Richard Ingham Yahoo News 19 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN (AFP) – A UN climate summit Saturday rammed through a battle plan against global warming forged by US President Barack Obama and other top leaders, sidelining smaller states which lashed the deal as betrayal.
After toxic exchanges, the conference chair forced through a deal using an unusual procedural tool that effectively dropped all obstacles to the new-born Copenhagen Accord.
UN chief General Ban Ki-moon admitted the agreement had failed to win global consensus and would disappoint many who demanded stronger action against climate change but voiced relief it had not been strangled at birth.
"Many will say that it lacks ambition," Ban said. "Nonetheless, you have achieved much."
Obama earlier called the political accord an "unprecedented breakthrough" after meetings with about two dozen presidents and prime ministers in Copenhagen.
Related article: Climate scientists underwhelmed
The agreement was assembled in a frenzied game of climate poker among the leaders of the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa and major European countries. The group had been chosen by conference chair Denmark after it became clear the summit was in danger of catastrophic failure.
But the deal was savaged when it was put to a full session of the 194-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Half a dozen developing countries led the charge, blasting the document as a cosy backdoor deal that violated UN democracy, excluded the poor and doomed the world to disastrous climate change.
"It looks like we are being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our people and our future," said Ian Fry of Tuvalu, a tiny Pacific island whose very existence is threatened by rising seas.
The draft is intended to be the kernel of a strategy to slash the fossil-fuel emissions that trap the Sun's heat and are warming Earth's surface, slowly but ruthlessly damaging our weather systems.
It set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), but did not spell out the important stepping stones -- global emissions targets for 2020 or 2050 -- for getting there.
It did not identify a year by which emissions should peak, a demand made by rich countries that was fiercely opposed by China. And, under it, pledges are voluntary and free from tough compliance provisions to ensure they are honoured.
Related article: Climate leaders: The rhetoric vs. the reality
China had bristled at anything called "verification" of its plan to cut the intensity of its carbon emissions, seeing it as an infringement of sovereignty and saying rich nations bore primary responsibility for global warming.
The deal was more detailed on how poor countries should be financially aided to shore up their defences against rising seas, droughts, floods and storms.
Rich countries pledged 30 billion dollars in "fast-track" finance for the 2010-2012 period, including 11 billion from Japan, 10.6 billion from the European Union and 3.6 billion dollars from the United States.
They set an ambitious goal of "jointly mobilising" 100 billion dollars by 2020.
But to make the "fast-track" funds operational, the accord needed plenary approval. Countries were invited to sign up to the deal.
More than 130 leaders attended the outcome, "the biggest meeting of heads of state and government in the history of the United Nations and possibly in history," said UNFCCC Information Officer John Hay.
The goal is to complete a signable treaty in Mexico City in December 2010 and have it take effect from 2013, after the current roster of pledges under the UN's Kyoto Protocol expire.
The outcome in Copenhagen will deliver a boost to Obama's efforts to secure legislation in the US Congress that would set his country on a path to lower emissions by around 17 percent by 2020 over a 2005 benchmark.
He described the deal as a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough."
The Copenhagen Accord was met with dismay by campaigners, who said it was weak, non-binding and sold out the poor.
"Well-meant but half-hearted pledges to protect our planet from dangerous climate change are simply not sufficient to address a crisis that calls for completely new ways of collaboration across rich and poor countries," said Kim Carstensen, leader of WWF?s Global Climate Initiative.
Climate scientists also warned that the deal fell perilously short of what is needed to stave off catastrophe.
"From the evidence of the last two weeks, I would say we have a heck of a long way still to go if, as a species, we are to avoid the fate that usually afflicts populations that outgrow their resources," said Andrew Watson, a professor at the University of East Anglia in Britain.
Climate talks end with eye on next year
Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press Yahoo News 19 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN – A historic U.N. climate conference ended Saturday with only a nonbinding "Copenhagen Accord" to show for two weeks of debate and frustration. It was a deal short on concrete steps against global warming, but signaling a new start for rich-poor cooperation on climate change.
The agreement brokered by President Barack Obama with China and others in fast-paced hours of diplomacy on Friday sets up the first significant program of climate aid to poorer nations. But although it urges deeper cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming, it does nothing to demand them. That will now be subject to continuing talks next year.
As delegates wrapped up an exhausting overnight negotiating marathon Saturday afternoon, to end the 193-nation conference, U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer assessed the results for reporters.
It's "an impressive accord," he said of the three-page document. "But it's not an accord that is legally binding, not an accord that pins down industrialized countries to targets."
