Climate deal disappoints EU
Copenhagen summit ends without a legally binding document, and pledges on emissions reductions fall short of EU hopes.
EU leaders voiced disappointment this morning (19 December), after the UN climate summit in Copenhagen failed to clinch a deal that guarantees that global warming will be kept below ‘dangerous’ levels.
After a final, 24-hour negotiating marathon at the very highest levels, countries signed up to an accord brokered principally by China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US, but the agreement could not hide the failure to narrow their differences on the level of ambition for a new global treaty on climate change to replace the Kyoto protocol after 2012.
“Let’s be honest. This is not a perfect agreement. It will not solve the climate threat,” said Fredrik Reinfeldt, Sweden’s prime minister in one of his final appearances as chairman of the EU presidency.
Reinfeldt said that the EU had been “fighting not to go backwards” during the two-week talks, which had become bogged down in acrimony and lack of trust among industrialised and developing countries.
José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, declared that this accord was better than no accord, describing it as “a positive step but clearly below our ambitions. I will not hide my disappointment,” he said, adding that “the fight to achieve a higher level of ambition goes on”.
Terms of the deal
Under the terms of the Copenhagen accord signed off in the early hours of Saturday, a majority of countries agreed to take action to restrict global warming to no more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels.
Developed countries promised to mobilise funds worth $100 billion (€69.75bn) per year by 2020 to help developing countries cope with climate change, while promising that $30bn (€21bn) would be available for the poorest countries between 2010 and 2012.
Rich and developing countries have until January to list emission-reduction pledges and other actions in an annexe to the accord.
Fact File
Different Voices
Barack Obama
“We know that this progress alone is not enough…we have come a long way but we know we have much further to go.”
The US president reflects on the Copenhagen deal
Felipé Calderón
“I know that this accord is far from what we expected and far from what the world needs.”
Mexico’s president and the host of the next major UN climate conference acknowledges that there is a long way to go.
Xie Zhenhua
“The meeting has had a positive result, everyone should be happy.”
The head of China’s delegation strikes an upbeat note.
Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping
“Gross violations have been committed today against the poor, against the tradition of transparency and participation on an equal footing by all nations and parties to the convention, and against common sense, because the architecture of this deal is extraordinarily flawed.”
The chair of the G77 reacts.
What’s in the UN political declaration and how does it compare to the EU position?
• The world should work to restrict global warming to 2ºC above pre-industrial levels.
The 2ºC has been the EU goal for many years, but the bloc had hoped for targets to lock countries into this goal. It wanted countries to aim to cut global emissions by 50% by 2050 and by 80%-95% for developed countries. The EU was disappointed on this score.
• Countries should take action to reduce emissions in line with science. Emission-reduction targets from developing countries and developing-country efforts, known as “nationally appropriate mitigation actions” (NAMAs), are set out in an annexe to the document.
The EU wanted the world to aim at actions that would cut emissions by at least 25% by 2020 (with 1990 as the reference year), in line with the lower estimated range given by scientists through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But pledges made add up to a reduction of just 18%.
• Least developed countries and those most vulnerable to climate change should get $30 billion (€21bn) “fast-start funding” over 2010 and 2012 to help them adapt to climate change.
The Copenhagen accord is within touching distance of the EU goals on fast-start finance. The EU thinks that the least-developed countries should get €15bn-€21bn in 2010-2012 and has promised to contribute €7.4bn ($10.2bn) of this total over three years. During the talks, Japan promised $5bn per year (€3.5bn) and the US promised $3.6bn (€2.5bn) in total. But some money needs to be found to make up the $1.2bn (€0.8bn) shortfall.
• Rich countries should mobilise to raise $100bn (€70bn) a year from public and private sources.
EU leaders agreed in October that the total bill could be around €100bn – €30 bn more than the estimate in the UN accord.
What is not in the draft UN text
• Timelines: Early drafts of the declaration referred to reaching a binding legal agreement “as soon as possible” and no later than December 2010 at the next big climate conference in Mexico City. But this was dropped from the final text.
The EU wanted a clear timetable and promise to deliver a legally binding treaty, but failed to get this.
But the targets and the level of support for the developing world falls short of what the EU had hoped for (see box).
The accord is also not a legally binding text, and the EU failed to get agreement on a timetable for reaching a binding treaty. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised to lead a campaign for a treaty, which he described as “the obvious next step”.
No 30%
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The EU wanted pledges to cut emissions by a minimum of 25% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels – in line with the lower end of the scientific consensus. But offers on the table only take the world to an 18% cut by 2020.
The EU also wanted a global target to halve emissions by 2050, but other countries would not sign up to this.
For the EU, the absence of these elements means the accord holds out no guarantee of limiting emissions to 2ºC. Scientific consensus holds that beyond 2ºC climate change would have more devastating effects.
The EU decided that pledges were not enough for it to make good on a promise to cut emissions by 30% by 2020, which it had promised if other industrialised countries made similar efforts.
This means that the EU’s pledge continues to be a cut in emissions by 20% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. Barroso said that the promise to go to 30% remained open: “This is not the final say. We need to keep working on this.”
Mini-summits
Nearly all the leaders of the EU’s 27 member-states were in Copenhagen and met on Friday afternoon to debate whether to increase their pledge to 30%. Some countries were in favour of making a unilateral move to 30%, but the European Commission was opposed to giving away this bargaining chip without having extracted greater concessions, according to an EU source.
EU leaders participated in an informal group of 30 world leaders that met several times over the final day in an effort to break the deadlock. This group included the leaders of France, Germany, Sweden, the UK, as well as leaders of the African Union, China, Russia and the US.
But in the end the decisive deal was made between the US and China, the two largest emitters, who are collectively responsible for half of all global emissions.
Greens red with anger
Questions are being asked about whether the UN’s 192-country forum is the best way to draft complex climate treaties. Felipé Calderón, Mexico’s president and host of the next big UN climate meeting in December 2010, said that countries needed to “learn lessons” from the Copenhagen process “to understand that the rule of consensus may not be a veto rule”.
Campaigners reacted bitterly to the outcome. Oxfam described the deal as “a historic cop-out”. Jeremy Hobbs, Oxfam’s executive director, said it was “a triumph of spin over substance. It recognises the need to keep warming below 2ºC but does not commit to do so. It kicks back the big decisions on emissions cuts and fudges the issue of climate cash.”
“Politically, we live in a world that agrees to stay below the danger zone of 2ºC but practically what we have on the table adds up to 3ºC or more,” said Kim Carstensen at WWF.
Greenpeace declared that Copenhagen was “a climate crime scene”, for which Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace’s international director, put the blame squarely on industrialised countries. He singled out the US for having “failed to take any real leadership and dragged the talks down”.