Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text' leak

Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol

• Read the 'Danish text'
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 8 Dec 09;

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as "the circle of commitment" – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.

The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol's principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.

The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as "a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks".

A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text. In particular, it is understood to:

• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;

• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called "the most vulnerable";

• Weaken the UN's role in handling climate finance;

• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

Developing countries that have seen the text are understood to be furious that it is being promoted by rich countries without their knowledge and without discussion in the negotiations.

"It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process," said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.

Antonio Hill, climate policy adviser for Oxfam International, said: "This is only a draft but it highlights the risk that when the big countries come together, the small ones get hurting. On every count the emission cuts need to be scaled up. It allows too many loopholes and does not suggest anything like the 40% cuts that science is saying is needed."

Hill continued: "It proposes a green fund to be run by a board but the big risk is that it will run by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility [a partnership of 10 agencies including the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme] and not the UN. That would be a step backwards, and it tries to put constraints on developing countries when none were negotiated in earlier UN climate talks."

The text was intended by Denmark and rich countries to be a working framework, which would be adapted by countries over the next week. It is particularly inflammatory because it sidelines the UN negotiating process and suggests that rich countries are desperate for world leaders to have a text to work from when they arrive next week.

Few numbers or figures are included in the text because these would be filled in later by world leaders. However, it seeks to hold temperature rises to 2C and mentions the sum of $10bn a year to help poor countries adapt to climate change from 2012-15.

Draft text divides climate summit
Richard Black, BBC News 8 Dec 09;

Documents leaked at the UN climate summit reveal divisions between industrialised and developing countries over the shape of a possible new deal.

Campaigners say a draft text proposed by the Danish host government would disadvantage poorer nations.

It also sees everything coming under a single new deal, whereas an alternative text from developing countries wants an extension to the Kyoto Protocol.

Other blocs are expected to release their own texts in the next few days.

Chairmen of working groups will then have to turn the various documents into a political document that 100-odd world leaders, plus delegates representing all other nations, could sign at the end of the conference.

The Danish document, plus the alternative text submitted by the BASIC group (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) were discussed by a small group of key countries in Copenhagen last week.

But the Danish proposal had remained under wraps until The Guardian newspaper published it on its website during the second afternoon of the conference.

More ambition

The documents show that at the broadest level, developed and developing worlds are split on several points:

* the level of cuts from developed countries
* the establishment of a target date by which global emissions should peak and begin to fall
* most fundamentally, the shape of any future deal.

The BASIC draft sees emission reductions from developed countries coming under the Kyoto Protocol, whereas the Danish draft envisages all measures coming under a single new agreement.

Although this might appear a technical point, developing countries have so far remained adamant on the retention of the protocol because of the measures it contains on financial assistance and technology transfer, and because it is the only legally binding treaty in existence that makes countries reduce emissions.

The Danish text sets out a vision of greenhouse gas emissions peaking globally by 2020, then declining.

It specifies a 50% emissions cut globally (from 1990 levels) by 2050. Most industrialised nations have already pledged an 80% cut in their own emissions.

According to some calculations, those figures, when combined with projected population growth in the developing world, mean that per-capita emissions in developing countries will remain below those in the west, "locking in" inequality.

Oxfam's Antonio Hill said industrialised nations had to offer bigger cuts than are currently on the table.

"The targets need to rise in ambition and in line with what the science says," he told BBC News.

"We think that at least 40% (from 1990 levels by 2020) is needed; and even that is not enough to produce equity."

However, Mr Hill suggested that measures on transferring finance from industrialised to developing countries - to help them curb their emissions and help them protect against the impacts of climate change - were "quite good".

Impossible dream?

Other observers, such as Sol Oyuela from the development agency CAFOD, were more damning.

"The document should not even exist," she said.

"There is a UN legal process which is the official negotiating text; there is no need for any other texts.

"To be working on a rival text is a kick in the teeth to the UN process that has been negotiated for so long."

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate convention, also said the document had no formal weight within the negotiations.

"This was an informal paper ahead of the conference given to a number of people for the purposes of consultations," he said.

"The only formal texts in the UN process are the ones tabled by the Chairs of this Copenhagen conference at the behest of the parties."

The UK government dissociated itself from the text.

"At this stage in the negotiation there's inevitably all sorts of texts doing the rounds and more will no doubt appear over the next 10 days," said a spokesman for the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

"The UK is continuing to strive for the most ambitious deal possible, as the prime minister has made clear again today."

Gordon Brown declared earlier that he would favour the EU moving from its current 20% target to 30%, which governments have agreed to do if there is a global deal here.

Over the next few days, small island states, least developed countries, the African bloc and the overall G77/China grouping are expected to present their own texts.

The small island states are expected to demand a legally binding outcome from Copenhagen, which many insiders say is impossible.

