COP15 Halftime Report – Inequity Concerns Take Centre Stage

And so it began: the countdown timer at the United Nations Framework for Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) website struck 0. On Monday December 7^th, COP15 President Connie Hedegaard declared:

‘Time is up! We have had enough wake-up calls. And we have hit the snooze button one time too many. We can make Copenhagen that turning point the world is expecting. Let’s get it done!’

After 6 full days of negotiations, COP15 is now halfway through. Some progress has undoubtedly been made. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) advanced the regulatory option of classifying greenhouse gas emissions as a threat to public health, which has the effect of instituting a (albeit government-determined) price on carbon. The EU also made a conditional pledge to reduce 30% of its 1990-level emissions by 2020 and committed $3.6bn per annum in prompt-start funding for developing countries in the next 3 years.

Perhaps most significantly, the first official draft of a climate deal – mercifully concise at 6 pages long – was put forth by the UNFCCC Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) on Friday. Granted, it is full of square brackets (in which unconfirmed figures and commitments are put) that ministers and heads of states will seek to fill when they arrive next week. According to the official COP15 press release:

‘… the draft states that emissions should be halved worldwide by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, but it also suggests 80 percent and 95 percent reductions by that year as possible alternative options… Even the core goal of the deal is in brackets. Throughout 2009, a number of scientific and political conferences have called for global warming to be kept below two degrees Celsius. Still, the new draft mentions 1.5 degrees Celsius as a possible alternative goal.’

The debate about targets that limit global average temperature increases to 1.5degrees or 2degrees Celsius is an especially contentious one. At the frontline of this debate is the Tuvalu-led Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs), which make the case that their nations’ very existence depends crucially on a commitment to limit temperature increases to less than 1.5degrees. Tuvalu, in particular, has made a clarion (if somewhat emotional) call in appealing to developed countries to consider the plight of its people – practically all of whom live within 2metres above sea level – in the ongoing negotiations.

It is easy to underestimate the feasibility gap between 1.5deg and 2deg. It entails a stabilization of CO2e concentrations in the atmosphere at 350ppm as compared to 450ppm, and involves hundreds of billions of dollars more in mitigation and adaptation efforts. While acknowledging that ‘nobody has more legitimate concerns than [the island countries] do’, U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern pointed out that ‘1.5 [degrees] is not in the realm of what we can get done with right now’.

At the end of the day, political realities in the U.S. make it difficult for the world’s largest economy to show the ambitious international leadership that the world is looking for. Most developed countries’ proposals for emissions reductions and financing for developing countries are conditional on strong action from the U.S., and this deadlock has led to a deep rift between developed and developing countries.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the pointed arguments between the U.S. and China. In response to Todd Stern’s remarks that China shouldn’t expect any American public climate aid money, China’s Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs He Yafei said:

‘I don’t want to say the gentleman is ignorant… I think he lacks common sense when he made such a comment vis-a-vis funds for China. Either lack of common sense or extremely irresponsible.’

Such arguments for developed countries, which have been responsible for the bulk of the GHG stocks in the atmosphere, to provide financial and technological support to developing countries in mitigating and adapting to climate change are nothing new. What is surprising is the gap between the numbers put forth by the two sides.

The 50 countries of The African Group, for example, has called for developed countries to pay as much as 5% of their GDP to developing countries to support them in their fight against climate change. This is in the order of trillions of dollars (5% of U.S. GDP, for instance, amounts to $722bn), more than an order of magnitude higher than the amount the EU has calculated the developing countries would need. Developed countries have also been asked to commit to much more ambitious emissions reductions by a significantly earlier date: 65% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, compared with an indicative 4% the U.S. has offered.

Indeed, COP15 has not been short of drama up to this point. Late Thursday night, G-77 chief negotiator Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aiping walked away from the negotiating table, telling the Danish media that ‘things are not going well’. Tuvalu’s representative told delegates at a plenary session that he cried on his way to the conference on Friday, noting that the fate of his country rests on the outcome of the conference. All around the world and in Copenhagen, environmentalists and climate activists have been stepping up on their demonstrations, demanding that global leaders seal the deal.

At this halfway point, we have now seen much of the posturing and rhetoric that countries tend to exhibit before the ministers and heads of state arrive in Copenhagen for the second and final week. This is where the real action begins.

Hold your breath, for the planet’s fate will be decided over the course of the next week.