Nopenhagen
Gayatri Ramanathan
This was perhaps one of the most anticipated international summits ever. It certainly turned out to be one of the most disappointing ones. The Copenhagen climate talks had raised much hope, and with equal vigour saw them all crashing as the summit progressed along its two-week course. If Bali saw action in the last few hours with negotiators charting a roadmap for the future, Copenhagen saw high drama in the closing hours with US president Barack Obama brokering a deal that was eventually not adopted by the Conference of Parties (COP).
The Copenhagen accord, agreed to by major economies including the US, EU, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, made a commitment to limit the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius and raise US $100 billion annually by 2020 to help developing countries fight climate change. However, the final document failed to specify caps on emissions to achieve the objective. These caps, specified in the earlier drafts, were in fact taken out in the final accord document. It was clear as early as September 2009 at the Bangkok preparatory meeting that far from seeking to deliver an ambitious, fair, comprehensive and legally-binding outcome, the Copenhagen summit would seek to impose a developed country agenda as Annex I countries sought bury the Kyoto Protocol.
At Copenhagen, even before the conference began on December 7, it became clear that the Danes (who held the presidency) were trying to push through a developed country agenda. They circulated a draft political declaration to a limited number of countries. Developing countries which were not shown the draft protested, bringing the proceedings to a halt. The next few days saw very little progress on the long-term cooperation and Kyoto Protocol drafts even after the high-level conference began.
In the end, the COP did not adopt the accord that arose from the ‘super green room’ where Obama played hardball with India, China, Brazil and a few other countries, but merely ‘took note’ of it. In the language of the UN, ‘taking note’ gives a low or neutral status to the document being referred to. It means that the document is not approved by the meeting (in which case the word ‘adopts’ would be used). ‘Taking note’ also does not connote whether the document is seen in a positive light (in which case the word ‘welcomes’ would be used) or negatively (in which case ‘rejects’ or ‘disapproves of’ would be used). There is no obligation, legal or political, for a party to the convention to implement the accord.
Questions about the extent to which the participants of the 26-country meeting are bound by the accord remain unanswered, as do questions about the implications of some wordings in the draft such as ‘consultation and analysis’ of developing country targets. The group of 26 countries that hammered out the final draft included the US, Russia, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Ethiopia, Grenada and Saudi Arabia.
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