Copenhagen and beyond

Dr. Atiq Rahman

AFP

The Copenhagen Conference on climate change was the culmination of years of work to follow up on the Bali Action Plan and the Kyoto Protocol. These two processes were outcomes of the long extended climate negotiations to reduce GHG emission and climate risks. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its fourth assessment report (which was published in 2007 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007) asserted that rapid climate change was largely created by human actions and will have severe impacts on human systems and ecosystems, which will affect all, but the poorest most.

The Copenhagen summit, held during 7-18 December, 2009 in the Danish capital, was attended by all 192 member states of the United Nations. Over 120 heads of governments also attended the high level meetings of the COP-15 and demonstrated their great interest and commitment to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The timing of COP-15 was aimed at initiating a rigorous process of follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol (KP), which has to be completed by 2012. The year 2012 will be the end of the first commitment period and a likely follow-up with the second commitment period would be greater GHG reduction. The whole world having being made conscious about the grave threats of climate change expected a legally binding agreement in Copenhagen to reduce GHG significantly, particularly by the industrialised countries. Unfortunately the governments of the world those, who represented in the COP-15, failed to deliver a comprehensive and consensus outcome.

The COP processes and key building blocks
The COP process is essentially an inter-governmental process under the UNFCCC. Hence, all the governments (e.g. member states of the UN) are responsible for the negotiations, but these negotiations take place mostly in political groups of nation states. One of the key negotiating group is the “developed country parties”, who have accepted the principal responsibility of the main negotiating problem of GHG emission from the early days of industrialisation. They accepted this responsibility being the Annex-1 parties to the UNFCCC. The other main negotiating groups are developing country parties represented by G-77 and China. The “G-77 and China” are a large group of over 160 countries, which forms a heterogeneous group representing wide ranging interests -- economic, development status and different degree of vulnerabilities. For example, LDC group represents the 49 least developed countries who are the most poor, but emit the lowest per capita GHG and often the most vulnerable. Another group is the “Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).” Some of them are equally threatened with obliteration due to sea level rise. In recent times there has been an attempt to form a new "Most Vulnerable Countries" (MVCs) group composed of LDCs, AOSIS and African poor countries. There has been some progress but the MVC is not yet an accepted formal group within the UNFCCC. Another sub-group within the G77 and China is the OPEC or the oil exporting countries mainly from the Middle East whose main interest is to protect their oil exporting.

The main negotiations were held around four key building blocks which include: i) shared vision for halting dangerous climate change by limiting temperature rise through mitigation measures meaning urgent actions for GHG emission reduction; ii) adaptation meaning how to live in a changed climate by reducing risks from both climate variability and climatic extremes; iii) technology generation and transfer for both mitigation and adaptation; and iv) funding and capacity building of the poor developing countries to address climate change and its impacts. In addition, two Ad hoc Working Groups on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWGLCA) and Implementation of KP (AWGKP) also worked closely and tried to influence the negotiation processes and outcomes.

These groups have been meeting in Bonn, Bangkok and Barcelona prior to the Copenhagen summit. In Copenhagen, the parties from the developed and developing countries presented their positions on the four streams, discussed and debated issues relating to shared visions, setting of mitigation targets by the developed and emerging economies for the post 2012 climate change regime (known as the second commitment period of the implementation of Kyoto Protocol) and funding for mitigation and adaptation. Because of the narrow national and political interests of few influential countries including the USA, China, India and Brazil, the COP-15 could not to reach a consensus on the key issues and failed to produce a comprehensive and legally binding agreement for immediate and long term actions to address climate change.

Negotiation dynamics and positions of various negotiating groups
Climate change decisions are perceived to affect each country differently and all key sectors such as economy, industry, energy system, transport, water resources, land management, forestry, urbanization etc. are affected differently. Hence each country tries to negotiate in their best perceived national interest. This national interest in each country is defined or led by the political processes in respective countries. Hence coming to a conclusion in decision making becomes very difficult. Further it has been the tradition that these should be consensus decisions. To reach a consensus serious compromises would have to be made. Hence often decisions which are good for the planet as a whole, or ethical decisions or decisions supportive for the protection of the most vulnerable become compromised and a agreement arrived at often represents the lowest common denominator.

Scientific outcomes indicates the range of decision that would be most helpful for the planet, but national interests and politics dictate the acceptable decisions. Since it is a matter of politics and power, it is often the most powerful who calls the shots.

Civil society actors
As stated, the negotiations process is essentially inter-governmental, but there are many non-governmental actors who also have significant roles and influences in the process. These include NGOs who influence their governments at home, many participates as members of their Government delegations as well as they form global networks and assert their positions in the global communities. For example, the Climate Action Network (CAN) is a large network representing worlds key environment and development NGOs working on different aspects or components of climate change negotiations. They have regional nodes, such as Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) representing southern interests while the US-CAN tends to influence their government for a global perspective.

