Week two of the Copenhagen conference has kicked off with a bang, and I’m not talking about the developing countries walkout.
Head of World Vision, Tim Costello, decried Tony Abbott as “singing solo” against the tide of climate change support.
According to Costello Abbott should fly to Copenhagen so he can take the 30,123 delegates to 30,124 and learn about how the rest of the world thinks climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time.
The problem is that not even Costello believes his rhetoric.
If Costello believed that rising sea levels will flood Bangladesh every emission counts and he should’ve stayed at home, saved the emissions and delivered his commentary and presentations by video conference.
But instead, according to his own script, he’s traded off the fate of poor Bangladeshis so he can contribute to the Copenhagen circus in the flesh.
And even if Abbott did arrive he wouldn’t find the sort of consensus Costello paints.
I’ve no doubt Costello is hearing lots of government delegates saying they think climate change is the greatest moral challenge of their time, it’s just that they say it as cover for their immediately following comments about why its someone else’s fault to cut emissions. The statement has as much credibility as “I don’t mean to offend, but …”.
And if governments actually thought climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our time there’d be an agreement already, but its actually an issue few political leaders are prepared to spend serious political capital on.
Costello’s suffering from climate change group think that occurs when you’re surrounded by twenty thousand self-flagellating green activists who are all convinced if this conference fails the end is nigh.
Costello aside, the arrival of Ministers was supposed to end the polite discussion between bureaucrats so the impolite discussions can be held to nut out a deal, hence the walkout by developing countries.
Depending on your perspective informs what you think Copenhagen should deliver.
The United States basically wants the Kyoto Protocol to sunset at end of the 2012 emissions reduction commitment period and be succeeded by a looser agreement in the long term cooperative track that brings all countries to the table. Australia basically wants a second commitment period under Kyoto with new obligations through the LCA track. Developing countries only want commitments through Kyoto because it doesn’t oblige them to do anything.
While most at the conference appear dismayed at the current state of the negotiations, they shouldn’t be surprised because the current negotiating positions are consistent with those announced before the conference if anyone had been listening.
Developing countries even announced the intention of a walkout twice before the conference.
The negotiations are now back on, but for those who came all the way to Copenhagen to be able to say that they were there when the agreement to save the world was struck it may be the last day they can get into the conference centre anyway.
Tomorrow delegates need a special pass to get into the isolated Bella Conference Centre.
And with one hundred and ten heads of government and states accompanied by their security details on Thursday and Friday, the allowable number of delegates into the centre will be reached with government delegations and the media alone.
As a consequence non-government observers will be scaled back to one thousand on Thursday and a mere ninety on Friday.
Rumours around the conference are that a group of NGOs will try and storm the conference centre to try and get access to political leaders. But the fastest way to make sure political leaders go elsewhere is to risk their security.
Instead they’d be better off cracking open a non-carbonated beer, putting their feet up and watching the deliberations from their laptops. No matter what they do it’ll be the closest they actually get to the conference.
Considering the religious fervour that many climate evangelists bring to the issue Sunday is, appropriately, an official day of rest.
But at the Copenhagen climate change conference that only means negotiators turn up to the Bella Conference Centre at ten and the arrested activists from Saturday’s protests can sleep in a bit longer in their cells.
The events of Saturday’s protests are still dominating the media coverage with increasing criticism that the Police behaved in a heavy-handed way.
The folks from left-wing activist group, GetUp!, allegedly have video showing the Danish Police being overly aggressive and charging the protestors. They may be right, but if I were a GetUp! donor I’d want to know why the activists I’d paid to go to Copenhagen were warm and rugged up in their hotel suite videoing the protest, rather than being on the frontline.
Meanwhile consistent reports are that the actual negotiations are going nowhere and emissions verification is proving to be a key stumbling block.
Because governments can so easily report compliance with their emissions targets, but actually just let emissions grow to help improve the competitive position of domestic industries, developed countries want emissions reductions externally verified.
