AFTER 12 days of wrangling, the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen effectively ended with an agreement to agree at some later date. It, therefore, was not simply all the hot air generated in hours of often-furious argument that has damaged the climate change issue. The way in which realpolitik asserted itself to the detriment of the vast majority of the 192 countries that turned up to have their say, left many very unhappy delegates heading for home Saturday night.
In the end it all came down to US President Barack Obama. He flew in aboard Air Force One, lectured the summiteers about the need to reaching an agreement but offered no further concessions on behalf of a wary United States. Then he went into private conclave with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, which meeting was later extended to include three other key countries, India, Brazil and South Africa and within hours there emerged the Copenhagen Accord. A shell-shocked summit, less a few delegates who had already flown home in disgust, wearily endorsed the deal Saturday night and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lauded the breakthrough.
But how real is a deal that has no reference to legally binding targets, plumps for a 2 degree Celsius limit when many countries claimed 1.5 degrees was the maximum that should be allowed, promises $100 billion a year to developing countries without saying who is going to pay these immense sums, fails to agree on any firm monitoring process and gives no firm framework on the much-touted carbon-trading markets?
Some delegations, including that from the Kingdom protested that the Copenhagen Accord breached UN rules because it had been cooked up by just a few countries. But in the end, it was clear that after almost a fortnight of often chaotic arguing, there was no appetite for further dissension. The EU that had along with the Russians been notably excluded from Obama’s behind-the-scenes deliberations, made the best of a bad lot and welcomed the accord.
The Danes are already being blamed for chairing the summit badly. But this is unfair. The reality is that in the year in which officials around the world had been preparing for this great event, there had been no real progress. It was the environmentalist lobby which had made the running in terms of publicity, clearly hoping that once all the national leaders had gathered, they could be bounced into an agreement.
What was so notable was the way in which the science behind global warming was largely pushed into the background by the myriad assertions of national interest. Could it be that the revelation on the eve of the summit that some climate scientists had been fixing their research to back the climate change argument, had a greater impact than had been expected? Certainly many Americans believe the scandal endorses their skepticism about the science and Obama’s lack of fresh concessions demonstrates his nervousness at this. Thus after all that effort, the Copenhagen climate negotiations will go down in the history books as “The Deal to Do a Deal”.
