United Nations Climate Change Conference: Political Report from the Ground

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COPENHAGEN, DENMARK : Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales (C) seated between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon (L) and Yvo de Boer Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change await the start of the opening ceremony of the High Level Segment of The United Nations Climate Change Conference on December 15, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Politicians and environmentalists are meeting for the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 that runs until December 18. Some of the participating nation’s leaders will attend the last days of the summit. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

An on-the-ground view from Charles Chauvel, a New Zealand Member of Parliament, who is currently in Copenhagen attending the UN Climate Change Summit. Chauvel, a lawyer of Tahitian and Scottish descent, is the Climate Change Spokesperson for the Labour Opposition. He has given pacificEyeWitness.org permission to publish his post here.

COP15 – What will come of Copenhagen?

By Charles Chauvel in Copenhagen

Day 4 for me today.  Yesterday, the developing nations staged a walkout from the negotiations.  This was largely to dramatise their concern about the developed world’s unwillingness to taken on meaningful pollution reduction targets.  After negotiations were suspended, there was a lot of discussion over what would happen here over the four days of the Conference that remain. To simplify massively, there are four big sticking points in the way of reaching a comprehensive agreement –  the targets each country adopts; the level of compensation to be paid to developing countries; the best way to measure and police each nation’s emissions; and how the Copenhagen agreement takes over from the Kyoto Protocol.

Based on what veterans of the process have been saying, the consensus is that there are four alternative scenarios for how the week will end up:

1. A comprehensive agreement with detailed rules. Unfortunately, given the complexity of the issues that remain to be agreed, and the fact that the US is not a party to the Kyoto Protocol, but is the key player in terms of making commitments for its replacement, this seems virtually impossible.  The US has only really been engaging since President Obama’s coming into office in January, and although considerable progress has been made, including developing countries voluntarily agreeing to some fairly impressive emissions reduction targets, an enormous amount of detail still has to be resolved.

2. A political framework with minimal detail. This seems to be the best outcome that can be hoped for.  Under it, countries will agree to a set of principles and goals that lack final numbers, with those numbers being negotiated in the two years between now and the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol.  This is in fact how Kyoto itself came about – in 1995, countries agreed the “Berlin Mandate” which two years later became the detailed set of rules we now know as the Protocol.

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Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore listens to speakers at the opening ceremony of the High Level Segment of The United Nations Climate Change Conference.

3. A ‘greenwash’ agreement. Under this scenario, countries paper over their many disagreements but fail to make and real progress, or agree further steps.  A high level statement of concern, but no agreed timetable for concrete actions, would be the outcome.  In many ways, the worst possible outcome because it would take huge effort to get things back on track.

4. A dramatic failure. Developing nations,especially small island states at risk of devastation from climate change,  frustrated at a lack of commitment from wealthy countries, walk out of the negotiations permanently because they won’t agree to a greenwash.  Some new framwork would need to be found going forward, potentially via individual UN bodies like the Food and Agriculture Organisation on land use change and forestry, and International Martime Organisation and IATA on bunker fuels.

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Delegation from Bhutan awaits the start of the opening ceremony of the High Level Segment of The United Nations Climate Change Conference.

The NZ officials from MFAT, MFE and MAF are really well thought of here – as opposed to the political leaders from NZ.  The officials are seen as having worked hard for many years on the technical issues at stake, and have a reputation for diligence, honesty and integrity.  Thank goodness for them, even if they make our current Government look better than it deserves.  It would not surprise me if the officials end up playing an important role in brokering any forward deal.  Hopefully there will be one!