The winding and stony road towards Copenhagen - COP15 Un...
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The winding and stony road towards Copenhagen Denmark got what it came to get at the climate conference in Bali: a roadmap for the work in climate diplomacy leading to the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen. By Connie Hedegaard, Minister for Climate and Energy, Conservative Party
The roadmap has unanimous support, including the EU, USA, India, China, and the developing countries. It clearly defines the building blocks and the framework for the creation of a future global agreement, and avoids any premature closing of doors. There is every reason therefore to be satisfied with the outcome of this year's climate conference in Indonesia. But caution must be exercised not to over-interpret the results of the Bali meeting. Anyone who followed the negotiations will know that right until the last moment, it was by no means certain that a unified decision would result from the meeting. It took two and a half days of virtually non-stop negotiations – interrupted only by the need for a few hours' sleep – before a suitably worded text from the presidency and the climate secretariat stood the test. Diplomatic craft was stretched to the limit, and if not blood then plenty of sweat and tears flowed in the climate conference's plenary hall, before the text was finalised. Even agreeing on the path towards Copenhagen came close to overturning the cart, before anyone had mentioned binding greenhouse gas reduction targets for individual countries. As the host for the 2009 climate conference, it has given Denmark something extra to mull over. The road to Copenhagen is no freeway. It is a winding path strewn with stones, and if one closely studies the roadmap from Bali, it can be seen that some of the stones are boulder-sized. The discussions that ignited in Bali will continue to blaze in the coming years. Although agreement was achieved at the eleventh hour on the Bali roadmap, it does not mean that all UN members now agree the shape of a possible agreement in 2009. Far from it. Bali also revealed another factor that I think could well play a vital role, namely that the political price for obstructing global agreement has increased significantly. Even when certain countries, towards the end of the meeting, were opposing a shared decision, it was not expressed as direct opposition but rather that countries ”did not prefer” the proposed text. It is becoming increasingly difficult to be a country which obstructs a shared solution and so holds the responsibility for a breakdown. That political pressure has come in part from EU efforts. The EU countries can be proud of the efforts made during the Bali conference. They consistently maintained the pressure and took the lead in achieving as ambitious a text as possible out of the meeting. And in the last vital days, it was a small, close-knit band of EU ministers who strove to secure the level of the agreement. The other vital source of political pressure is those conclusions science has put on the table via the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which this year has provided compelling scientific evidence of global warming and the necessity of urgent and comprehensive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It is thus of great importance that the agreement text actually refers to the IPCC reports, which show the greenhouse gas reductions that are necessary if the world is to avoid the human and economic consequences of climate change becoming too great. Denmark and the EU would have liked to see the final text more clearly stating that greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries should be reduced by 25-40 per cent by 2020, but taking the critical nature of the negotiations into account, the EU can be satisfied with how the text has turned out. As an aside, it should be mentioned that agreement was in fact achieved among the industrial countries on this being the operative range for future discussions on reduction obligations. Now two years of concerted effort begins. A lot of leg-work can be done in advance. But the December days in Copenhagen in 2009 will be the decisive period. I can already predict that it will be a political thriller on an international scale, and that right until the very end it will not be known whether a future agreement can be reached. Perhaps the very last minutes will decide whether the world joins in a shared agreement or not. It has been clear from the start that Denmark has taken on a major task in hosting the climate conference in 2009. But after the Bali conference the message is clear: we must prepare ourselves for a task that could be even greater than we expected. There is no guarantee of success. Edited April 1, 2008
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The winding and stony road towards Copenhagen - COP15 Un...
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12/2/09 1:50 PM