21 December 2009

Copenhagen Accord

An article in the Guardian gives credit to the British Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, for returning to the main hall at 4am, refuting the speech of the Sudan delegate and bringing the rebelling small countries round, by restating the amount of money pledged to combat their climate change issues. It was touch and go whether  the summit would end with no deal at all or a weak one.

A blog on oneclimate.net direct from the hall, gives another angle on those dramatic hours. There is no mention of Ed Miliband. The key moment, in the writer's mind, occurred at around 5am when the hall stirred and the Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed took the microphone. Nasheed was, it seems, the only head of state to stick it out throughout the night.

Would he side with his Tuvalu colleagues and the Sudan line? Among the developing nations and small-island states, he is recognised as a, possibly the key representative. Nobody would be ignorant of the fact that he addressed the United Nations climate change summit between the speeches of President Obama of the United States and President Hu Jintao of China. If he rejected the deal on the table, there was a very good chance that many other developing countries would have rejected it too (whatever the speech of Ed Miliband had achieved). And Copenhagen would have ended without a deal.

He did not side with the rebels. Apparently he was passionate yet calm and logical as he asserted it was best for his country to move forward with the unambitious and non-binding deal that was on the table. Though he greatly respected his colleagues' objections, he believed it was in everyone's best interest to accept this deal and work to turn it into something more ambitious and legally binding by the end of 2010.

Few have any doubts that the Copenhagen Accord is weak, fewer still doubt it is frighteningly unhelpful to the most vulnerable states. But with the deal comes an agreement to turn it into something legally binding, and hopefully stronger, within a year. The Secretary General stated it should be a matter of a few months.

So what is the deal? The accord makes references to the need to keep temperature rises to no more than 2C, and says rich countries will commit to cutting greenhouse gases, and developing nations will take steps to limit the growth of their emissions. Countries will be able to set out their pledges for action in an appendix. In addition, there are provisions for short-term finance of up to $10 billion a year for three years to help poorer countries fight climate change, and a long-term funding package worth $100 billion a year by 2020.

So the Maldives will get some money to fight the ravages of climate change. But with nothing legally binding, global temperatures will probably rise more than 2C, as major nations accuse each other of being the stumbling block.

No amount of remedial work will keep the Maldives above sea level, however much money is 'invested', if this state of affairs continues. Let us keep the faith with President Nasheed, keep the debate simmering and trust that work behind the scenes over the coming months will put legal flesh on this weakly skeleton.