Destruction of forests — burning or cutting trees to clear land for plantations or cattle ranches — is thought to account for about 20 percent of global emissions. That's as much carbon dioxide as all the world's cars, trucks, trains, planes and ships combined.

So a deal on deforestation is considered a key component of a larger pact on climate change being negotiated in Copenhagen.

On Sunday, language calling for reducing deforestation 50 percent by 2020 was struck from the text being considered. And the document only mentions financing without saying how much would go to the more than 40 developing nations in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

The Europeans want to put in a shorter-term goal, "and the rain forest nations are saying that we are happy to have a goal as long as it's balanced by appropriate funding ... which is missing from the text," said Federica Bietta, the deputy director of the Coalition for Rain Forest Nations. The group represents most of the countries that could take part in a forest scheme.

Antonio Gabriel La Vina, the lead negotiator in the forest talks (as well as negotiator for the Philippines and facilitator of the REDD contact group) and author of the latest draft, downplayed the changes and said it was a compromise between those who wanted hard targets and those who didn't.

Environmentalists earlier this month hailed the forest talks as one area where negotiations were progressing and some suggested they could serve as a catalyst to inking a larger climate deal here in Copenhagen.

But they have fallen victim to the same bickering between rich and poor nations which has slowed progress on the wider agreement. There are still no firm figures on financing or cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the larger agreement.

December, 15: Negotiators in Copenhagen have made progress on two key issues for the reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) mechanism, reports a forest policy group.

John O. Niles, director of the Tropical Forest Group, said the latest REDD text has made "enormous strides" since earlier versions of the agreement last week.

"We needed two critical pieces of text to catapult into a world where developing nations could see real value for saving tropical forests," said Niles. "Forests and forest peoples worldwide need 'early action' language to fast track financing to save forests immediately. And the agreement needs clarification that national forest reference emissions levels will be discussed and decided with concrete timelines. Both of these critical dimensions of a new global forest paradigm are now very much in play."

Niles noted that last week's text did not include language to "force decisions on reference forest emissions levels" which would be needed to generate conservation funding for tropical countries.

Cara Peace, Tropical Forest Group's Assistant Director for Policy, added that REDD is one of the few areas where significant progress has been made in Copenhagen.

"Saving tropical forests has positively catalyzed the climate change negotiations - it is the only beacon in an otherwise dark night," she said in a statement.

The Tropical Forest Group also reported that the Holy See helped facilitate language on indigenous peoples rights in the REDD text.

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The carbon market sees great potential in investing in forests through the sale of valuable carbon offsets and dozens of REDD early action projects have started in nearly 40 countries, the U.N. says.

CAREFUL DESIGN

Greens say the scheme has to be carefully designed to ensure money flows to communities to give an extra incentive to save forests and to ensure forest protection in one area doesn't lead to deforestation in another, a concept called leakage.

La Vina, from the Philippines where deforestation is a major concern, said the draft text had improved safeguards on protecting the rights of indigenous forest people and conversion of natural forests into plantations.

It also affirms that developing countries should undertake transparent efforts to govern the scheme and take steps to ensure that emissions cuts from REDD projects can be measured, reported and verified, a key requirement for investors.

But the draft text doesn't mention earlier options to set a target to halt and reverse loss of forest cover, something that greens say is needed to give nations a clear goal.

La Vina said there were still a number of "live options", such as all nations aiming to halt deforestation by 2030 and reducing deforestation and degradation by developing nations by half by 2020.

Governments must decide the final target, he said.

Financing was also still unclear but the United States pledged $1 billion as part of a $3.5 billion scheme as initial financing towards slowing deforestation, a U.S. government statement said on Wednesday.

La Vina said there was still debate on the concept of "sub national" activities. Most countries back a national approach to REDD to ensure any emissions reductions from REDD projects are accounted on a national level.

Greens see this as a loophole and fear sub-national projects could drive deforestation elsewhere in a country or region.

"Will developed countries provide financing to developing countries to stop deforestation at a national level and help get us the reductions the science say is needed?" said Roman Czebiniak of Greenpeace.

"Or will REDD be a loophole that allows big corporations to continue to pollute so long as they set up a small forestry project in a developing country?" he told Reuters.

La Vina said the dispute was unlikely to be resolved in Copenhagen but thought it might me settled during 2010.

