After Copenhagen

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In 2004, Bianca Jagger received the Right Livelihood Award, known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’, for her “long-standing commitment and dedicated campaigning over a wide range of issues of human rights, social justice, and environmental protection”. She is the founder and chair of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation.

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The experience of participating at the Copenhagen climate change summit (COP15) in December is not one I will easily forget. It was a unique opportunity to set the world on the right path to avoid catastrophic climate change. For two days, most of the world’s leaders congregated under one roof for a common purpose. Attended by 120 Heads of State, COP15 was the largest gathering of its kind held outside of the annual UN General Assembly in New York. The two weeks of meetings, extending late into the night, marked the culmination of two years of intensive negotiations. The conference was the focus of unprecedented public and media attention. And yet, the result – the Copenhagen Accord – was a shameful compromise.

Yvo de Boer has recently announced his intention to stand down as head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In the run-up to COP15 he was unequivocal about the conference being successful only if it delivered significant and immediate action. Sadly, COP15 failed to deliver.

Henry Ford once said that “most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them”, and this was true of all too many of the negotiating positions on display at COP15. Those leaders and negotiators must take full responsibility for their actions.

Not legally binding

The failure at Copenhagen has been felt across the world, resulting in grave uncertainty about the ability of world leaders to deliver a comprehensive, legally binding, international climate change treaty. The words “legally binding” were conspicuously absent from the three-page text of the Copenhagen Accord. The Accord is merely “politically binding” for those countries that choose to sign up to it. Furthermore, it does not set emissions reduction targets for either 2020 or 2050, nor does it set a deadline by which the action points should become enforceable.

The Conference of Parties in Copenhagen did not even “adopt” the Accord. They “took note” of it. Rob Fowler, chair of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law, commented, “The exact status of the so-called ‘Copenhagen Accord’ …is unclear… (It) fails to achieve even the status of a ‘soft-law’ instrument, and thus constitutes the most minimal outcome conceivably possible.”

The end of the meeting saw leaders of the United States and the BASIC Group of countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) hammering out a last-minute deal in a back room. It was as though the nine months of preparatory talks had never happened, and the Bali Action Plan adopted in 2007 had never existed. This group found it easier to reach a (non)agreement behind closed doors on a few basic points of principle, rather than work out a treaty via the formal UNFCCC process. Although the European Union had been the clear global leader in the fight against climate change dating back to COP3 in 1997 when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted, it was not involved in this meeting. UNFCCC participants were presented with a fait accompli perceived by many as a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ ultimatum.

The Copenhagen Accord did not achieve unanimous consent – several parties raised points of order. As Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Apisai Ielemia said, in the UN system “nations large and small are given equal respect; the public announcement of a deal before bringing it before the COP meeting was disrespectful of the process and the UN system.” He highlighted major problems with the political agreement, saying it lacked a scientific basis, an international insurance mechanism, and guarantees on the continued existence of the Kyoto Protocol. “We came here expecting an open and transparent process. Unfortunately this is not happening.”

What transpired at Copenhagen left developing countries frustrated about their marginalization by the developed world, about their exclusion from policy making, and about the lack of transparency in the way the negotiations were conducted.

350 parts per million

The Copenhagen Accord acknowledges that a rise of more than two degrees Celsius is catastrophic, but it contains no firm commitments to address this impending global crisis. Professor James Hansen, Head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies is emphatic: “The safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 parts per million (ppm).” Atmospheric levels are currently hovering at around 389ppm.

The UN Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) was supposed to have been part of the legally binding treaty.  Emissions from deforestation account for approximately 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, and the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change argues that “curbing deforestation is a highly cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” Planting 10 million square kilometres of natural forests will help stabilize the concentration of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere at the 350ppm that Professor Hansen prescribes.

In the absence of a legally binding treaty, the implementation of REDD rests on voluntary, country-driven activity. The lowest estimates on the financing of REDD are predicted to be US$22.4 – $37.3 billion from 2010-15 just to support preparatory activities. To date, six developed nations, Australia, France,, Japan,  Norway, the UK, and the US have pledged a total of US$3.5 billion to support the implementation of REDD between 2010 and 2012.