Besides these there are the more activists groups who prefer to express themselves through demonstrations, street activities and sometimes resulting in conflicts giving rise to law and order problems. In Copenhagen around thirty thousand activists demonstrated in the frozen blizzards of Danish winter put pressure on the global negotiators for a fair deal to save the planet. It may be noted that most of these people did not have access to the main conference venue.

Various side events to COP
Then there are the research or scientific communities who expressed themselves in the negotiating spaces by exposing their scientific results, outputs and preferred positions. The COP process of UNFCCC has provided significant opportunities for side events where NGOs, civil society and scientific community presented their findings and perspectives and shared these with members of government and other actors. These have been mostly indirect and sometimes direct ways of influencing the process and its outcome.

Business actors
The other major actor group is the business community. Most of these actors are backed by financial resources, interests and profit motives. They have enormous capacity to influence their national as well as other Governments to push for the cause of individual or collective business interests. Sometimes the business community can be a major part of the solution to the climate problem by developing and marketing technologies which can reduce GHG as well as offer risk reducing adaptation technologies. In Copenhagen over quarter of the participants were from the private sector looking for business opportunities in the emerging climate market particularly in Clean Development Mechanism and carbon market.

The vested interest of the private sector sometimes use their financial resources to influence the political and media processes in their favour. An example is the fossil fuel lobby who significantly influenced the US decision making process and delayed the US Government to accept the rapidly emerging scientific consensus on climate change and even walked out of the Kyoto Protocol process having undertaken the complete negotiation in 1997.

The media actors
The media has played a key role in the formation of public opinion across the world. For example in Bangladesh, the print and electronic media has played a significant role both before and after the COP 15 Copenhagen Summit. This has had major influences. Firstly, by relaying the human stories of impacted communities by climate extreme events, they influenced political as well as public opinion in Bangladesh and worldwide. Secondly, by covering political analysis as well as scientific findings, vulnerability of Bangladesh as well as the forthcoming threats to Bangladesh's development, the media drew much of the global attention to Bangladesh vulnerability and need for adaptation.

Similarly worldwide, media has played a significant role in raising expectations as well as exposing the frustrating outcomes of the COP 15 process. The global TV networks such as BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera had huge global access and influence. The rapid and almost instant coverage by the media have significant impacts on the negotiations themselves.

The US-Basic Group dynamics
Amongst the national governments or groups, different countries played different roles to represent their own perceptions of self-interest and outcomes. The world needed USA to join any future deal. As the greatest emitter being outside any deal will result in an incomplete and ineffective outcome as it was evident in a weak implementation of Kyoto Protocol. Though US remained a full member of the UNFCCC process, they opted out of the Kyoto Protocol significantly undermining the UNFCCC principle.

The election of Obama as the new President offered an opportunity and raised expectations that the US could play a leadership and positive role. The Obama administration wanted to move their own internal legislation so that it could get any future deal ratified by the US Congress and Senate. However, the US emphasized that they were not in a position to sign any legally binding agreement in 2009. In COP 15, the US played a more progressive role than under the Bush administration but that was still demonstrated a weak and divisive leadership at COP 15.

The G77 + China as a group was less coherent in COP 15 as the major and newly emerging, rapidly industrializing emitters called the BASIC Group, composed of China, India, Brazil and South Africa. They were perceived as being more busy protecting their own interests than the interest of the developing world. Particularly they had
shown little sympathy of LDCs and AOSIS groups.

As developing countries the BASIC group members had no obligation to any GHG reduction commitment under UNFCCC. The industrialized countries pressurized them to express their commitment or at least undertake actions through NAMA (Nationally Appropriate Mitigating Actions). They had rapidly formed a very coherent group threatened by the industrialized countries pressures to commit for rapid GHG reduction. Their position was that these countries are in their early stage of development and will need to economically develop rapidly further without being hindered by climate change related obligations. Prior to COP 15, the African countries who are one of the only geographical groups expressed that they were vulnerable and not getting the promised compensation. Africa and South Asia have been identified as the most vulnerable zones.

The European Group
The European Union was more progressive in keeping the Kyoto Protocol functioning and had offered to reduce upto 30% GHG by 2020. The European Union, a group of 25 countries played a key role but lost its leadership in the last and final days of the negotiation process. The EU was central to keeping the CDM market operating and worked hard for a consensus outcome. They also had committed funds for developing countries. Further some EU countries had also developed climate friendly technologies and market.

LDC group
The Least Developed Countries had the sympathy of the world but the financial commitment and the urgency of response was too slow for their liking. So, the LDCs have enough reasons to be frustrated. Because of their weak political position and even having little support from other richer and larger developing countries and members of G77 and China group, COP 15 saw the emergence of the informal group of Most Vulnerable Countries. Bangladesh, along with Maldives gave leadership to form a group which includes LDCs, AOSIS members and other members of poorer African countries. This would then consist of over nearly 100 countries which would have greater bargaining and negotiating power. The MVC group deserves to be strengthened as climate change will emerge as a more powerful as well as devastating phenomenon threatening development and increasing poverty.

