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[Environment > Copenhagen Climate change conference 2009]
Copenhagen: The key players and how they rated
The agreement brokered by Barack Obama has faced international criticism from all sides, but most participants are already back home trying to portray it as a national political victory
Suzanne Goldenberg in Copenhagen, Toby Helm and John Vidal
The Observer, Sunday 20 December 2009 Article history
CONTINUED FROM newsgdn4
The EU
Nightmare avoided – but not embarrassment
Europe came to Copenhagen as the bloc that potentially stood to lose the most. The fear was that the US and other countries would refuse to cut their emissions further, but the EU would be forced by public pressure, or by the US , to cut from 20% to 30%, as it had promised to do if there was an ambitious deal.
This would leave it carrying most of the cuts and economically compromised.
The EU need not have worried. No country forced its hand on emission cuts in the negotiations, and it was itself comprehensively split, with countries such as Poland and even Germany reportedly blocking moves by Britain and others to put the cuts on the table.
One European country that played a key role was Denmark, the host, but this turned out to be an embarrassment.
Connie Hedegaard, the Danish climate minister, started well but was forced at the start of week two to step down in favour of the Danish prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, officially because it would be inappropriate for a mere climate minister to meet and greet world leaders. But it was an open secret that she was at odds with her leader and the rich countries preferred their own man.
Then Lars Løkke Rasmussen proved to be out of his depth at this level of politics. He, too, was forced to step down, probably by the UK, Australia, Canada and others.
Denmark also gave the world the "Danish text", a semi-secret set of proposals prepared with the rich countries. to be pushed for at the end of the talks. It was leaked to the Guardian on day two, and from then on the fight between rich and poor countries was furious.
John Vidal
Africa
Bold nations wield their new power
The talks saw Africa assert itself on the world stage. The poorest and climatically most vulnerable continent has the most to lose from temperature increases and formed its own negotiating group for the first time.
Led by President Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, it stunned France, Britain and other rich nations last month by unexpectedly walking out of a preparatory UN climate conference meeting in Barcelona. The carefully planned move forced the UN into giving Africa and the concerns of the poorest more negotiating time.
Africa came to Copenhagen emboldened and, with the backing of international environment and development groups, staked out the moral high ground. By demanding the deepest emission cuts from the rich, and stoutly defending the Kyoto protocol – the only legal agreement that forces such countries to cut emissions – it was for once at the dead centre of global politics.
But Africa also has added clout in climate politics because of its close and growing links with China, the world's biggest producer of emissions. China has invested more than any other country in Africa's metals, oil and forests, and it now has more allies there than in most other continents.
Just as the US used Britain and its friends to make its arguments at Copenhagen, so China used Africa. But it worked both ways: in an astonishingly bold move, it seems that Africa at one point threatened to withhold its resources from China if it joined other countries in trying to abandon the Kyoto protocol.
But the continent also threw up one of the most interesting new figures on the world stage. Lumumba Di-aping, the Sudanese ambassador to New York, is a McKinsey and Oxford-trained radical economist who not only matched the media spin of western countries, but was partly behind George Soros's plan to use hundreds of billions of dollars of IMF special drawing rights to fund the financial deal.
In the end, the west exerted its traditional influence in Africa. President Meles was courted strongly by presidents Sarkozy, Brown and Obama in the days before the world leaders met, to try to bring Africa aboard the west's deal.
Meles proposed that developing countries accept $100bn a year – a remarkably similar sum to what the west had suggested. The accusations soon flew that Ethiopia had been bought and Meles was immediately slapped down by his peers.
Africa ended the talks divided, but knowing that it now plays a far more important role in the new politics of climate change.
John Vidal
[Environment > Copenhagen Climate change conference 2009]
Ed Miliband: China tried to hijack Copenhagen climate deal
Climate secretary accuses China, Sudan, Bolivia and other leftwing Latin American countries of trying to hijack Copenhagen
John Vidal, environment editor
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 December 2009 20.30 GMT Article history
The climate secretary, Ed Miliband, today accuses China, Sudan, Bolivia and other leftwing Latin American countries of trying to hijack the UN climate summit and "hold the world to ransom" to prevent a deal being reached.
In an article in the Guardian, Miliband says the UK will make clear to those countries holding out against a binding legal treaty that "we will not allow them to block global progress".
"We cannot again allow negotiations on real points of substance to be hijacked in this way," he writes in the aftermath of the UN summit in Copenhagen, which climaxed with what was widely seen as a weak accord, with no binding emissions targets, despite an unprecedented meeting of leaders.
