“HOPENHAGEN”

The eye of the world is focused upon Copenhagen, Denmark where under cold, gray skies convene a massive flurry of 14 to 18 thousand people, 192 negotiating countries, dozens of heads of state, hundreds of concurrent meetings, and countless discussions on any and every existing climate change issue. The largest and most important UN climate change conference in history opened Monday, with diplomats warned that this could be the best, last chance for a deal to protect the world from calamitous global warming. Copenhagen is a Conference of Parties (COP)—those parties being countries that have signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

There have been several diffrenet events and dissusions going on trought this days in Copenhagen. Some of the ideas which came up in past days were, that developed countries should come up with more ambitious emissions reduction targets than they have already promised. They should also deliver substantial financing of developing countries in order to enable them to pursue the dual goals of both reductions of emissions and economic development. Chinese climate official blames the US, EU and Japan for too low ambitions on emissions cuts.

In the beginig of the week european energy ministers promised to develop a new offshore power grid to link up electricity produced from sea-based wind power turbines. Onward French politican Kouchner recomemeded a very small tax of 0.005 percent on financial transactions, which would help developing countries fight poverty, promote education and health, and meet the costs of combatting climate change.

Tuesday at the second day of climate conference in Copenhagen the UN weather agency announced, that this decade has very likely been the warmest in the historical record, and 2009 will probably end up as one of the warmest years. Furthermore EPA chief spoke about US common sense CO2 ragulation. This relates to the United States for the first time outlined a dual path toward cutting greenhouse gases that would involve both President Barack Obama's administration and the US Congress to reduce greenhouse emissions. On Wednsday developing countries split on demands. Small island states and poor African nations wanted the climate conference to aim at a legally binding deal tougher than the Kyoto Protocol. Richer developing countries opposed the proposal. Also on Wednsday the President Barack Obama’s top climate change envoy, responding to criticism from China that the U.S. isn’t doing enough to cut greenhouse-gas pollution, said China must be a “major player” in the push to cut global emissions.

Yet on Friday, EU leaders reached a final figure of 3.6 billion US dollars a year for the next three years, with Britain, France and Germany each contributing about 20 percent. Britain is pushing to raise the figure higher at the Copenhagen talks.The climate money is meant to go toward a global 10 billion US dollars annual fund for short-term help to poor countries, particularly in Africa, adapt to the effects of global warming before a new climate treaty being negotiated in Copenhagen comes into force in 2012. The EU leaders also pledged to reduce their emissions by 30 percent of 1990 levels by 2020 — but are still demanding that other leading polluters make comparable commitments first. EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the pledge "conditional."

On Friday a key working group under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) came up with a six-page text. The draft may form the core of a new global agreement to combat climate change beyond 2012, when the present framework, the Kyoto Protocol, expires. Most figures in the text are shown in brackets – meaning that there is not yet agreement on these specifics. Most importantly, 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.

After one week of UN-led climate negotiations in Copenhagen, some money is finally on the table and a draft agreement has been circulated. Now the really hard bargaining begins. Of course, real negotiation happens elsewhere. First, it gets done within country groupings: the G77 plus China, the EU, the Least Developed Countries, the Alliance of Small Island States and so on.

On the 17th and 18th of December, 110 heads of states and governments will come to Copenhagen in an attempt to seal a political global climate deal. If a deal is agreed, the UN will aim at transforming it into a legally binding text to replace the Kyoto Protocol as its regulations of emissions expires in 2012.

JUNIOR RESEARCHER

The view represents author’s point of view and not the ICPE Position