Anandi Sharan: Prospects for the Copenhagen Conference – Just 12 days to go

By Anandi Sharan

New technology interventions to create and reinforce sustainable systems, new ownership patterns to make community ownership of natural resources legally enforceable, natural resource conservation done by communities overruling government and oligopolies, equal rights for all species…. It was never going to be easy to deliver on the Rio earth summit treaties.

The climate convention was especially treacherous, because no one wanted it in the first place: we wanted an energy convention which would create national quotas of fossil fuel use, not a climate convention where we had nothing to say at all because WE DID NOT CAUSE THE PROBLEM. But that would have meant …well, equity, and that has been the sticking point all along.

The only way the UNFCCC process has been kept going for 18 years has been by nearly succumbing and then at the last minute always sidelining the USA. And indeed this is going to be the determining factor in Copenhagen too. The USA forced us all to adopt a Bali Action Plan (BAP) in 2007 which was, according to America, a plan for laying down targets and time tables for everyone.

This was an interpretation of the BAP which no one else – except perhaps Canada – went along with though, because enshrined in the text of the Convention agreed 15 years previously is the principle of “common and differentiated responsibility”, i.e. equity. Annex 1 countries, including the USA, are supposed under the Convention to reduce emissions, but developing countries are supposed to reduce emissions only provided the Annex 1countries pay us.

Today we are hostage to American senators who are in the pay of – well, of the companies and institutions that defend the American Way of Life. Democracy in America is not suited to the politics of the twenty first century, but sadly Obama has not acted on this simple truth which he no doubt knows himself too. He could have decided to forget about Congress and put through new rules under the American Clean Air Act, bolstered by the endangerment finding of the courts that greenhouse gases are damaging to human health.

But he did not, boasting in deeds if not words that he would have enough political charisma to push through an Act, and that rules are cowardly whilst Acts are glorious. Now he has neither, and is revealed as a miserable coward.

The campaign in the next 12 days has to be to write to Prime Ministers, Presidents and Kings and Queens attending the fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention at Copenhagen – the CoP15 and CoP/MoP5 - , asking them to boycott America. The way to do this is to rush through for purely procedural reasons a meaningless 1 page document at the main Conference of the Parties – the CoP15, and then move on to the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol – the CoP/MoP5.

All the signatories of the Kyoto Protocol want to continue with its arrangements and want a second commitment period with legally binding arrangements. The Kyoto Protocol is a decent enough set of rules for ensuring polluters reduce emissions and act on their financial commitments to us by paying us to switch to renewable energy. The deeper the QELROs accepted by the developed countries - the quantified emissions limitation and reduction obligations, the greater the incentive to buy carbon credits from us, the block of G77China who DID NOT CAUSE THE PROBLEM, but are willing to do as much as possible about it provided we are paid to do it. Buying carbon credits is the financial mechanism we need. In an ideal world the rich would thus say, right, we cut by 200 % against 1990 levels by 2020. and

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The campaign in the next 12 days has to be to write to Prime Ministers, Presidents and Kings and Queens ... asking them to boycott America.

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This means they cut 100% at home, and another 100% by paying us to install renewable energy systems in the billions so that everyone is the world has clean electricity and no one needs to use coal or non-renewable biomass anymore. In this way we would have an energy convention of sorts after all and climate change may just be slowed down or even reversed. But at the moment it is unlikely we can all agree on 200% cuts for Annex 1 countries against 1990 by 2020 at the CoP/MoP5. But Annex 1 could just agree to let’s say 90% cuts by 2020 - 45% to be done as domestic cuts and 45% to be achieved by paying us to do CDM projects.

The point is, the EU-27, and most of the other Annex 1 countries except the USA, and of course G77 and China, have experience of cooperating and want to go on with the Kyoto Protocol - except Canada - having had five years of the Kyoto Protocol arrangements, and having learnt a lot together. America is unwilling to catch up, unwilling to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and unwilling to make deep cuts – Obama is going to commit to 4% cuts against 1990 levels by 2020, thus dragging down other developed countries on what China calls “a race to the bottom” – but only nearly.

We must write to our leaders and tell them to finish the CoP15 in one day flat, and avoid American filibustering, thereby freeing up the next ten days of negotiations for the CoP/MoP5 - the forum that can deliver real results.

P.S. Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner of the European Union, called on the trade bloc on Monday to pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent from 1990 levels to demonstrate leadership. 45% domestically and 45% through CDM would be better. We are on track to use up the entire 1000 Gt CO2e budget for this century before the next commitment period ends in 2020 unless we cut emissions by 8% annually globally.