RTCC – COP 15 – Copenhagen

The Copenhagen Accord is an embarassing text of which the official body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Conference of the Parties, only takes note. It is signed by a “list of parties” of which there is no trace on the web yet; it should include all developed countries and the big developing countries while Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and many smaller developing countries refused to endorse it. The delegation from Tuvalu declared that “we have been offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our people and our future [...] our future is not for sale” and Cuba roared in a harsh critique of the process originating the document. In fact a group of about 30 Heads of State and government, as many as 28 from the developed world, met in a hotel on Friday 18 December delaying indefinetely the plenary to come up with a six page text, two of which are blank lists, i.e. to be filled before 31 January 2010. A lot of people wonder why this unfairly out of protocol meeting was to take place just before the general assembly.

This non agreement is the face saving document presented to the world two years after the Bali Action Plan was adopted to launch the development of a new treaty in Denmark this year. It is not a legally binding document nor a political agreement starting up immediate action, which were the objectives at COP15: this summit then should be honestly called a big failure with respect to the expectations. An overall failure of democracy because no commitments have been signed on how much greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced and about whom will pay (and when) the promised money for mitigation and adaptation to developing countries.

Citizens and businesses needed and need reference points from their governments and international institutions on many issues, but they see here that the best choice is to (continue to) act independently to cut emissions and adapt to the severe actual impacts of climate change around the world. The bottom-up approach can reach important results by itself while the United Nations process of negotiations is to be reformed; what needs to be changed seems the effectiveness of the system of representation of over 190 countries in order to avoid deadlocks, but allow democracy to take place in a transparent and inclusive way. Groups of countries could have one representative for decisions to be taken, say with a 3/4 majority of votes (whenever a unanimous one is not available) to actually manage to act on issues regarding the whole humanity rather than facing this constant paralisis that can only worsen the global environmental situation.

Moreover it is very sad to observe that thousands of people have been queing for hours outside the Bella Center without being able to get access to this public important event: it never happened during the previous Conferences of the Parties. The civil society was bringing energy, ideas and enthusiasm inside and outside the venue, but everything was turned upside down in the second week. And it is very disappointing that Barack Obama did not inject the final stimulus asked of the USA after the EU and Japan offered significant initial funding for developing nations to cope with climate change. These offers do not even appear in the Accord because they were conditional to a globally agreed text: unfortunately steps backwards have been made and we have little in our hands now, despite the general satisfaction expressed by various political leaders.

An historic opportunity has been missed in Copenhagen and it would be wise to learn from this failure to get this deal done in the next year. Too many echoes of ideological clashes and mistrust resounded in the Bella Center during the last two weeks: a lot of confidence is still to be built like Obama himself acknowledged. What makes many (poorer or richer) people angry is that there are already big obstacles ahead to stay stuck on disputes on the past any longer, but to do that a true confrontation should take place from now on. Any more leaked unofficial texts and phantomatic documents will only help the climate catastrophe to come while a more mature multilateral discussion and a better United Nations system to deliver action, and not proclamations, are what the public opinion want in order not to completely lose trust in our common institutions.

Certainly different urgent choices would have been made already at COP15 or before if submersion was a clear and present danger for New York, London or Shangai, and not only for Maldives, Kiribati and the like.

Luca Marazzi

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 2:15 pm and is filed under COP15 - Copenhagen 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.