Miliband said there must be "major reform" of the UN body overseeing the talks – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – and on the way negotiations are conducted. He is said to be outraged that UN procedure allowed a few countries to nearly block a deal.
The prime minister, Gordon Brown, will repeat some of the UK's accusations in a webcast tomorrow when he says: "Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down [those] talks. Never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries."
Only China is mentioned specifically in Miliband's article but aides tonight made it clear that he included Sudan, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba, which also tried to resist a deal being signed.
But in what threatened to become an international incident, diplomats and environment groups hit back by saying Britain and other countries, including the US and Australia, had dictated the terms of the weak Copenhagen agreement, imposing it on the world's poor "at the peril of the millions of common masses".
Muhammed Chowdhury, a lead negotiator of G77 group of 132 developing countries and the 47 least developed countries, said: "The hopes of millions of people from Fiji to Grenada, Bangladesh to Barbados, Sudan to Somalia have been buried. The summit failed to deliver beyond taking note of a watered-down Copenhagen accord reached by some 25 friends of the Danish chair, head of states and governments. They dictated the terms at the peril of the common masses."
Developing countries were joined in their criticism of the developed nations by international environment groups.
Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International, said: "Instead of committing to deep cuts in emissions and putting new, public money on the table to help solve the climate crisis, rich countries have bullied developing nations to accept far less.
"Those most responsible for putting the planet in this mess have not shown the guts required to fix it and have instead acted to protect short-term political interests.".
In a separate development, senior scientists said tonight that rich countries needed to put up three times as much money and cut emissions more if they were to avoid serious climate change.
Professor Martin Parry of Imperial College London, a former chair of the UN's Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: "Even if non-binding pledges made at Copenhagen are completely fulfilled, there is a 1.5C 'gap' leading to unavoided impacts. The funding for adaptation covers impacts up to about 1.5C, and the mitigation pledges to cut climate change down to 3C at most ... leaving 1.5C of impacts not avoided because of the failure of adaptation and mitigation to close the gap."
The UN climate chief, Yvo de Boer, said: "The opportunity to actually make it into the scientific window of opportunity is getting smaller and smaller."
[Environment > Copenhagen Climate change conference 2009]
Copenhagen: The key players and how they rated
The agreement brokered by Barack Obama has faced international criticism from all sides, but most participants are already back home trying to portray it as a national political victory
Suzanne Goldenberg in Copenhagen, Toby Helm and John Vidal
The Observer, Sunday 20 December 2009 Article history
CONTINUED FROM newsgdn4
The EU
Nightmare avoided – but not embarrassment
Europe came to Copenhagen as the bloc that potentially stood to lose the most. The fear was that the US and other countries would refuse to cut their emissions further, but the EU would be forced by public pressure, or by the US , to cut from 20% to 30%, as it had promised to do if there was an ambitious deal.
This would leave it carrying most of the cuts and economically compromised.
The EU need not have worried. No country forced its hand on emission cuts in the negotiations, and it was itself comprehensively split, with countries such as Poland and even Germany reportedly blocking moves by Britain and others to put the cuts on the table.
One European country that played a key role was Denmark, the host, but this turned out to be an embarrassment.
Connie Hedegaard, the Danish climate minister, started well but was forced at the start of week two to step down in favour of the Danish prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, officially because it would be inappropriate for a mere climate minister to meet and greet world leaders. But it was an open secret that she was at odds with her leader and the rich countries preferred their own man.
Then Lars Løkke Rasmussen proved to be out of his depth at this level of politics. He, too, was forced to step down, probably by the UK, Australia, Canada and others.
Denmark also gave the world the "Danish text", a semi-secret set of proposals prepared with the rich countries. to be pushed for at the end of the talks. It was leaked to the Guardian on day two, and from then on the fight between rich and poor countries was furious.
John Vidal
Africa
Bold nations wield their new power
The talks saw Africa assert itself on the world stage. The poorest and climatically most vulnerable continent has the most to lose from temperature increases and formed its own negotiating group for the first time.
Led by President Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, it stunned France, Britain and other rich nations last month by unexpectedly walking out of a preparatory UN climate conference meeting in Barcelona. The carefully planned move forced the UN into giving Africa and the concerns of the poorest more negotiating time.
