Copenhagen climate talks

Better than nothing

Dec 19th 2009 | COPENHAGEN
From Economist.com

The accord delivered by the Copenhagen climate talks is hardly far-reaching

AFP

EVEN its biggest fans—if such people exist—would be hard-put to find the Copenhagen Accord on the climate a rousing success. "Many," admits Ban Ki-moon, "will say it lacks ambition." Despite the emotional support and demands of tens of thousands of activists gathered in the Danish capital, expectations of the UN climate conference among participants were not so high that they were hard to meet. But the accord put together on Saturday December 19th by an informal grouping of countries, including America, China, India and South Africa, barely made it over, and was only incorporated into the conference's conclusions after a tense all-night session.

The accord offers to enhance long-term co-operative action against climate change, and recognises the need to provide help to poor countries for adaptation. It provides a way to bring together the offers of emission reductions made by various countries before the conference began—and, should they so wish, to raise them—as long as they are confirmed in the next few months, and gives a special status to the idea of holding global warming to no more than 2ºC. It finds words that provide a way forward on the vexed issue of monitoring reductions undertaken by developing countries off their own bat, which is important not least because it is something the American Senate wants reassurance on with respect to China. It offers short-term funding for projects in developing country of $30 billion, and aspires to a long-term system that would, in principle, provide $100 billion a year for mitigation and adaptation from 2020 onwards. And, perhaps the component of clearest value from outside the world of climate politics, it moves forward on REDD, the plan for reducing deforestation.

To many environmentalists, the accord's great deficiency is that it sets no targets for emissions; earlier drafts had room for specific figures for developed-country reductions in 2020 and both developed-country and global reductions by 2050. Such language is seen as important in defining a widespread shift of the world economy away from fossil fuels. The emissions reductions the accord enshrines are, at least so far, significantly smaller than is needed to provide any confidence about the 2ºC target, and there is much yet to be sorted out about getting the money it talks about distributed equitably.