The U.N. Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray after developing countries reacted angrily to leaked documents indicating world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the United Nation’s role in all future climate change negotiations.
According to the U.K.’s Guardian news source, the document also sets unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.
The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” but understood to include the United Kingdom, United States and Denmark, has only been shown to a few countries since it was finalized this week.
The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the protocol principle, agreed upon at the Kyoto climate summit, that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of climate change causing gases, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce emissions, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol -- the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.
The document was described by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the U.N. balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks.”
A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text. In particular, it is understood to:
- Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original U.N. agreement;
- Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called “the most vulnerable”;
- Weaken the United Nation’s role in handling climate finance;
- Not allow poor countries to emit more than one and a half tons of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tons.
Developing countries that have seen the text are understood to be angry that it is being promoted by rich countries without their knowledge and without discussion in the negotiations.
“It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get President Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the U.N. process,” said one diplomat.
The underlying tension between the world’s largest producers of greenhouse gases and small countries quickly surfaced on the first day of the conference, Catholic News Service reported.
In smaller gatherings after Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen opened the conference with the remark that “a deal is within our reach,” the Alliance of Small Island States said it would accept nothing less than a legally binding pact to limit greenhouse gases. A much less demanding but politically appealing agreement would do little to protect its countries from rising sea levels, said the alliance, a coalition of 42 small island nations, low-lying coastal countries and territories.
Two officials from the U.S.-based Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns said the position taken by the alliance serves as a call to the world to ensure that developed countries take definitive steps to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The real debate is over a political versus a legally binding document,” Maryknoll Sister Ann Braudis, who co-chairs the U.N. NGO Committee on Sustainable Development, told Catholic News Service in an e-mail. (See: Conflict surfaces early at climate conference.)
Also, even before any climate adaptation fund has seen the light of day in the discussions at Copenhagen, Bangladesh has made substantial demands, asking for at least 15 percent of any climate funding.
If sea levels rise by one meter, at least 20 million Bangladeshis, of a total population about 150 million, would be affected. If Himalaya’s glaciers melt substantially due to global warming, the situation is dire.
“The population of our one coastal district is bigger than the entire population of all island countries and in that consideration at least 15 percent of any climate fund should come to us,” Bangladesh State Minister of Environment and Forests Hasan Mahmud told a news conference, according to Reuters.
Hasan Mahmud emphasized that Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in the world, Reuters reports.
“We are not begging any mercy from anyone. Rather we want justice as the worst victim of climate change,” said Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, a leading economist, who is also part of the Bangladesh climate negotiation team.
Also, the British Met Office, which is the United Kingdom's National Weather Service, today published station temperature records for over 1,500 of the stations that make up the global land surface temperature record. The data shows that global-average land temperatures have risen over the last 150 years and that global warming has increased since the 1970s.
According to Reuters, Met Office Hadley Centre has published the data to increase transparency among climate scientists and support evidence that the globe is warming.
The release is a response to the series of leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia. The e-mails indicated that some climate experts were suppressing others’ data to enhance their own, Reuters reports.
The Met Office will continue to put as much of the station temperature record as possible into the public domain. When international approvals are in place, the remaining station records -- around 5,000 in total -- will be released.
Watch the NCR Ecology channel and the NCR Today group blog for updates on the Copenhagen climate conference.
More coverage: A report from Irish missionary Fr. Sean McDonagh, who is attending the conference, is featured on Rich Heffern’s NCR Today blog.
[Rich Heffern is an NCR staff writer. His email: rheffern@ncronline.org]