South Africa blasts Copenhagen failure

PRETORIA, South Africa – South Africa says Copenhagen's failure to produce a legally binding climate change agreement was unacceptable, joining a global chorus of condemnation even though it helped draft the final accord.

South Africa's environment minister Buyelwa Sonjica and her two top climate change negotiators said Tuesday that part of the blame rested with the way the host guided the conference. In their first media briefing since returning from talks in the Danish capital that ended Saturday, the trio described an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion that Denmark was plotting to force its own position on other nations.

In the end, South African negotiator Joanne Yawitch said, the Danes unveiled a draft at the 11th hour that Yawitch said was "seriously problematic." She said negotiators edited late into the night and came up with a document South Africa found more balanced, but that she felt substantive changes were unwelcome.

Her fellow negotiator Alf Wills said the resulting agreement was limited not only in terms of what it did to save the planet, but in the number of nations that accepted it, saying it did not extend beyond the 28 represented at the late-night negotiations.

Sonjica said substantive talks were hijacked by debates over how to handle the process.

"Process is important, since it determines outcomes, but some ill-restrained interventions combined with poor decisions by those guiding the process meant that process problems caused the loss of three days — precious time indeed," Sonjica said.

Copenhagen's outcome was "not acceptable. It's definitely not acceptable. It's disappointing," Sonjica said.

South Africa along with the U.S., India, Brazil and China drafted the climate change agreement reached in Denmark. The compromise calls for reducing emissions to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 C (3.6 F) above preindustrial levels. The nonbinding agreement also calls on rich nations to spend billions to help poor nations deal with drought and other impacts of climate change, and to develop clean energy.

Sonjica said South African President Jacob Zuma had discussed with other African leaders whether the talks should be abandoned, but it was decided it would be better to continue to try to influence the talks from inside.

"And maybe what we have now would have been worse" had there been a walk out, she said.

In the days since the talks ended, it seems no one has had much good to say about Copenhagen, resulting in some international sniping. Several nations have said the industrialized world should have committed to deeper emissions cuts.

British climate change minister Edward Miliband wrote in The Guardian newspaper Sunday that most countries — developed and developing — supported binding cuts in emissions, but that "some leading developing countries currently refuse to countenance this." He singled out China.

Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Miliband's opinion piece seemed designed to sow discord among developing nations.

EU officials have complained countries such as Nicaragua, Bolivia, Sudan and Venezuela prevented a more ambitious pact.

South Africa's Wills said the political agreement that emerged from Copenhagen did have positive elements that can be built upon at the next round of talks, scheduled in Mexico City in 2010. Wills pointed to agreements on how the U.S. and other developed countries would record emission reduction targets, and on how emission reduction action by advanced developing countries like South Africa would be accounted for.

South Africa is the only African nation among the 20 countries that emits nearly 90 percent of the world's greenhouse gases. But while their country is more industrialized than most on the continent, the majority of South Africans are poor, some living without electricity even as the country's coal-fired power plants contribute to global warming.

There have been suggestions that countries like South Africa could have brought more to the negotiating table in terms of committing to cutting their own emissions. Wills said such ideas amounted to "shifting the burden from those who are historically responsible for the problem to those who are not responsible."

Yawitch said the challenge ahead will be to rebuild trust among nations that she said was damaged in Copenhagen.

"You can do the impossible," she said, "if people trust each other."

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Issued by:  Yahoo News

Author: DONNA BRYSON

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Issue date: December 22, 2009

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How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room

As recriminations fly post-Copenhagen, one writer offers a fly-on-the-wall account of how talks failed

Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.

China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was "the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility", said Christian Aid. "Rich countries have bullied developing nations," fumed Friends of the Earth International.

All very predictable, but the complete opposite of the truth. Even George Monbiot, writing in yesterday's Guardian, made the mistake of singly blaming Obama. But I saw Obama fighting desperately to salvage a deal, and the Chinese delegate saying "no", over and over again. Monbiot even approvingly quoted the Sudanese delegate Lumumba Di-Aping, who denounced the Copenhagen accord as "a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries".

Sudan behaves at the talks as a puppet of China; one of a number of countries that relieves the Chinese delegation of having to fight its battles in open sessions. It was a perfect stitch-up. China gutted the deal behind the scenes, and then left its proxies to savage it in public.