G77 says Danish climate text 'threatens success' of UN talks
Richard Ingham And Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 9 Dec 09;

COPENHAGEN (AFP) – A Danish draft proposal for a political agreement "threatens the success" of UN climate talks in Copenhagen, the head of the G77 group of countries said Tuesday at the summit aimed at sealing a historic deal on cutting carbon emissions.

The text, which has not been officially released, is a "serious violation that threatens the success of the Copenhagen negotiating process," said Sudan's Lumumba Stanislas Dia Ping, who heads the G77 group.

"The G77 members will not walk out of this negotiation at this late hour because we can't afford a failure in Copenhagen," he told journalists.

"However, we will not sign an unequitable deal. We can't accept a deal that condemns 80 percent of the world population to further suffering and injustice," he added.

The proposal text, called a "draft political agreement", created an uproar on the second day of the December 7-18 talks when an early draft dated November 27 circulated informally.

Earlier, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he expected the summit to produce a deal on cutting carbon emissions as scientists reported that the first decade of the 21st century had bust records for global warming.

"I am encouraged and I am optimistic," Ban said, reflecting the weight of expectation resting on the 12-day negotiations.

"I expect a robust agreement in Copenhagen that will be effective immediately and include specific recommendations."

Prospects of a breakthrough were bolstered late Monday when the United States declared it would start to regulate carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, as a dangerous pollutant.

But the cost of failure in the Danish capital was highlighted when the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the Noughties were shaping up to be the hottest since records began.

"The decade 2000-2009 is very likely to be the warmest on record, warmer than the 1990s, which were in turn warmer than the 1980s," Michel Jarraud, the WMO's secretary general, told a press conference.

Jarraud also said the year 2009 would probably rank as the fifth warmest since accurate records began in 1850.

The December 7-18 talks, under the banner of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), are the boldest attempt in a 17-year odyssey to turn back the threat of climate change through consensus.

If all goes well, the conference will yield an outline agreement that sets down pledges by major emitters of greenhouse gases to curb pollution.

It will also set down principles of long-term financing to help wean poor countries off high-carbon technology and beef up their defences against climate change.

Rich countries are under pressure to kick in 10 billion dollars a year in "fast-track" funding from 2010 to 2012.

Further negotiations would be needed over the next year to flesh out the agreement. Once ratified, the accord would take effect from 2013.

Delegates said the next few days would see countries lay out their positions before some 110 world leaders -- including US President Barack Obama, Premier Wen Jiabao of China and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- arrive for the climax.

Two years of talks have taken place in the run-up to Copenhagen, exposing deep rifts on emissions burden-sharing.

Reducing greenhouse gases carries an economic cost in energy efficiency and in shifting away from the oil, gas and coal, the cheap and plentiful "fossil fuels" that are the mainstay of the world's power.

Developing countries, several of which are already big polluters, are refusing to budge unless rich nations slash their emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 over 1990.

Among advanced economies, eyes have turned to the United States, which remained on the sidelines of the climate arena under George W. Bush.

Obama is now bulldozing away Bush's policies and is steering legislation through Congress that would cut US emissions by four percent by 2020 compared to the 1990 benchmark -- albeit still a fraction of what the EU is demanding.

Danish climate text should be regarded as diversion:WWF
WWF 8 Dec 09;

Copenhagen, Denmark - A leaked draft Copenhagen climate agreement prepared by the Danish hosts of the summit should be regarded "as a distraction" from the negotiations which should focus on texts that have been worked up in previous negotiating sessions, WWF said yesterday.

The Guardian newspaper, which published the document and sighted a confidential developing country analysis of it, said the text was a departure from the Kyoto protocol which weakened the pre-eminent role of the UN negotiations.

“The behind the scenes negotiations tactics under the Danish Presidency, have been focusing on pleasing the rich and powerful countries rather than serving the majority of states who are demanding a fair and ambitious solution,” said Kim Carstensen, leader of WWF's Global Climate Initiative.

“The Danish Prime Minister´s proposed text is weak and reflects a too elitist, selective and non-transparent approach by the Danish presidency.”

The Guardian said it was believed the UK and US were involved with Denmark in drawing up the text. WWF has been critical of the Danish Prime Minister for talking down what can be achieved in the Copenhagen talks in recent weeks, and has tracked the growing criticism from both emerging economies and states highly vulnerable to climate change impacts.

“We understand and share the frustration of the poor and vulnerable countries," Carstensen said. "We urge the Danish presidency to change its style and move to a cooperative and listening mode.

"We also believe this was one of the political signals sent by COP President Connie Hedegaard in her opening statement yesterday.”

Carstensen said the draft appeared to go in a contrarz direction to months of intense negotiations on text over more than a year.

“Focus on the Danish text right now is a distraction from the negotiations that have just resumed for their final phase in Copenhagen," he said. "Talks must focus on the text that has so far been negotiated and not on new texts that are being negotiated in small groups.”