Copenhagen Accord Limps On with Clock Still Running

Accord Limps On

After the hullaballoo surrounding the climate meeting in Denmark last December, observers could be forgiven for missing the first significant deadline after the resulting Copenhagen accord, where states were meant to come up with final offers for their contribution to global emissions cuts post 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.

Early indications from the UN are for a restatement of all the major pledges offered prior to Copenhagen. However, the actual process of submitting offers by the agreed timeframe has in itself improved the standing and legitimacy of the so-called Accord, which was a last-minute effort to retrieve a phoenix from the ashes of global discord (see World: 21 December 2009: Countdown from Copenhagen: Summit Renders Unimpressive Agreement as World Leaders Fail to Strike Compromise).

Reports on submissions are incomplete so far, but suggest a restatement of low-end positions from those who had offered a range, including the European Union (EU) at 20%, after East European countries and Italy blocked a move to the higher 30% position offered at the high end. The United States has offered a 17% cut by 2020 on a 2005 base, while Japan has continued with its 25% reduction offer on a 1990 base, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, given that the offer was contingent on similar pledges from others. From the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China), non-binding promises of a reduction in carbon intensity of the order 40–45% from China, 20–25% from India and reductions of 34% and 36.1% on business-as-usual levels by South Africa and Brazil, respectively, all for the 2020 period. Other countries have reportedly put forward plans in order to be considered within the framework of the accord.

As yet, there are no indications on what will be done to channel funds to developing countries—perhaps one of the unsung successes of the Copenhagen meeting, which saw a US$30-billion fast-track fund approved for the 2010–12 period. Beyond that timeframe, the finance issue also enters into uncertainty, with some pledges, and an agreement on a UN-run fund to manage a significant part of funding, but no fixed details on contributors or recipients or terms for transfers. The lack of agreement is likely to give a fillip to existing Kyoto-era mechanisms, including the Clean Development Fund, although even this is not fully clear as yet.

Outlook and Implications

Understandably, the hopes for a global binding agreement have been damaged by the failure to compromise at Copenhagen, when over 100 leaders were in attendance at the talks, raising hopes of a historic breakthrough on the issue. In the aftermath, there is a sense of lost impetus and fracture, which some observers feel has put the emphasis back on local and regional action, rather than top-down responses to the threat of rising temperatures.