involving so few, going on at the Bella Centre that nearly everyone was in the dark, writes FRANK McDONALD
Venezuelan president Huge Chavez could “smell the sulphur”, and he was not alone. It became a cloak-and-daggers drama not long after Air Force One landed at snow-covered Kastrup airport and Barack Obama got into his bullet-proof limousine, with his security detail and the White House press corps forming a long motorcade.
That Obama did not attend the high-level plenary session was noted by all; when his name was called, he emerged from a side door to deliver his underwhelming speech from the podium and disappeared through the same door immediately afterwards. It was then that he threw himself into a series of multilateral and bilateral meetings.
It was inevitable that the complex negotiating process under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would be hijacked by the big guys. Never before in the climate talks had anything like the number – 119 heads of state or government – turned up, surpassing by 10 the Earth Summit’s roll-call in 1992.
Neither did the UNFCCC nor the Danes expect that so many lesser mortals would want to attend COP 15. They anticipated an attendance of 17,000 or so, but it was more than double that figure – more than 45,000 in all. Many of them had to stay in Malmö and other parts of southern Sweden, as Copenhagen was bursting at the seams.
The 21,500 observers, mainly drawn from environmental and development aid NGOs (non-governmental organisations), became more and more frustrated every day by the lack of progress and increasingly restricted access. The heavy-handed tactics of Danish police in dealing with demonstrations compounded their alienation. Author and activist Naomi Klein condemned the police behaviour as “just outrageous” and then said she had a message for the Danish state: “We love your bicycles and your windmills, but it’s our world and we have a right to have our say.” But any chance that they would be able to say it to the world’s leaders was severely circumscribed.
They could only watch them delivering their speeches or giving press briefings on UNFCCC webcasts. But it was not in the plenary session or in the tiered press conference hall that the real action was taking place; that was all happening at meetings held behind closed doors, involving only some of the 193 countries represented at the conference known as COP 15.
The G77 group of 134 developing countries, including many in the front line of global warming, played a blocking game in an effort to get what they wanted – more solid commitments from developed countries to cut emissions and provide the billions of dollars needed by poorer nations to cope with climate change, now and in the future.
However, there are some who believe that the G77 was used by China to stall the negotiating process, so that it could do a “side deal” with the US and others in the final hours. “The Chinese were refusing to engage with the [Danish] chair or with the EU,” one Irish source said. “It was a deliberate strategy to ensure that the work didn’t get done.”
The Americans “may have been complicit in this”, he said. Certainly, the US delegation was accused by others of blocking progress in the last week.
The Danish presidency also lost the confidence of numerous delegations, particularly those representing poorer nations; they felt Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s climate and energy minister – now about to become a member of the European Commission – was pursuing her own agenda and “siding with the rich countries”. She eventually stepped down, handing over to Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen to preside at the “high-level segment” of COP 15. But he also had his critics, having been accused of circulating a draft agreement to a select group of countries in advance; this blew up in his face when the Guardian put the “Danish text” on its website.
UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer had spelled out the four “political essentials” of any deal in Copenhagen. These were:
By how much were developed countries, including the US and EU states, prepared to reduce their emissions?
How willing were major developing countries such as China and India to limit the growth of their emissions?
What financial aid would be provided by developed countries to help poorer ones cope with climate change?
How was that money, running into billions of dollars, going to be managed – by the World Bank or the UNFCCC?
But the “Copenhagen Accord” has only delivered partially on one of these “essentials”; it says developed countries are willing to provide $30 billion over three years (2010-2012), rising to a potential $100 billion a year in 2020.
On all the rest, there’s just fudge. The two appendices at the end of the three-page text, respectively listing “quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020” by developed countries and “nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing countries” are totally blank; these are supposed to be filled in by January 31st, 2010.
No wonder some of the poorer countries and the highly-articulate environment and development NGOs reacted with such dismay when the terms of the “accord” were finally released at around 3am on Saturday. One can only imagine how the seven young people who fasted for 40 days to get a “meaningful agreement” felt about it.
The deal was done by the presidents of the US, Brazil and South Africa and the prime ministers of China and India, apparently with no reference to anyone else. An Obama administration official told the AP news agency that the “key moment” was when the US president “walked uninvited into a meeting” being hosted by Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao.
Sitting around the table were presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Jacob Zuma of South Africa along with Indian prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh, who had been feted at a state dinner in the White House less than a month earlier.
“The only surprise we had, in all honesty, was . . . that in that room wasn’t just the Chinese having a meeting . . . but in fact all four countries that we had been trying to arrange meetings with were indeed all in the same room. The president’s viewpoint is, ‘I wanted to see them all and now is our chance’,” the unnamed official said.
One of the lessons being drawn from this debacle is that a new world order is emerging, with both China and India flexing their muscles as major powers to match the strength of their economies. Brazil is in there too and South Africa, to a lesser extent. And it’s all happening without a nod in the direction of the old world – notably Europe.
All of which makes for an interesting year ahead, culminating in COP 16 next December in Mexico City.
Frank McDonald is Environment Editor