After our Copenhagen self-goal

The outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference is so abysmally disproportionate to its two year-long preparation that even prime minister Manmohan Singh had to admit that only “very limited” progress was achieved there. This is a far kinder description than the conference deserves. Its outcome was a disaster—a two-and-a-half page agreement not adopted under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which sets no short- or medium-term goals and no enforceable collective or individual targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What the world desperately needs to prevent dangerous climate change is a peaking of emissions by 2020, premised upon a reduction in the developed north’s emissions by 40-45 per cent by then and 80-90 per cent by 2050, supplemented by strong action by the fast-growing southern countries, in particular BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), to cut emissions below business-as-usual (BAU) trajectories. Only this can produce an even chance of limiting global warming to 2° C, as demanded by the major emitters, or ultimately to 1.5° C by 2100, as urged by more than 100 developing countries. This means limiting atmospheric greenhouse concentrations to 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide-equivalent from 380 ppm at present. Indeed, recent developments in climate science suggest that concentrations must fall to 350 ppm.

What the so-called Copenhagen Accord will deliver is greenhouse concentrations of 700-800 ppm and warming between 2.9° and 4.5° C, probably closer to the higher end. Unless the northern countries improve their reduction offers dramatically—from a miserly 6-14 per cent by 2020 (excluding forestry credits)—climate change will accelerate. BASIC emissions will rise sharply, even with the promised reduction in emissions intensity of GDP (40-45 per cent for China and 20-25 per cent for India). Global emissions will not peak by 2020; nor will they fall—as is necessary—to 42 billion tonnes (bt), from 46 bt in 2008.

The Copenhagen Accord represents an ignominious retreat from the urgent and universal imperative of combating climate change through cooperative global action. Unless the world replaces the accord with an ambitious, effective, legally binding agreement that equitably imposes deep emissions cuts upon the major polluters, the global south’s underprivileged, poor people will suffer untold misery owing to rising sea levels, cyclones, rainfall changes and frequent droughts—leading to more hunger, displacement and disease. This is doubly iniquitous: the primary culprit of climate change is the north. But the accord lets it off the hook.

The accord’s sole positive feature is that it acknowledges the vulnerability of the small island states and pledges $10 billion in annual aid to the south for three years. This amount is puny in relation to the $200-400 billion annually needed by the south as compensation and assistance for mitigation of climate change, adaptation to it and for a transition to low-carbon development. A good deal of the funding will probably be recycled from existing aid and controlled by the north through the World Bank—which is not amenable to democratic multilateral control.

The accord was negotiated in an unaccountable, collusive and underhand manner, involving just 20-odd countries of the 193 represented at Copenhagen. It represents a compact between the world’s biggest present and future emitters to deny or weaken their climate-related obligations. The BASIC four did no favour to their people by collaborating with the US to seal the deal.

India, home to the world’s largest number of poor, has scored a goal against a majority of its population by signing the accord. It deplorably tailed both the US and China. It colluded with China in excising all figures pertaining to the north’s voluntary emissions cuts. The truth is, China and India did not want a legally binding framework, even with substantially weaker obligations. They cynically undermined the unity of the G-77+China group and showed they can be as ruthless as the north, with its colonial past and domineering present, in furthering their elites’ parochial interests while taking cover behind domestic poverty and north-south differentiation of responsibility.

Signatories to the accord have till the end of January to spell out their commitments. But these are not enforceable—unless the accord itself is made legally binding in violation of the UNFCCC. That would only further compound its iniquity. There are two alternative pathways now. Either the accord is pushed as the final climate deal, or its core. Or, it is seen as only a statement of intent, to be further negotiated on the basis of the reports of the two UNFCCC working groups—on the Kyoto Protocol and Long-Term Cooperative Action. These reports contain elements of a good, enforceable deal—minus some hard numbers. The second alternative is evidently preferable.

India can reverse a part of the damage it has caused if it insists on Copenhagen-II—genuine multilateral negotiations for an effective, legally binding agreement with stringent time-bound emissions-reduction targets for the north and deviations from BAU for BASIC four. That should logically be the agenda when BASIC meets later this month.

Mydifitalfc.com