Considering many developing countries don’t have the technical or regulatory capacity to verify their own emissions it may not seem to be an unreasonable ask, but major developing countries like China and India also understandably don’t like the bad faith injected into verification requirements.
There is a lot of bad faith in negotiations because some developing countries approach negotiations with a North / South perspective that developed countries have been out on an all night bender, and developing countries are now being asked to pay part of the bill.
As a consequence bad proposals are being put into negotiating texts like the scrapping of intellectual property rights on climate-friendly technologies by a motley crew of negotiators from Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ghana and India.
The fact that removing IP will simply harm climate-friendly technology innovation and reduce access to the technologies to reduce emissions doesn’t’ seem to matter, because from a North / South perspective scrapping IP is about making sure developed country businesses cannot profit from developing country emissions reductions.
However there would be one thing that would bring China to the table and it’s the same central key to unlocking a final Copenhagen agreement – money.
For developing countries they want a big adaptation finance pool that will be funded by rich countries, and the size of that pool will dictate the level of emissions reduction they’re prepared to commit to.
For developed countries the negotiations are about how much they have to give to that adaptation financing pool, and how much they’ll have to harm their economies and their competitive advantage against developing countries through emissions reduction as well.
That is, of course, except for Europe because it has already started absorbing the cost of emission reduction and wants everyone else to take on the burden so they can stop shooting themselves in the foot.
Tim Wilson is Director of the Climate and Trade Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs and is blogging from Copenhagen at www.sustainabledev.org
Shockingly, representatives from the British Hadley Centre confessed they had a problem at the start of their late Friday afternoon side event on the science of climate change.
But before sceptics get excited it was an audio visual confession that they were having problems with their microphones.
And in a second blow to sceptics the microphone issues were quickly fixed by the attendants and the three panellists continued their presentations of climate-induced doom and gloom.
There was some comfort in a concession by a panellist that two degrees of warming could deliver many positive benefits, but an average four degree temperature rise would only carry downsides.
What was surprising was that the topic of the leaked emails and documents that has prompted ‘Climategate’ didn’t come up in the questions and answers section.
But apparently questions were being asked elsewhere.
At another side event Director of the film Not Evil, Just Wrong that criticised the science of climate change, Phelim McAleer, asked Professor Stephen Schneider from Stanford University about ‘Climategate’. But the organisers appeared to decide it was easier to throw McAleer out of the event than allow Schneider to answer his question.
While negotiations progress throughout the weekend, most of the comings and goings are behind closed doors which means for entertainment you’re better off staying in town than catching the train to the Bella Conference Centre.
On Saturday there was a rare discussion about the impact of a Copenhagen agreement at a symposium on trade and climate change organised by the World Trade Organisation and the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen.
But out of the thirty-one thousand people registered for the Copenhagen Conference, less than fifty seemed interested in the impact of the international agreement they want by attending.
Most of the observers were outside the Danish Parliament protesting for an international, legally binding emissions reduction treaty.
As protests go it was largely predictable with chants led from a central stage asking the crowd “what do we want?”, with the response “a legally binding treaty”, “when do we want it?”, “NOW”. And then the protestors marched to the Conference Centre to the sound of beating drums.
That was until about three hundred masked youths broke ranks with the calls for a “peaceful” protest and started smashing things. Many were probably tense after their failed attempt to incite a violent protest on Friday morning.
You’ve got to hand it to the organisers of today’s protest though they successfully turned out a large crowd reported to be between thirty thousand and one hundred thousand people, but from my observations I’d it was closer to the former.
Unlike the conference there was a much greater presence of anti-capitalist sentiment amongst protestors today with placards and posters decrying “toxic capitalism” and “change the system, not the climate”.
Clearly these protestors have never looked at the rising emissions from centrally planned economies.
But opposition to capitalism clearly only went so far with a little coffee stall where you could get a “green bean” coffee.
I presume the protestors turned a blind eye to the fact that beans were imported from the other side of the world by a carbon emitting shipping line and traded on globalised international markets.