A legally binding international agreement — a treaty — requiring further emissions cuts by richer nations was the goal in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 when the annual U.N. conference set a two-year timetable leading to Copenhagen.
A new pact would succeed the first phase of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, whose relatively modest emissions cuts by 37 nations expire in 2012. It was hoped a new regime would encompass the U.S., which rejected Kyoto.
But the hopes for Copenhagen faded as 2009 wore on and the first U.S. legislation to cap carbon emissions worked its way only slowly through Congress. Without a U.S. commitment, others were wary of submitting to a new legally binding deal.
Big polluters, nonetheless, submitted plans for reductions ahead of the U.N. talks.
The European Union has committed to cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels; Japan to 25 percent, if others take similar steps, and the U.S. provisionally to a weak 3 to 4 percent.
For the first time, China also offered to rein in its greenhouse gas output, pledging to reduce its "carbon intensity" — that is, its use of fossil fuels per unit of economic output — by 40 to 45 percent. India, Brazil and South Africa followed suit with their own voluntary targets.
But scientists say that's too small a rollback in gases from fossil-fuel burning, emissions that have increased an average of 2 to 3 percent a year in the past decade.
Some U.S. experts are predicting a big enough rise in temperatures to lead to serious damage from coastal flooding, droughts, species die-offs and other impacts of climate change.
The U.N. climate summit this past week in the snowy Danish capital brought more than 110 leaders. The Copenhagen Accord emerged principally from Obama's meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and the leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa.
The compromise document indicated richer and poorer nations are ready for closer cooperation on climate. Its key elements, with no legal obligation, were:
_Nations agreed to cooperate in reducing emissions, "with a view" to scientists' warnings to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) above preindustrial levels.
_Developing nations will report every two years on their voluntary actions to reduce emissions. Those reports would be subject to "international consultations and analysis" — a concession to the U.S. by China, which had seen this as an intrusion on its sovereignty.
_Richer nations will finance a $10 billion-a-year, three-year program to fund poorer nations' projects to deal with drought and other climate-change impacts, and to develop clean energy.
_They also set a "goal" of mobilizing $100 billion-a-year by 2020 for the same adaptation and mitigation purposes.
In a U.S. concession to China and other developing nations, text was dropped from the declaration that would have set a goal of reducing global emissions by 50 percent by 2050. Developing nations thought that would hamper efforts to raise their people from poverty.
In a news conference here Friday, Obama deflected criticism that Copenhagen had failed to achieve a strong agreement. If the world waited to reach a binding deal, "then we wouldn't make any progress," he said, warning that could produce "such frustration and cynicism that rather than taking one step forward, we ended up taking two steps back."
Environmentalists and a handful of developing countries were unconvinced.
"The deal is a triumph of spin over substance. It recognizes the need to keep warming below 2 degrees but does not commit to do so. It kicks back the big decisions on emissions cuts," said Jeremy Hobbs of Oxfam International, a group that works with developing countries.
The full U.N. conference, in its long overnight session that finally ended Saturday, approved by consensus a compromise decision to "take note" of the accord, instead of formally approving it.
"We have a deal in Copenhagen," said a visibly relieved U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has made climate change his No. 1 priority. He said "this is just the beginning" of a process to craft a binding pact on emissions.
The next deadline for a treaty will be the 2010 U.N. climate conference in Mexico City.
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EDITOR'S NOTE — Associated Press writers John Heilprin, Seth Borenstein, Michael Casey, Arthur Max and Karl Ritter contributed to this report
U.N. climate talks end with bare minimum agreement
Dominic Evans and Alister Doyle Reuters 19 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - U.N. climate talks ended with a bare-minimum agreement on Saturday when delegates "noted" an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that falls far short of the conference's original goals.
"Finally we sealed a deal," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. "The 'Copenhagen Accord' may not be everything everyone had hoped for, but this ... is an important beginning."
A long road lies ahead. The accord -- weaker than a legally binding treaty and weaker even than the 'political' deal many had foreseen -- left much to the imagination.
It set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times -- seen as a threshold for dangerous changes such as more floods, droughts, mudslides, sandstorms and rising seas. But it failed to say how this would be achieved.
It held out the prospect of $100 billion in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations but did not specify precisely where this money would come from. And it pushed decisions on core issues such as emissions cuts into the future.
"This basically is a letter of intent ... the ingredients of an architecture that can respond to the long-term challenge of climate change, but not in precise legal terms. That means we have a lot of work to do on the long road to Mexico," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.