Here's what actually went on late last Friday night, as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish prime minister chaired, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN. Probably only about 50 or 60 people, including the heads of state, were in the room. I was attached to one of the delegations, whose head of state was also present for most of the time.

What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his "superiors".

Shifting the blame

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. "Why can't we even mention our own targets?" demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil's representative too pointed out the illogicality of China's position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord's lack of ambition.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak "as soon as possible". The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.

Strong position

So how did China manage to pull off this coup? First, it was in an extremely strong negotiating position. China didn't need a deal. As one developing country foreign minister said to me: "The Athenians had nothing to offer to the Spartans." On the other hand, western leaders in particular – but also presidents Lula of Brazil, Zuma of South Africa, Calderón of Mexico and many others – were desperate for a positive outcome. Obama needed a strong deal perhaps more than anyone. The US had confirmed the offer of $100bn to developing countries for adaptation, put serious cuts on the table for the first time (17% below 2005 levels by 2020), and was obviously prepared to up its offer.

Above all, Obama needed to be able to demonstrate to the Senate that he could deliver China in any global climate regulation framework, so conservative senators could not argue that US carbon cuts would further advantage Chinese industry. With midterm elections looming, Obama and his staff also knew that Copenhagen would be probably their only opportunity to go to climate change talks with a strong mandate. This further strengthened China's negotiating hand, as did the complete lack of civil society political pressure on either China or India. Campaign groups never blame developing countries for failure; this is an iron rule that is never broken. The Indians, in particular, have become past masters at co-opting the language of equity ("equal rights to the atmosphere") in the service of planetary suicide – and leftish campaigners and commentators are hoist with their own petard.

With the deal gutted, the heads of state session concluded with a final battle as the Chinese delegate insisted on removing the 1.5C target so beloved of the small island states and low-lying nations who have most to lose from rising seas. President Nasheed of the Maldives, supported by Brown, fought valiantly to save this crucial number. "How can you ask my country to go extinct?" demanded Nasheed. The Chinese delegate feigned great offence – and the number stayed, but surrounded by language which makes it all but meaningless. The deed was done.

China's game

All this raises the question: what is China's game? Why did China, in the words of a UK-based analyst who also spent hours in heads of state meetings, "not only reject targets for itself, but also refuse to allow any other country to take on binding targets?" The analyst, who has attended climate conferences for more than 15 years, concludes that China wants to weaken the climate regulation regime now "in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be more ambitious in a few years' time".

This does not mean China is not serious about global warming. It is strong in both the wind and solar industries. But China's growth, and growing global political and economic dominance, is based largely on cheap coal. China knows it is becoming an uncontested superpower; indeed its newfound muscular confidence was on striking display in Copenhagen. Its coal-based economy doubles every decade, and its power increases commensurately. Its leadership will not alter this magic formula unless they absolutely have to.

Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action. I left Copenhagen more despondent than I have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power politics, fell back, and drained away.

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Issued by:  The guardian

Author: Mark Lynas

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Issue date: December 22, 2009

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5 common mistakes in the coverage of the Copenhagen Accord

With the exception of a few hours of shut-eye, I stayed up all Friday night to watch the last hours of the COP15 negotiations. It was absolutely gripping, shocking, heart-wrenching, inspiring and in the end came with some measure of relief. (BTW—for anyone that would like to watch any part of Friday night’s negotiations it is all online here. I have found this partial transcript useful for skipping around in the many hours of footage.)

I have not seen a single news article that has done justice to what happened overnight. In fact, I’ve seen many that I feel misunderstand or mischaracterize what happened. Watching the questions journalists asked during the final press conferences, I kept saying to my computer screen “Were you not watching!?” so I suppose it should come as little surprise that I, as someone who watched the entire thing, feel a number of the articles written thus far leave readers with misimpressions.

In particular, I would like to address five things that I’ve seen reported or opined in various media (primarily on the left) over the last two days that I believe are fallacies, based on what I witnessed.

Fallacy #1—The “Copenhagen Accord” text preempted a better agreement from being adopted at COP15.