But considering how cold it is in Copenhagen I can understand putting ideology to one side especially when the objective is to warm up. Oh, except when it is the climate.
Day five of the Copenhagen climate change conference has finally delivered some modest negotiating progress through the release of summary reports for the Chairs of the LCA and KP tracks.
To make themselves feel important most delegates at international negotiating conferences always talk in acronyms, but at Copenhagen they’re in over drive.
KP means the first track to establish a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol for cutting emissions when the first commitment period expires in 2012.
LCA means the second track of long-term cooperative action to establish a new agreement that brings all countries to the table on emissions reduction, the establishment of adaptation funds, the transfer of technology and issues around deforestation and forest degradation.
And then there’s discussions about the inclusion of CCS in the CDM, the current progress of SBSTA and whether IP is still in the EGTT. And don’t get me started on the role of JIs in ITC! And how could I forget GEF?
If you don’t know what I am talking about I’m sure the ICC can explain it to you, and if you cannot find them just go to WWF, FOE or an observer organisation from UNEP, UNCTAD or the WTO.
And that’s only scratching the surface.
Anyway, the LCA and KP Chair’s texts were confidentially circulated to country delegations early this morning, so green groups got copies, had read them and were telling negotiators what they don’t like about them over morning tea. But to give faith that confidential does mean something it took me until after lunch for my copy.
And the texts so far say more about what hasn’t been achieved, than what has.
Any subject area of substance remains bracketed which means no one has agreed to it, or the text doesn’t include proposals and instead refers the issue to a newly formed reference group or subcommittee to ensure debate about that one issue doesn’t cause further deadlocks.
So on day five not much has been achieved outside of process and cutting out the really bad ideas, but at least it is now in writing.
One of the most entertaining aspects of these conferences is how delegates walk around busying themselves and pretending they understand what is actually going on.
Or worse, carrying a folder and telling negotiators what they think should be going on.
Each area of negotiations is highly specialised and requires an incredible amount of background knowledge to understand. But that doesn’t stop NGO representatives demanding to know the progress of discussions on bunker fuels and making sure they collect the latest copy of the daily programme of events tome.
I’m the first to admit I know what’s happening in the expert group on technology transfer, that’s EGTT, and broadly the comings and goings in the main LCA track, but I’d be lying if I said I understood the full complexities of REDD.
The total number of registered observers now exceeds the total capacity of the Conference Centre, excluding government delegates and the media, so starting the second week observer entry will be rationed which means Greenpeace will have two hundred protestors admitted entry.
That should be a welcome development, but unfortunately for ordinary Copenhagians it means twenty thousand people are about to be forced onto the streets to go to bars all day and drink legitimately tax deductable beer before they protest.
Though the rationing shouldn’t be too much of a problem by next Thursday because from then on the focus is on the plenary session and the rhetoric-laden speeches delivered by heads of governments and States will be broadcast on the web.
Apparently the CPH Crowne Plaza has also been booked to give the single observer delegate in attendance that can’t web stream the proceedings because they didn’t bring a laptop. If you don’t know what CPH means it is actually how someone referred to Copenhagen earlier today.
But seriously, in addition to most delegates having their own, the conference centre has two big rooms of about two hundred laptops each permanently available for delegates to check what GEF means on the UNFCCC website to avoid the total humiliation of confessing that they don’t know and putting their friend in the impossible position of confessing the same.
And then there are the hundreds of computer terminals with webcams and Skype so observers can acronym their friends back home to boredom.
That last sentence may appear a bit cynical, but on my count I’ve used twenty different acronyms in this post alone. TGIF. Oops, better make that twenty one.
Like the debate about climate change in Australia, symbolism over substance is triumphing in Copenhagen and the pledge to make the conference carbon neutral is looking decidedly hard to deliver.
The UK’s Telegraph newspaper has reported that 140 private jets are expected by organisers over the conference fortnight, and 1,200 limousines are being used throughout the two weeks of the Conference.