Another round of climate talks is scheduled for November 2010 in Mexico. Negotiators are hoping to nail down then what they failed to achieve in Copenhagen -- a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. But there are no guarantees.
NON-BINDING ACCORD
A plenary session of the marathon 193-nation talks in the Danish capital merely "took note" of the new accord, a non-binding deal for combating global warming finalized by U.S. President Barack Obama, China, India, Brazil and South Africa.
Work on the pact had begun in a meeting of 28 leaders, ministers and officials, including EU countries and small island nations most vulnerable to climate change.
The European Union, which has set itself ambitious emissions cuts targets and encouraged others to follow suit, only reluctantly accepted the weak deal that finally emerged.
"The decision has been very difficult for me. We have done one step, we have hoped for several more," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In the final hours of the talks, which began on December 7 and ended early on Saturday afternoon, delegates agreed to set a deadline to conclude a U.N. treaty by the end of 2010.
At stake was a deal to fight global warming and promote a cleaner world economy less dependent on fossil fuels.
The accord explicitly recognized a "scientific view" that the world should limit warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius -- although the promised emissions cuts were far short of the amount needed to reach that goal.
"We have a big job ahead to avoid climate change through effective emissions reduction targets, and this was not done here," said Brazil's climate change ambassador, Sergio Serra.
A final breakthrough came after U.S. President Barack Obama brokered a final deal with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and leaders of India, South Africa and Brazil that they stand behind their commitments to curb growth in greenhouse gases.
Obama said the "extremely difficult and complex" talks laid the foundation for international action in the years to come.
"For the first time in history, all of the world's major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action on the threat of climate change," Obama said at the White House on Saturday after returning from Copenhagen.
The outcome underscored shortcomings in the chaotic U.N. process and may pass the initiative in forming world climate policy to the United States and China, the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases.
STORMY
In a stormy overnight session, the talks came to the brink of collapse after Sudan, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia lined up to denounce the U.S. and China-led plan, after heads of state and government had flown home.
Sources close to the talks told Reuters the Danish hosts and U.N. lawyers had not obtained formal backing from the conference for a smaller group of leaders and ministers to agree a final text, leading to chaos when this was finally presented to a plenary meeting of all 193 countries.
U.N. talks are meant to be concluded by unanimity. Under a compromise to avoid collapse, the deal listed the countries that were in favor of the deal and those against.
An all-night plenary session, chaired by Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, hit a low point when a Sudanese delegate said the plan in Africa would be like the Holocaust.
The document "is a solution based on the same very values, in our opinion, that channeled six million people in Europe into furnaces," said Sudan's Lumumba Stanislaus Di-aping.
"The reference to the Holocaust is, in this context, absolutely despicable," said Anders Turesson, chief negotiator of Sweden.
The conference finally merely "took note" of the new accord.
This gives it the same legal status as if it had been accepted, senior United Nations official Robert Orr said. But it is far from a full endorsement, and it was also condemned by many environmental groups as showing a failure of leadership.
(With reporting by Gerard Wynn, Anna Ringstrom, John Acher, Anna Ringstrom, Richard Cowan, David Fogarty, Pete Harrison, Emma Graham-Harrison and Alister Bull in Washington; Writing by Gerard Wynn and Alister Doyle; editing by Dominic Evans and Janet McBride)
UN says Copenhagen deal 'a start'
BBC News 19 Dec 09;
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has welcomed a US-backed climate deal in Copenhagen as an "essential beginning".
But he said the accord, reached with key nations including China and Brazil, must be made legally binding next year.
After intense wrangling, delegates passed a motion simply taking note of the deal, without formally adopting it.
The pact did not win unanimous support, amid outrage from some developing nations who said it lacked specific targets for reducing carbon emissions.
The accord includes a recognition to limit temperature rises to less than 2C and promises to deliver $30bn (£18.5bn) of aid for developing nations over the next three years.
It outlines a goal of providing $100bn a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with the impacts of climate change.
The agreement also includes a method for verifying industrialised nations' reduction of emissions. The US had insisted that China dropped its resistance to this measure.
But the BBC's environment correspondent Richard Black says the Copenhagen Accord looks unlikely to contain temperature rises to within the 2C (3.6F) threshold that UN scientists say is needed to avert serious climate change.
US President Barack Obama described negotiations as "extremely difficult and complex", but said they had laid "the foundation for international action in the years to come".