For Venezuela or Cuba or Nicaragua or Sudan or Tuvalu to suggest that continuation of the deadlocked plenary with the negotiators of the 193 countries could have produced an adoptable document contradicts the evidence of the last two years and two weeks of negotiations.  According to what I heard negotiators saying, many proposed texts had been floated but nothing had achieved the kind of support that would make it signable. This was pointed out in very diplomatic terms by the negotiators from Grenada (AOSIS representative), Ethiopia (AU representative), the LDC representative, the Maldives, Norway, UK and many more. As the COP15 began its last day, there was *no deal* of any kind ready for the many world leaders present that day to sign. Why any reporters or commentators would give air-time to the suggestion that the UNFCCC negotiation process had produced something better, I’m having a hard time understanding. If that something better wasn’t going to get signed, it wasn’t better.

I think the Norwegian diplomat said it best when speaking to the full plenary of negotiators saying (I paraphrase) that the negotiators as a group needed to be able to be self-critical and recognize that after two years and 2 weeks of negotiating *they* had failed their heads of state and the world by failing to have something ready for their leaders to sign when they came to Copenhagen. Given that reality, he said, the heads of state made an “unprecedented effort” talking directly to each other and brokered a deal where there had been *none.* (You can find his excellent comments at 1:26 into the plenary video linked above.)

Fallacy #2—The poor countries of the world rejected the Accord.

The claim I’ve seen in some early articles that “the poor countries of the world rejected” the deal is totally inaccurate. It is deeply unfair to throw all the developing nations in an undifferentiated block like this. Sudan, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and Tuvalu quite vociferously opposed the Accord on both procedural and content grounds. But among the dozens of developing nation representatives that took the floor Friday night, they were in a clear minority.

While recognizing the many short-comings of the Accord, one developing nation after another pleaded with the countries mentioned above to drop their opposition so that the Accord could be adopted.  This pleading was truly heart-wrenching. I will never forget the desperate words of the President of Maldives literally begging these nations to drop their opposition to the Accord. (2:52 into the overnight plenary video)  His pleading was followed by a long applause and similar appeals by negotiators from dozens of other countries and the representatives of nearly every major UN coordinating group, each stating that the parties in their group, through them, wished to express their support for the passage of the Accord. Those bodies include the Alliance Of Small Island States (AOSIS), the Least Developed Countries (LDC), the Africa Group, and the African Union (AU).

Notably, the G77 (a caucus which represents 130 developing nations) did not make a statement in support of the Accord. However, that may have been more of a result of who was representing them than a sign of their collective will. The official G77 representative was from Sudan. After prefacing his remarks by saying he was speaking only on behalf of Sudan, he rejected the Accord with a hyperbole-filled, cynical statement that included a claim that the Accord had the “same values” that created the Holocaust. (You can find his remarks 32 minutes into the recording linked above.) His Holocaust comparison was roundly condemned by nearly every nation that spoke afterward, and several other aspects of his remarks were objected to as well. After that, many G77 countries took the floor to independently endorse the Accord.

Unfortunately, because the handful of opposing nations could not be convinced to support the adoption of the Accord as a decision of the COP15, instead a decision was unanimously passed for the COP15 to “take note” of the Accord.  The COP also agreed that individual countries should have the opportunity to associate themselves as parties agreeing to the Copenhagen Accord, listing their names in an addendum to accompany the Accord. Until that addendum is prepared, we won’t know the exact tally of who was for and against the Accord’s adoption. But judging by the statements made on the plenary floor, I think the final tally will show that many more developing nations supported it than opposed it.

In conclusion, it is my opinion that the more accurate record of what happened is that while many developing (and developed) countries were disappointed by the COP15’s inability to produce a signable text better than the Accord, the overwhelming majority of them were in support of adopting the Accord as a decision of the COP.

Fallacy #3—The Accord came out of an undemocratic backroom deal that minimized the voice of developing nations.

Initially, the strongest and most compelling argument raised by the handful of nations actively opposing the adoption of the Accord was that the Accord had come out of an undemocratic, non-representative backroom deal that had circumvented the UNFCCC process. They are without-question correct on one of those points: it is true that the Accord was brokered outside of the UNFCCC negotiating process by a body made up of less than the 193 countries assembled. With the COP15 in total deadlock (according to many of the negotiators who spoke last night) and with many heads of state on the scene, the President of the COP, Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, invited 28 heads of state and their lead negotiators to a series of “Friends of the Chair” meetings to try to break the impasse. Obama was a participant in some of these meetings.

