Countdown from Copenhagen: Summit Renders Unimpressive Agreement as World Leaders Fail to Strike Compromise

Too Much Process, Too Little Substance

Two weeks of bickering over details and procedures meant that the real agreement had to be salvaged over the last couple of days, with the world leaders negotiating the text of the final accord, rather than merely endorsing it. The final text was finally put together by Friday evening (18 December), after a select group of the leaders of the most influential world economies called off an emergency negotiation round, and after a set of private discussions between the U.S. president Barack Obama, and the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, which finally cleared up the issue of how promises to cut emissions would be verified by the international community. Still, when presented to the rest of the 192 states represented at the Copenhagen Summit, the draft accord triggered a spate of anger and resentment both because of its lack of substance and because of the fact that the agreement was reached behind closed doors. It took a rather dramatic effort on behalf of Britain’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband, who managed to salvage the agreement at the last moment, for the Summit to be able to lay the claim that at least some sort of agreement was reached.

Nevertheless, the final drama was certainly not commensurate with the magnitude of the end result, as the so-called Copenhagen Accord produced only a loose agreement, without binding targets for greenhouse emissions cuts as even the 2050 goal for 80% reduction in the emissions of the developed states was dropped on China’s insistence.

What Went Wrong?

One of the major factors undermining Copenhagen was the lack of progress made during the two-year negotiating process laid out in Bali (Indonesia) at the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP-13) for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at end-2007. That reflected the absence of political will on climate change action in a number of necessary participants—and in particular the United States under its previous administration of George W. Bush—and meant that discussions on a raft of thorny and fundamental issues was backloaded to Copenhagen. This then overwhelmed negotiators and left them limited time to come to terms on even the fundamentals in the two weeks available in Denmark, even if inroads were made in some spheres such as the financial architecture for transfers to the developing countries, and indeed funds for fast-track finance from 2010–12.

Part of this reflects the way in which lower carbon policies have evolved in some of the major players, where more proactive and committed administrations have only slotted into place in the last year. This left limited time for policy formulation and, in cases, the process of building domestic consensus on commitments for the 2020 period. As a result, many offers of carbon cuts have only been made in the last few months—including those from the United States, Japan, Indonesia, and South Africa (which then triggered late offers from China and India)—but all came too late in the day and with too little detail to be meaningfully analysed by counterparts. Rather than these commitments then kick-starting a domino of offers of increasing ambition and range, as hoped for by the European Union (EU) and others with high-end targets on the table, this then paved the way for the descent to the lowest common denominator witnessed at Copenhagen and evident in the wafer-thin document now known as the Copenhagen Accord.

Another abiding obstacle in climate change negotiations has been the sheer breadth of issues touched on by this one subject, and, as a result, the vast range of local ministries, authorities, and institutions necessary for co-ordinated action, both at the local and the international level. Even at a high level, the global drive to lower carbon use can be said to touch on everything from economic development, to energy, to transportation, to trade and technology use, to agriculture to industry and manufacturing—all of which complicates policy co-ordination, formulation, and follow-up action. While the developed countries have tried to limit the range of topics covered to an extent with the focus broadly speaking on energy/industry, carbon sinks, and finance, the developing world has sometimes seemed inclined to use these negotiations as a one-time moment for historical redress across a number of areas of imbalance. That has served to further complicate and broaden out the debate in an already complicated and wide-ranging issue, making renewed focus on a few key themes an essential starting point for success in follow-up negotiations next year.

Developed Country Divides

It has also been notable that while the G-77 was relatively united in its position, helped by the fact that it was mainly asking for concessions rather than offering concessions, the developed world has often been at odds with itself, both at the country and block level—and indeed internally. The most outstanding of those divides was the one between the EU) on one side and the United States on the other. The EU pushed for braver action on behalf of the developed countries and even laid out its readiness to adopt a legally binding requirement to decrease its own emissions not by 20%, but by 30% by 2020, granted that other developed countries, most notably the United States, follow up with reciprocal commitments. However, the EU’s call was silenced, both because of the unwillingness of many of the Eastern and Central European member states to commit to an action that they deemed to be too onerous on their fragile economies, and because of President Obama’s constraints back home, as he is still struggling to see the U.S. climate bill clear the Senate. It ought to be noted, however, that the impotence of the Copenhagen Accord should not be blamed entirely on the divides among the developed states, as the unwillingness of counties such as China and India—which although still dubbed as "developing states" are currently the first and the fourth largest emitters of greenhouse gases respectively— to follow up with strong commitment on their own behalf further decreased the incentives for leaders of developing states to take bolder actions.

Outlook and Implications

With 119 global leaders gathered round a table at the end of last week, it is clear that Copenhagen has been a missed opportunity and a disappointment. Nonetheless, it was always just one milestone on the road—rather than a one-off—and that gives some grounds for hope of progress towards targeted emissions levels (and indeed the regulatory certainty sought by companies affected by this) in the three years before the Kyoto Protocol formally lapses at the end of 2012. Despite the persisting disappointment from the missed opportunity, looking at the situation from a more realistic perspective leads to the conclusion that not all is lost, and that while a more convincing deal could have been expected, all signs before the summit itself indicated that the big divides among developing and developed countries would hardly be overcome. After all, it is hard to imagine a worse timing for the discussion of such an elaborate and economically and politically sensitive issue as climate change than now, as the world is still struggling to emerge from the most profound economic crisis in decades.

As yet, UN negotiators have put in a relatively tight timetable to do the best they can to rechannel efforts towards a more ambitious and legally binding accord in the months ahead—albeit with provisions for an agreed deadline removed from the final text. That sees a timetable of 31 January for developed-country emissions pledges and developing-country nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAS) to be finalised before the next meeting in Bonn from 31 May to 11 June, and the previously scheduled COP-16 in Mexico in December 2010—after which time gets extremely short for both countries and companies to put in place meaningful policies for 2013.