The demand for limousines from climate change negotiators is so large that companies have had to drive them from Sweden and Germany because Denmark is under-supplied.
Meanwhile a video clip from US Centre for American Progress shows the free shuttle bus between the conference centre and the airport is empty.
However, on registration delegates were provided with a free public transport ticket and the train to the conference centre is full … most of the time.
And no doubt some are using the train for the entertainment at the Bella Centre Train Station.
As delegates arrive vegans for climate change, led by Supreme Master Ching Hai, are handing out information about the low-carbon impact of veganism.
Just to prove her empathy for animals the Supreme Master’s go-vegan-for-the-climate activists are handing out free hard cover copies of her books ‘The birds in my life’ (which was apparently a best-seller on Amazon) and ‘The dogs in my life’. Neither book states whether they are carbon neutral.
Conference organisers may have taken inspiration from the Supreme Master because two-thirds of conference centre food is organic. But there’s no explanation in the conference guide book about whether organic food’s use of more resources to produce less is good for the emissions reduction.
But the Supreme Master’s influence hasn’t extended too far because meat is still on the menu.
Beyond the circuses inside and out, the negotiations remain in deadlock with rich countries demanding developing countries take on more of the responsibility to cut emissions, and vice versa.
Over dinner last night I was chatting to a Swiss University student who made the point that there were a lot of people shouting about what they wanted at this conference, but no one seemed to be listening. It is a good analogy for the behaviour of the negotiations.
The lack of negotiating progress is partly a consequence of little political weight that can be provided by officials who are simply postulating for the media and to other delegations to prove they’re serious for an internationally legally binding emissions reduction cuts if you’re Tuvalu, a second emissions reduction period under Kyoto Protocol if you’re Europe, or that the science of climate change isn’t settled if you’re the Gulf States.
But the arrival of Climate Change Ministers in the lead up to the weekend will bring more flexibility to the negotiations than can be offered through mid-level bureaucrats. The job of Climate Ministers will be to push negotiations to a point where the one hundred and ten Heads of Government and States can sign a final document when they arrive at the end of next week. This means Ministers have a lot of sleepless nights ahead.
But the weekend also offers officials an opportunity with fewer observer delegates breathing down their necks.
The number of non government observers exceeds government delegates by two-to-one and they’re running amok.
Green non-government observers can basically be broken up into two groups. The first are the pack leaders who actually understand what is being negotiated and are seeking to influence the outcomes.
The second are the pawns who make up numbers when there is an urgent need for one hundred people all dressed in orange t-shirts that say “How old will you be in 2050?” for stunts that make good television.
Over the weekend the pawns will be playing with Danish Police when they leave the isolated Bella Conference Centre for organised demonstrations and protests in the centre of Copenhagen.
Like all demonstrations the organisers are declaring them ‘peaceful’, but my tip is to take a helmet because hell hath no scorn like an angry climate activist who wants a legally binding international treaty delivering global emissions cuts.
Tim Wilson is Director of the Climate and Trade Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs and is blogging from Copenhagen at www.sustainabledev.org.
The negotiations at the Copenhagen Climate Conference are complex and go well beyond emissions reduction targets.
One of the key negotiating points between developed and developing countries is over the REDD agenda, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in developing countries.
The REDD agenda is all about reducing emissions from deforestation and encouraging reforestation to capture emissions.
But part of the agenda is also whether developing countries are allowed to convert their forests for carbon sequestering agriculture purposes.
As the Copenhagen Special edition of Palming off livelihoods? argues the cost of anti-conversion policies will harm the world’s poor, particularly in Asia and the one million Indonesians and Malaysians who rely on palm oil for their jobs and livelihoods.
And the evidence is clear that if you want to reduce environmental degradation the best option is poverty reduction by providing people the opportunity for a sustainable livelihood, especially in poor rural communities.
Any REDD decision at COP15 must consider the impact it will have on developing countries and those trapped in poverty.