According to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who also participated in many of those meetings, the 28 nations selected were intentionally representative of all the major UN negotiating groups, the major carbon emitters, the major economies, diverse regions and the majority of the world’s population. I can’t find a complete list of the participating nations online anywhere but the representative of Grenada listed 23 in her remarks:

1. Sweden (outgoing President of the EU)
2. Spain (incoming President of the EU)
3. Saudi Arabia (head rep for OPEC)
4. Russian Federation
5. Norway (leader in climate funding)
6. Maldives
7. Lesotho (head rep for LDCs)
8. South Africa
9. Bangladesh
10. Algeria (head rep of the Africa Group)
11. Denmark (COP15 President)
12. Mexico (COP16 President)
13. Germany
14. France
15. UK
16. Ethiopia (head rep for the African Union)
17. Colombia
18. Korea
19. China (largest national population)
20. India (2nd largest national population)
21. US (3rd largest national population)
22. Brazil
23. Grenada (head rep for AOSIS)

The representative nature of the group was defended and presented in persuasive fashion by a number of negotiators, particularly the lead negotiator of Grenada.  As the official representative of the Alliance of Small Island States, the Grenada negotiator said about the Friends of the Chair meeting (paraphrasing) “We were there; we saw the process as legitimate,” “Everyone was negotiating in good faith,” “It was a difficult session, in which AOSIS fought for every single thing, but as you can see we did not get much,” “we regret that this meeting is dividing us… but we stand by the document and we stand by the process.” (Her full remarks can be heard 1:11 into the overnight plenary video.) In his post COP press conference, the UN Secretary General also stood by the process.

The convening of the Friends of the Chair meeting does not represent an undemocratic process. The role of the nation convening an international conference is to do everything possible to make the conference a success. With the conference on the verge of total failure, it was entirely appropriate for the Prime Minister of Denmark to convene these heads of state and try a new strategy for producing a document that could be adopted. (The characterization of this move as somehow throwing out all the groundwork laid over the last two years is specious. The Accord, while sadly lacking the details found in other draft texts, clearly builds on issues and texts that have been deeply explored in the international climate policy negotiations these last two years.) The Friends of the Chair process would have been undemocratic if the resulting document had been adopted as a COP decision without its being proposed to all countries for consideration and consensus.  That was not the case.

While I think the Danish Prime Minister’s attempt to present the Accord to the general body and call for a vote 1 hour later (with regional caucusing to take place during the intervening hour) was ambitious, naive, misguided or manipulative, depending on your perspective—plenty of complaints were aired in the press about the Danes’ facilitation of the negotiations throughout the COP—I think it is worth noting that while the Prime Minister came in for hot criticism by the dissenting countries, he was commended generously for his good faith efforts by many more.

Fallacy #4—The Accord is a worthless “sham” and failure.

Consider this for a moment: Would the President of the Maldives and representatives of so many other nations have spent hours begging the dissenting nations (listed above in Fallacy #2) to unblock the passage of the Accord if it were truly worthless? True, it is not nearly the agreement we need. Everyone, from the COP President himself to Ban Ki-Moon to Obama to every single negotiator on the floor last night acknowledged as much. Critically important things did not make it into the text, such as legally-binding reduction targets and a commitment to reduce emissions quickly enough to possibly achieve a less than 1.5 degrees Celsius warming. And the funding that is pledged in the Accord is paltry when compared to the recent bank bailouts (a common refrain heard in the debates over funding). But when the conference was about to end with absolutely nothing, it’s foolish to say it would have been better to adopt nothing. That would have been truly worthless.

I’m tempted to elaborate here the numerous merits of the Accord that I heard delegates reference in the overnight session and that I understand from what I read in it, but there are certainly many people more qualified to do that. The best enumeration of the Accord’s accomplishments that I’ve found thus far is on Politico.com’s COP 15 “Arena.”

But there is just one thing I have to exclaim: the importance of getting an agreement under which the major developing nation emitters recognize they have a responsibility to act cannot be overstated! This undermines a major rallying cry of US political opponents of climate legislation who rile the American public up by denouncing the fact that (up to now) the UNFCCC negotiated texts would require the US to act while China, Brazil, India and other big [current] emitters aren’t.  Recall that this “disparity” is *the* grounds on which the Kyoto Protocol was rejected outright by a 95-0 vote in the US Senate in 1997. It has taken 12 years and an unprecedented level of negotiations to get that disparity rectified through the Copenhagen Accord. Nothing to sneeze at.

Fallacy #5—Obama is to blame!