The Accord does contain a commitment by developed countries to pay the developing world US$30 billion of “climate aid” over the next three years, with the aim of increasing this amount to US$100 billion a year from 2020. However this offer is not legally binding. There is no mention of which countries will receive financing, in which amounts, on what conditions, or under which mechanisms.

Vapour money

Even concrete financing pledges can be unpredictable, conditional, and selective when implemented, and the finance ‘goals’ contained in the Accord are anything but concrete. As Professor Hansen puts it, even the money promised to developing countries is “…vapour money. There’s no mechanism for such financing to actually occur, and no expectation that it will.”

‘Vapour money’ is not good enough. We must call for a concrete fiscal plan to incentivize sustainable development. There were no ‘goals’ when governments were delivering bailouts to the banks during the recent global financial crisis. The amount of money put up by the United States alone to save its banks was US$750 billion.

After the Copenhagen meeting concluded, the French newspaper Libération lamented the speed and commitment to saving the planet compared with saving the global financial system: “We must make the bitter observation: when it comes to rescuing the banking system, the dialogue has been far more effective and determined. It is clearly easier to save finance, than it is to save the planet.”

The question of how to move forward is a tough one. How do we achieve a contractual commitment, when world leaders, brought together for one purpose, and with all the resources of the COP15, failed?

First vital test

Countries were asked to submit their voluntary proposed domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction pledges in a common document by January 31st, 2010. This was the first vital test of the Accord’s relevance. By mid-February, 55 countries had submitted plans to cut GHG emissions. The most significant target to date has been set by Norway, which pledged 30-40% reductions by 2020. Similarly, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Japan, and Iceland have made commitments to reduce GHG emissions in the range of 30%, and the EU has committed to a 20-30% reduction. All of these countries have based their reductions relative to 1990 levels. By contrast, the United States and Canada have framed their pledges in deceptive terms, offering to reduce emissions by 17% relative to 2005 levels, which amount to a mere 3.2% reduction relative to 1990 levels.

India, the world’s fifth largest polluter, has pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 20-25% by 2020, relative to 2005 levels, although there is no indication what measures they will take to meet the goal. Similarly, China “will endeavour to reduce its emissions per unit of GDP by 40 to 45% by 2020.” China’s plan also includes “increasing the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15% by 2020, and increasing forest coverage by 40 million hectares and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion cubic meters by 2020 relative to 2005 levels.”

Commitment to the Accord and countries’ adherence to their own targets will be entirely self-monitored. Some states have indicated their support for the Accord, but have submitted no targets to date. Some have submitted reduction targets, but have not indicated support for the Accord.

Immediate action

The failure of world leaders to broker a global, comprehensive, legally binding treaty was an appalling abdication of responsibility. I am not being alarmist; the situation is alarming. The time for further excuses and postponements, for procrastination or prevarication, has long passed. Now is the time for decision-makers in politics and economics to take concrete steps to avert climate catastrophe; the time for courage and leadership, and for immediate action. Tackling climate change is the over-riding moral imperative of the century. Our future, the fate of future generations, and the future of all other species on this planet hangs in the balance.

Now, more than ever, nations, societies, communities, and individuals are interconnected and interdependent. It is an intellectual illusion to believe that the crises that besiege our world today can be compartmentalised, and that we can address them without revolutionizing our way of life. Climate change will affect everyone, everywhere, in every state, and from every socio-economic group, in hundreds of ways: from the pollution of cities to erosion in rural areas; from contamination of the oceans and rivers to desertification; from mass migration to overcrowded cities, and the security of individuals and states. We must change the way we live, eat, think, do business, and travel, in order to build a society on a solid sustainable foundation.

We cannot do this without cooperation between nations, states, leaders, parties, organizations, and individuals. At this critical juncture in history, we will either stand or fall together.

Also see: Bianca Jagger in an interview from December 2009, where she discusses the REDD agreement, deforestation, targets and the Kyoto Protocol.