Fidelis E Satriastanti, Jakarta Globe 20 Dec 09;
In the aftermath of the United Nations climate conference, at least one local environmentalist agreed with many of his colleagues around the world that without the creation of a legally binding treaty, the Copenhagen talks were generally a failure.
Fitrian Ardiansyah, program director for climate and energy at the World Wide Fund for Nature-Indonesia, said the lack of transparency, an unclear set of procedures and the lack of leadership ultimately doomed the summit.
“The conference did deliver on an outcome, yes. But whether the Copenhagen Accord will be able to reverse the dangerous effects of climate change, it’s still considered weak,” Fitrian said.
The accord includes an agreement on climate fund contributions by developed countries and a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius — well short of the demands of island nations. Experts also considered the articles enumerated in the accord to be unclear.
Fitrian agreed, saying that overall, the deal hammered out in Denmark left much to be desired.
“While the pledge [to limit carbon emissions] is well meant, there is still a long way to go toward forming a legally-binding treaty,” he said. “Many people want to protect our planet from the dangers of climate change, but such an endeavor entails the efforts of both rich and poor countries.”
Greenpeace International slammed world leaders for claiming they had reached a deal.
“Rather than coming together to secure the future of hundreds of millions of people and agreeing to a historic deal to avert a climate crisis, the leaders of the world’s most powerful countries have betrayed the current generation and future generations as well,” said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International
“The world is facing a tragic crisis in leadership. Averting the climate chaos has just gotten a lot harder,” he said.
Naidoo also criticized those who called the Copenhagen Accord a positive development, saying that it in fact was a step backward.
“It does not contain any strong measures for emission reduction in developed countries,” Naidoo said. “It is a major concession to industries that are polluting [the environment], especially in the fossil-fuel sector, which lobbied hard to undermine a [legally-binding treaty] and now has the license to continue to pollute.”
Greenpeace called the Copenhagen summit a missed opportunity.
“The world has to resume negotiations next year. It needs to get back on track from Bali [to Copenhagen] to Mexico, where a fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement must be adopted to avert the catastrophic effects of climate change,” Naidoo said.
Fitrian said the Indonesian government could also play a critical role in showing that it was committed to negotiating a stronger accord in the future.