Today was the first day of actual negotiations at COP15. But with the conference “rocked” by the afternoon leaking of a draft text for a potential Copenhagen agreement on The Guardian website yesterday negotiators are reporting slow progress.
The leaked text was prepared by developed countries is simply a consolidation of the negotiating positions of most developed countries – an agreement that nominates a peak date for emissions and brings in developing countries into the fold by requiring all countries to enter into a register of their emissions reduction policies.
But the cardinal sin broken by the text’s proponents is that it will both bind developing countries to commit to capping their emissions, and set a date for their decline.
Not all developing countries were unhappy. The small island states bloc actually argued for a new, tougher international treaty because the Kyoto Protocol was not tough enough.
It’s clear from the statements of the governments of China and India that the leaked text is completely unacceptable, and they have reiterated their earlier commitment to walk out of the conference if they are presented with a fait accompli agreement from developed countries.
As the Conference continues a walkout appears more and more likely. If flexibility isn’t adopted by developed countries toward the obligations on developing countries it is likely they will start decrying eco-imperialism and a lot of people will have emitted a lot of carbon by flying a long way for nothing.
Negotiators are also reporting that developing countries have sought negotiations to revolve around earlier negotiating texts that contained absurd and mutually exclusive proposals to cut emissions and provide the governance infrastructure to deliver them.
The behaviour of the UNFCCC Secretariat is also coming under scrutiny. The job of a multilateral institution Secretariat is to facilitate meetings, help country members and promote the decisions of the Conference of Parties.
But in the lead up to, and during, the Conference the Secretariat has either directly engaged in activism, or has sponsored others pushing for a deep green agreement at Copenhagen.
In the opening ceremony the Executive Secretary, Yvo de Boer, took the near unprecedented position of outlining the deal he wanted done. By comparison at last week’s World Trade Organisation Minister the Director-General, Pascal Lamy, stated that a conclusion to the Doha Round was desirable, but that what was in it depended on the attitude of member states.
This sort of behaviour from the top of the Secretariat down has opened the Secretariat to criticism that it is going well beyond its mandate and its neutrality in negotiations is being questioned.
But the Secretariat did assist in transparency at Copenhagen today by releasing a copy of the delegates listing. The three volumes of the now 33,000 registered delegates exposes the circus that the conference has become.
The Australian government alone has more than one hundred registered delegates.
Traditionally government delegates dominate these conferences with business and non-government observers, plus the media, hanging on. But at Copenhagen non-government delegates out number Party delegations by nearly two-to-one.
And the number of activists has obviously got the Danish government and Police worried.
Rumours circulated around the conference today that the previous night the Danish Police raided accommodation of conference activists seizing material that could have been used to promote civil disobedience at protests scheduled for the weekend.
And NGOs continued to provide some colour and light to the conference. A group of Africans protested for “climate justice now”, and a side event was scheduled in the evening for the establishment of a new Framework Convention for Mother Earth Rights.
But if you throw yourself into this conference you can quickly lose time, so anything to give you a sense of timing and routine is welcome. And routine is what the ‘Fossil of the Day Award’ provides.
The Award is announced at 6pm every day in the NGO trade stalls section of the conference for the country that is deemed by activists to have done the most to hold back global emissions reduction cuts. It’s a ceremony that is ten years old and is held at every climate change negotiating conference.
On Monday that Award was won by Annex 1 countries under the Kyoto Protocol for having “an overwhelming lack of ambition” to cut emissions, and on Tuesday by Ukraine for setting the lowest emissions reduction target in the developed world – allowing a 75 per cent increase in emissions.
Today it was Russia’s turn for refusing to discuss its Kyoto Protocol obligations. And for the first time in the ten year history of the Awards the ‘Ray of the Day’ Award was given out to Tuvalu for arguing for a binding, international treaty to cut global carbon dioxide emissions.
If the event weren’t such a farce, it’d almost be funny.