Bangladesh perspectives and its role in the COP-15
A large delegation of negotiators from Bangladesh led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina participated in the COP-15. The Bangladesh delegation could successfully draw the attention of the negotiating parties and global audience about the vulnerability of the country to climate change impacts and strongly raised the demand for resources for adaptation and disaster risks reduction. The Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Dr. Hasan Mahmud, State Minister for Environment and Forest of the Government of Bangladesh supported by a number of government and non-government actors, made laudable contribution to the plenary session discussions as well as in other fora in relation to LDCs and MVCs and in the interest of the vulnerable of the planet. The world leaders including UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, US President Barack Obama and R.K. Pachuri, the Chair of IPCC acknowledged the vulnerability in Bangladesh and called upon the parties to support vulnerable countries like Bangladesh to address the impacts of climate change.

The Bangladesh delegation had succeeded in establishing its own vulnerability as well as a leadership role of LDCs and MVCs. Further Bangladesh's position not to cross 1.5oC as the maximum temperature increase also found its place in the final Copenhagen Accord.

The poor outcome -- a draft accord
The Copenhagen Climate Conference has been criticised for its weak process and poor outcomes. We were looking for a comprehensive, fair and legally binding climate deal, but the global leaders and the negotiators produced a draft accord, which was primarily an agreement between the US and the BASIC group with a few other countries. This disappointed the whole world as a non-consensus outcome.

The draft accord does not reflect a global aspiration in terms of setting target for GHG reduction and concrete actions by the developed and newly developing countries to avoid dangerous climate change in the near future.

The draft accord drift in that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and emphasised strong political will to urgently combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. It also recognised the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be kept well below 2 degree celcius on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development and urged for long-term cooperative action to combat climate change. The accord also recognized the critical impacts of climate change and the importance of response measures for the poor and vulnerable countries to reduce risk and their vulnerability to climate change. But it miserably failed to set targets or allocations for GHG reduction by the annex -1 countries to limit temperature rise below 2 degree celcius in the current century. Further, the draft accord recognised the urgency and importance of adaptation measures in poor countries including LDCs, AOSIS and MVCs, but failed to commit adequate funding for the vulnerable countries who are the main victims and are not responsible for the global climate change.

The end game
The last three days of COP 15 was almost a nightmare. There was very poor leadership and there was not a clear sense of direction. When President Obama entered the COP 15 process, potential for compromise was low. The US was pushing China to a position which China thought was unacceptable. The BASIC group was maintaining their coherence and the US was not in a position to offer any concession itself as its own domestic issues gave no flexibility to President Obama.

There were countries, groups of countries and NGOs who thought that a bad and divisive outcome is worse than no outcome. Others considered that however weak the outcome of the COP 15 process is, UNFCCC negotiations must maintain integrity and continuity so that the next phase can build on it.

When the “Copenhagen Accord” (originally placed as a framework) was developed by a few (about 40) countries and was presented to all the membership of the COP 15, it was considered inadequate and the process was felt faulty. The COP decided to “take note” of the outcome and not consider it a 'decision'. That left the whole accord in a “legal limbo” but finally it was agreed that parties will respond by January 31, 2010 to impart the process a life and continuity.

Thus, the Copenhagen Accord remains weak and incomplete. But the process must continue resulting in a “legally binding agreement” in Mexico. By then substantial funds on the table with a process and criteria for fund distribution and a significant amount (over US $30 billion) on the table will give a boost to the process.

The limited achievement and future challenge
Despite all the limitations, the Copenhagen Accord has three major successes:

(a) The global community agreed to stabilise the global GHG emission not to cross the temperature rise of 2oC from the pre-industrial period. Once this 2oC limit get established, the residual temperature and its concomitant emission reduction will have to be distributed amongst all the countries ensuring a 'Safe' limit of GHG emission.

(b) A global climate fund was established with an initial total of US $30 Billion during 2010 2012 period. Further a significant fund of US $100 billion per year from 2020 has also be established. Though a few countries mentioned that these were very small figures and they raised questions like - how the funds will be generated, managed and spent? These have not yet been established. There is a need to develop the steps to connect the 10 billion per year up to 2012 to 100 billion per year beyond 2020.

Only in February 2010, Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General has formed a fund raising group chaired by Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister to start looking at these issues. But the creation and starting to spend significant funds will probably generate a number of projects and actions from which the world will learn to do both mitigation and adaptation actions.

(c ) The Accord agreed that at COP 16 to be held in Cancun, Mexico in December 2010 where the legally binding agreement will be resolved. It is likely that a number of negotiation sessions will take place before COP-16 in Nov-Dec 2010 in Mexico.

In an ideal world, most of the conflicting issues will be resolved before that. Only a few issues should be left for the Heads of governments and states to agree on in the final session. Such a process has likelihood of success. The COP 16 becomes critical after the grand failure or limited success of the Copenhagen process to develop a global consensus.

Climate change is the greatest threat human beings face today. There is a need of equal greatness of vision and quality of global leadership to resolve the intensity of the climate crisis.

The author is Executive Director of Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) and Chairman of Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA).

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