I have hardly read a positive word about Obama in regards to the Accord. On the right, Obama is being trashed for having agreed to spend billions of dollars, going along with the “global climate hoax” and taking his eye off the economy for 10 seconds. On the left, activists are calling Obama a sell-out and an underminer of the UN. In the case of progressive activists, I think the critique shows a sincere misunderstanding of where the hold-up is when it comes to getting the US to act on climate issues. The hold-up is and has been in the US Senate for nearly two decades. I’ve often wondered why Obama doesn’t just come to the podium and point that out: “Hey everybody, I’d just like to say that the Executive Branch and the House of Representatives are ready to act but we can’t do anything as long as you let your Senators filibuster and block every meaningful climate bill proposed.”  I understand he probably doesn’t do that because it would make working with the Senate testy, but I don’t understand why the activists that are currently trashing Obama can’t make the Senate their rallying cry and point of emphasis. It’s clear to me from the way Obama has directed stimulus money that he wants to act on climate issues (not just talk, as some have accused), but that he knows he can’t without the US Senate’s cooperation.

There’s something else, though, that I didn’t understand until this week: Only the Executive Branch has the authority to represent the US Government in international affairs—not any member of Congress or the Supreme Court. So, Obama can’t say at the negotiations “go talk to the Senators about why they won’t agree to a carbon cap.” Instead, he has to represent why they won’t agree to a carbon cap and try to get those obstacles addressed in some way. (As I mentioned in Fallacy #4, the Accord removes a stumbling block that has been the grounds for inaction by the US Senate for the last 12 years!)

The other thing the Executive Branch’s authority in foreign affairs means is that it would be incredibly unwise for Obama to agree to anything that would be rejected outright by the US Senate. Besides being fruitless (recall: Senate rejection of the Gore-endorsed Kyoto Protocol), it would undermine confidence and trust in his ability to faithfully represent the US Government in international affairs.

Finally, why should Obama get so much blame given that he did not broker the Accord by himself (as he himself acknowledged)?  Clearly, his role in the Friends of the Chair meetings was significant. I wasn’t there, of course, but by most accounts (Ban Ki-moon, Rasmussen, Obama, the Grenada negotiator, and others) the meetings were a collective, good faith effort in which different leaders stepped forward at different times to make the Accord possible. Robert Orr, UN Assistant Secretary for General Policy and Planning, gave a fascinating description of those meetings when asked by Andrew Revkin of the NY Times about Obama’s role. Here are some excerpts: “Certainly at key times President Obama played a key role, meeting with leaders from large developing countries. It is equally safe to say that at other parts of the negotiations other leaders were central. There were key moments where African leaders, small island developing state leaders took the lead… It was not driven by one leader, or two leaders, or three leaders. I would [use] two hands to count the number of leaders that played key roles.” (you can watch his full description beginning 35 minutes into this press conference)

Cause for Hope

The things I saw, in every segment of the COP15 negotiations that I had the opportunity to watch, gave me hope. Clearly, the Accord is not the climate deal we need to avert increasing climate-related crises and catastrophes. Everyone I heard negotiating was in agreement on that.  However, there were several things I witnessed that that may not have been codified in a deal, but which gave me much hope:

• Many countries in their delegation press conferences or in the speeches by their heads of state enumerated steps that they are already taking, even without a legally-binding, global agreement with caps and targets.
• Representatives from developing nations described how they are more than ready to go low-carbon, but their main limitation is access to technology—both funding and know-how. (Under the Accord $23 billion of short-term funding has already been pledged over the next 3 years.)
• Observers noted that the gap between scientists and politicians has closed significantly over the last two years—to the point where heads of state were debating 1.5 vs 2 degrees Celsius with high levels of scientific acumen. (also 35 minute mark in Robert Orr press conference)
• The fact that 133 heads of state came to COP15 signals a huge commitment of global political emphasis and attention.
• Yver de Boer reported that 50% global emissions reductions by 2050 and 80% by 2050 from industrialized countries was very much on the table with plenty of willingness from the heads of state to make it happen, but that there simply wasn’t enough time to get it into the Accord in a politically “responsible way.”
• The last-minute, hands-on negotiations of heads of state was an unexpected development that produced significant confusion but also delivered an incredible breakthrough that has opened a new way forward for climate negotiations.

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Issued by:  GRIST

Author: Sam Hummel

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Issue date: December 22, 2009

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