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24 December 2009

So COP-15 is over. The two-year process that began in Bali has been extended into 2010, and nations will head to Mexico next year to try again to negotiate what they failed to agree on at Copenhagen.

The two working groups that had been charged with producing agreements on, respectively, a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and a global agreement on climate action that includes the United States essentially failed to reach agree­ment after two years of talks. It was only the eleventh-hour in­tervention of a group of leaders of major emitting countries that allowed Copenhagen to avoid ignominious failure.

The surprise appearance, late on Friday, of a text agreed between the leaders of the United States, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and up to 20 other nations, distracted the conference long enough to allow COP hosts Denmark to close the meeting with a qualified agree­ment. However, the Conference of Parties, the supreme body of the UNFCCC, decided in a tense and volatile final session to only “take note” of the Accord. In diplomat-speak this falls short of an “adoption”, but will be sufficient to allow action under the Accord to start right away.

Because the COP operates on consensus, any opposition to a proposal means that passage is impossible. Five countries – Ven­ezuela, Sudan, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba – rejected the Accord outright. During the early hours of Saturday morning delegates argued over how to proceed given the lack of consensus. Even­tually, Slovenia proposed listing all those countries in favour and against the Accord, and it was agreed that the COP should not approve the text but simply “take note” of it. This gives the Accord some legal status without implying approval.

Early drafts of the Accord (we believe there were as many as eight drafts) included a thirteenth article that set a deadline for the process of COP-16, which will be held in Mexico, but this was removed. The Accord is not legally binding, nor does it list individual targets for developed countries. UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer called it a “letter of intent” that sets out the principles for a binding agreement that may be reached in Mexico. Essentially, the Copenhagen Accord may be considered as a replacement for the text that had been developed under the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the UNFCCC, (potentially) grouping as it does all developed and major developing countries.

The key difference between the Accord and the AWG-LCA is that the Accord allows for all nations to voluntarily commit to goals and measures. The unilateral actions they take are to be listed in a Registry and subject to international “consultation” (rather than verification, a word that China strenuously objected to) that respects national sovereignty. The text of the Accord allows Nation­ally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) seeking international financial support to be listed in a separate list.

How it came about

By the time President Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen on Friday morning, it had become clear to most Parties and observers that the twin-track negotiations under the two Ad-Hoc Working Groups were failing to make any headway. Even bilateral discussions among leaders themselves were not producing any breakthrough.

During the night of Friday President Obama reportedly met with the leaders of the BASIC group of countries (Brazil, India, South Africa and China) and further discussions with a wider group of countries led to the creation of the Accord. The Accord was then presented to a Plenary meeting of the COP, which after a long and tense debate, punctuated by pauses for legal advice, eventually decided to take note of the Accord.


Why the Bali Plan failed

It’s become clear over the past few years that as climate change has moved up the political agenda, so the debate within the UNFCCC has begun to move away from an environmentally-led agenda to a more politically-driven discourse.

The Bali Action Plan was set up to extend the Kyoto Protocol into a second commitment period. While Kyoto itself as hard enough to set underway, the political and economic changes since 1997 have made it even harder today to achieve consensus. Had the meeting only been about extending Kyoto for another five or seven years, it would likely have succeeded. But with the second track trying to wrangle the United States into a binding agreement at the same time, the focus on Kyoto was necessarily blurred.

Fur­thermore, the US’ insistence that a) it would not sign Kyoto and b) whatever it agreed to would have to include China meant that there was always a high likelihood that the very restricted agenda of the AWGs would not succeed. A lot of observers have begun to wonder whether climate change can be effectively addressed by 193 nations meeting once a year; the fact that a group of 26 member states representing all major groups was consulted in the drawing up of the Accord suggests otherwise.

Parties to the UNFCCC have until January 31 2010 to enter their pledges or commitments into one of two Appendices to the Copenhagen Accord. The pledges will then be held and com­municated among Parties as they prepare to negotiate a legally binding treaty next year.

IDEAcarbon’s view of the Copenhagen Accord

It has to be said that the Copenhagen Accord does not offer much in the way of environmental security. The vague commitment to a 2 degree Celsius limit on temperature rises is not in any way supported by definite actions. Money to assist adaptation and mitigation measures in developing countries has yet to flow. But it may be that the five heads of state that met late Friday have cre­ated something that could eventually succeed more meaningfully that Kyoto has to date.

Kyoto mandates emissions reductions in countries representing just 30% of global emissions. Copenhagen could, if adopted as a legally binding treaty, cover in excess of 85% of global emissions. We concede that China committing to reduce emissions intensity by 40-45% by 2020 is no guarantee that its emissions will fall, but equally, once it has signed the treaty China may upgrade its commitment as and when it feels ready and able to do so.

What the Copenhagen Accord does is group all major emitters together in one group, unlike Kyoto. It creates a mechanism by which all national actions can be compared, and where all national emissions markets may be linked.

Copenhagen is a bottom-up, federal process. Sovereign nations contribute their national commitments to the process in the interest of all. Kyoto expressed a similar approach in a top-down fashion, which earned it the enduring enmity of the US. For the markets, Copenhagen holds out the continued promise of inter­linked markets in both developed and developing countries. In reality markets have never been a problem with Kyoto, as the US has itself said on many occasions; it’s just been the politics that Washington couldn’t agree with.

By agreeing to extend the AWG mandates for a further year, the Copenhagen COP has set the stage for a proper agreement to a second Kyoto commitment period, as well as an agreement on a mechanism that could, and indeed probably will replace Kyoto. 

 

 

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