It is day two of COP15 but negotiations haven’t begun. The purpose of the second day was to establish a framework for discussions throughout the conference, including setting up working groups and assessing the negotiating lie of the land. But these discussions go, like the actual negotiations, go on behind closed doors.
But following the leak of a draft agreement text written by ‘friends’ of the Chair, negotiators spent the afternoon hosing down developing country anger at their perception of a stitch up.
Negotiations at Copenhagen are operating on two tracks. The first track is the future of the Kyoto Protocol and if, and how, it should be extended into a second commitment period the expiration of the first period in 2012.
The second track is the track that commenced at the December 2007 Bali Summit and concluded with the Bali Road Map committing countries to the diplomatically vague “long-term cooperative action”.
The vagueness of the language was deliberate because of the lack of convergence from countries about both the problem, and the solution. And not much has changed over the last two years.
The United States position has remained largely consistent since the Clinton Administration by opposing negotiation of a legally binding treaty along the lines of the Kyoto Protocol.
And the US won’t agree to anything unless obligations are also placed on developing countries.
The European Union wants the most extensive deal by either introducing a new, deeper commitment period under the first track Kyoto process that also brings in developing countries supported by international emissions trading.
Developing countries disagree. Developing countries largely believe that climate change is a developed country caused-problem and they should deliver a developed country- solution.
The Group of 77 developing countries plus China don’t want obligations under the second track, and have argued for deeper obligations on the Kyoto first track because it doesn’t requiring them to do anything.
Australia sits somewhere between the European, American and G77 plus China positions, but closest to the Americans.
The small island States falling victim to climate-induced sea level rises want at least one per cent of developed country GDP to be dedicated to addressing climate damage, Africa want ‘climate aid’, and the oil-rich Gulf States are openly questioning the science of climate change following the leaked CRU emails and data.
When a reality-based picture of negotiating positions is painted an outcome at Copenhagen appears decidedly bleak.
But the vacuum left by negotiators has quickly been filled by non-government organisations providing light entertainment.
Today’s NGO colour and light show started with a crowd of young people singing “all we are saying is give youth a chance, always we are saying is cut greenhouse gas” in a remix of the Beatles’ Give Peace a Chance. However the robotically-voiced activists dressed up as aliens asking to be taken to a “climate leader” who is committed to a “real deal” was much more original.
My favourite was the unsuccessful “Offset Magician” who attempts to make the carbon footprint of plane travel disappear through carbon offsets but just can’t pull off the trick.
But the best entertainment was at a side-event with a speaker who dared decry the NGO group think that prevails over the conference.
Forestry conversion has become a hot topic because a key pillar of the negotiations is how to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. But green activists want to remove options for forestry conversion to agriculture which will deny millions of poor farmers the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.
And that was the point Chairman of the pro-development NGO World Growth, Alan Oxley, made in releasing and speaking to his new report highlighting the importance of forestry conversion to economic development in poor countries.
I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether climate activists were actually interested in listening to the impact of their policies on those who couldn’t afford the plane ticket to Copenhagen.
It is day one of COP15 and the main focus of the day is the opening ceremony which, apart from being the first official event, provides the media with the coverage they seek. Four people spoke, 1. The Prime Minister of Denmark, Lars Rasmussen, 2. the Mayor of the City of Copenhagen, Ritt Bjerregaard, 3. the Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachuari, and 4. the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat, Yvo de Boer.
There’s no special prize for guessing what they all said – like a broken record they extolled the need for an international agreement to cut emissions to ensure the saving of the world. Interestingly Pachuari took a swipe at climate scepticism and the recent exposure of emails from the UK Hadley Centre attacking illegal behaviour to seek to discredit the IPCC.
Most people haven’t attended a multilateral meeting like COP15 before, so the video above explains the different sections and a quick overview of what will happen over the next two weeks.
Otherwise the events were relatively irrelevant apart from the occasional NGO protest to entertain the media and the announcement of the Fossil of the Day Award.
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