Africa came to Copenhagen emboldened and, with the backing of international environment and development groups, staked out the moral high ground. By demanding the deepest emission cuts from the rich, and stoutly defending the Kyoto protocol – the only legal agreement that forces such countries to cut emissions – it was for once at the dead centre of global politics.
But Africa also has added clout in climate politics because of its close and growing links with China, the world's biggest producer of emissions. China has invested more than any other country in Africa's metals, oil and forests, and it now has more allies there than in most other continents.
Just as the US used Britain and its friends to make its arguments at Copenhagen, so China used Africa. But it worked both ways: in an astonishingly bold move, it seems that Africa at one point threatened to withhold its resources from China if it joined other countries in trying to abandon the Kyoto protocol.
But the continent also threw up one of the most interesting new figures on the world stage. Lumumba Di-aping, the Sudanese ambassador to New York, is a McKinsey and Oxford-trained radical economist who not only matched the media spin of western countries, but was partly behind George Soros's plan to use hundreds of billions of dollars of IMF special drawing rights to fund the financial deal.
In the end, the west exerted its traditional influence in Africa. President Meles was courted strongly by presidents Sarkozy, Brown and Obama in the days before the world leaders met, to try to bring Africa aboard the west's deal.
Meles proposed that developing countries accept $100bn a year – a remarkably similar sum to what the west had suggested. The accusations soon flew that Ethiopia had been bought and Meles was immediately slapped down by his peers.
Africa ended the talks divided, but knowing that it now plays a far more important role in the new politics of climate change.
John Vidal
[Environment > Copenhagen Climate change conference 2009]
Ed Miliband: China tried to hijack Copenhagen climate deal
Climate secretary accuses China, Sudan, Bolivia and other leftwing Latin American countries of trying to hijack Copenhagen
John Vidal, environment editor
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 December 2009 20.30 GMT Article history
The climate secretary, Ed Miliband, today accuses China, Sudan, Bolivia and other leftwing Latin American countries of trying to hijack the UN climate summit and "hold the world to ransom" to prevent a deal being reached.
In an article in the Guardian, Miliband says the UK will make clear to those countries holding out against a binding legal treaty that "we will not allow them to block global progress".
"We cannot again allow negotiations on real points of substance to be hijacked in this way," he writes in the aftermath of the UN summit in Copenhagen, which climaxed with what was widely seen as a weak accord, with no binding emissions targets, despite an unprecedented meeting of leaders.
Miliband said there must be "major reform" of the UN body overseeing the talks – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – and on the way negotiations are conducted. He is said to be outraged that UN procedure allowed a few countries to nearly block a deal.
The prime minister, Gordon Brown, will repeat some of the UK's accusations in a webcast tomorrow when he says: "Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down [those] talks. Never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries."
Only China is mentioned specifically in Miliband's article but aides tonight made it clear that he included Sudan, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba, which also tried to resist a deal being signed.
But in what threatened to become an international incident, diplomats and environment groups hit back by saying Britain and other countries, including the US and Australia, had dictated the terms of the weak Copenhagen agreement, imposing it on the world's poor "at the peril of the millions of common masses".
Muhammed Chowdhury, a lead negotiator of G77 group of 132 developing countries and the 47 least developed countries, said: "The hopes of millions of people from Fiji to Grenada, Bangladesh to Barbados, Sudan to Somalia have been buried. The summit failed to deliver beyond taking note of a watered-down Copenhagen accord reached by some 25 friends of the Danish chair, head of states and governments. They dictated the terms at the peril of the common masses."
Developing countries were joined in their criticism of the developed nations by international environment groups.
Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International, said: "Instead of committing to deep cuts in emissions and putting new, public money on the table to help solve the climate crisis, rich countries have bullied developing nations to accept far less.
"Those most responsible for putting the planet in this mess have not shown the guts required to fix it and have instead acted to protect short-term political interests.".
In a separate development, senior scientists said tonight that rich countries needed to put up three times as much money and cut emissions more if they were to avoid serious climate change.
Professor Martin Parry of Imperial College London, a former chair of the UN's Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: "Even if non-binding pledges made at Copenhagen are completely fulfilled, there is a 1.5C 'gap' leading to unavoided impacts. The funding for adaptation covers impacts up to about 1.5C, and the mitigation pledges to cut climate change down to 3C at most ... leaving 1.5C of impacts not avoided because of the failure of adaptation and mitigation to close the gap."
The UN climate chief, Yvo de Boer, said: "The opportunity to actually make it into the scientific window of opportunity is getting smaller and smaller."
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