"This progress did not come easily, and we know that progress on this particular aspect of climate change negotiations is not enough," he added.
'Toothless failure'
Several South American countries, such as Nicaragua and Venezuela, were among a group saying the agreement had not been reached through proper process.
After an all-night negotiating marathon, the 193-nation two-week conference ended at 1426 GMT on Saturday.
"The conference decides to take note of the Copenhagen Accord of December 18, 2009," the chairman of the plenary session of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) declared earlier in the day, swiftly banging down his gavel.
Environmental campaigners and aid agencies branded the deal toothless and a failure.
Robert Bailey, of Oxfam International, said: "It is too late to save the summit, but it's not too late to save the planet and its people."
Mr Ban told journalists: "It may not be everything we hoped for, but this decision of the Conference of Parties is an essential beginning."
The Copenhagen Accord is based on a proposal tabled on Friday by a US-led group of five nations - including China, India, Brazil and South Africa.
The UK's Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said it was very important that the adoption of the accord would allow the flow of money to begin.
But, he said: "We recognise there could have been more ambition in parts of this agreement. Therefore we have got to drive forward as hard as we can towards both a legally binding treaty and that ambition."
Delegates had battled through the night to prevent the talks ending without clinching an agreement.
The deal was lambasted by some developing nations when it was put to a full session of the UNFCCC.
The main opposition came from the ALBA bloc of Latin American countries to which Nicaragua and Venezuela belong, along with Cuba, Ecuador and Bolivia.
Venezuelan delegate Claudia Salerno Caldera said the deal was a "coup d'etat against the authority of the United Nations".
Climate 'holocaust'
Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese negotiator, said the accord spelled "incineration" for Africa and compared it to the Nazis sending "6 million people into furnaces" in the Holocaust.
But the African Union backed the deal and his statement was denounced by other delegations.
In a further twist, says BBC environment reporter Matt McGrath, there is to be a list of those countries in favour and against on the front of the final document, with some experts suggesting money will only flow to those who say yes.
During the summit, small island nations and vulnerable coastal countries had demanded a binding deal to limit emissions to a level preventing temperatures rises above 1.5C (2.7F) over pre-industrial levels.
SCENARIOS: U.N. talks descend into chaos; possible exits
Reuters 19 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - U.N. climate talks descended into chaos on Saturday after some developing nations rejected a plan for fighting global warming championed by U.S. President Barack Obama.
Saturday had been intended as a day celebrating a new U.N. accord after two years of negotiations culminated in a summit on Friday but, after a stormy all-night session, the 193-nation meeting was at risk of unraveling.
Some delegates said it risked becoming like the stalled Doha round on world trade talks. One Saudi delegate said it was without doubt "the worst plenary I have ever attended."
Developing nations including Venezuela and Tuvalu said they could not accept a text originally agreed by the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa as the blueprint of a wider U.N. plan to fight climate change.
They said the plan was worked out without their approval and that its goals of limiting global warming to a 2 Celsius temperature rise, alongside a $100 billion a year in aid from 2020, were inadequate.
The embarrassing deadlock casts a shadow over a U.N. process that demands unanimity to get decisions made and has to reconcile the radically different climate policies of OPEC oil exporters, worried about a shift to renewable energy, or tropical island states who fear rising sea levels.
Tempers flared during the session, held after most of 120 visiting world leaders had left. A Sudanese delegate even compared developed nations' policies to the Holocaust, saying global warming was killing people in Africa.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen suspended the session after daybreak to consult lawyers on a possible way out. Options include:
1) Opponents of the plan back down and allow the deal to pass -- there is no formal vote but each state has an effective veto by objecting. This looks unlikely because several states have so vehemently opposed the accord.
British Environment Minister Ed Miliband, however, warned delegates that the plan would have to be endorsed to unlock funds outlined in the deal, including $30 billion in quick-start aid from 2010-12, rising to $100 billion a year from 2020.
2) The plan is downgraded to a "miscellaneous document" -- with less legal weight than the planned "Copenhagen Accord." That might still let its backers go ahead with the plan, but would limit their ability to control targets such as limiting a rise in world temperatures to 2 Celsius over pre-industrial times.
Apart from the original five nations supporting the scheme, European Union states, Japan and groups representing small island states, least developed nations and African countries spoke in favor of the plan during the overnight session.
3) In case of deadlock, the meeting could simply be adjourned without a decision and delegates agree to meet again sometime in 2010. That would leave the U.N. process largely rudderless because some other decisions due in Copenhagen are meant to guide the process.
