Copenhagen, Dec 19 (Inditop.com) India and other emerging economies prepared a Copenhagen accord late Friday night in association with the US, to be presented to an overnight plenary session of the UN climate summit. The accord came under attack from the Group of 77 almost at once, though it was unclear if it would carry its opposition into the plenary session.
In a dramatic development earlier in the evening, US President Barack Obama broke into a meeting of the heads of government of BASIC countries – Brazil, South Africa, India, China – and held an hour-long meeting.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and South African President Jacob Zuma were all present.
The draft was prepared at the meeting and finalised with heads of 25 other countries, plus European Union (EU) and the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an Indian official said.
“The global goal of what we agreed upon was to keep temperature rise within two degrees Celsius,” Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said shortly afterwards. “We also agreed upon a transparency mechanism that protects our sovereignty.”
He was referring to the demand by rich countries that emerging economies not only take steps to control emissions of greenhouse gases that are warming the earth, but that their actions be verifiable by the international community.
India and China have opposed this earlier, saying this would impinge upon their sovereignty.
Describing the third sticking point to a Copenhagen accord, Ramesh informed: “President Obama said some European countries wanted to negotiate a new legal treaty (to fight climate change). Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made it very clear that no new legal treaty could be negotiated, since we already have the Kyoto Protocol.”
While Ramesh said India and the BASIC countries had got a “good deal” that was also “good for the entire developing world”, the G77 did not think so.
In the sharpest division within the developing world in recent years, Lumumba Di-Aping, Sudan’s ambassador to the UN, called it “the worst development in the fight against climate change”. Sudan is now chair of the G77.
Di-Aping – who attended the meeting of 25 countries – said the draft accord was “in gross violation of the principles of transparency and participation by all countries that have governed all actions within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is against the poor and it lacks common sense.”
He alleged that the draft had been “superimposed by the US. Obama has today eliminated his differences with (George W.) Bush”.
Asked why he thought China and India had agreed to such a deal, Di-Aping snapped back: “Ask China and India”.
Would the G77 oppose the draft at the UNFCCC conference plenary session due to start any moment? “Wait and see,” Di-Aping said. Pressed further, he said: “Sudan will oppose.”
According to UN rules, all decisions have to be by consensus among the countries present at a meeting.
Before the draft accord was presented to the larger group of countries, Obama held a press conference – only for journalists accompanying him – and then left for the airport.
At the press conference, the US president said: “This is going to be the first time when emerging countries have offered mitigation targets, voluntarily. It was essential to get that shift in orientation. That will be the major benefit of this accord.”
Obama admitted that there was a “fundamental deadlock in perspectives” between developed and developing countries on how to tackle climate change. “Both sides have legitimate points.”
He said a legally binding treaty to fight climate change was necessary but would be “very hard” to get. “If we just waited for that then we would not make any progress.”
Applauding India for the steps it had voluntarily taken to control greenhouse gas emissions, Obama said: “A more binding agreement was not achievable at this conference”.
Shortly before the plenary session was scheduled to start, the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Climate Change Shyam Saran told Inditop: “This was a way to get out of the deadlock”.
But many green NGOs were unhappy with the accord. Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said: “World leaders failed to avert catastrophic climate change. People everywhere demanded a real deal before the summit began and they are still demanding it. We can still save hundreds of millions of people from the devastation of a warming world, but it has just become a whole lot harder.”
Kim Carstensen, the leader of WWF Global Climate Initiative, said: “After years of negotiations we now have a declaration of will which does not bind anyone and therefore fails to guarantee a safer future for next generations.”
Friends of the Earth and 350.org also criticised the accord because it had not been reached in a transparent manner.
But there were some supporters too. Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director, said: “The world’s nations have come together and concluded a historic-if incomplete-agreement to begin tackling global warming.”
Elliot Diringer of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said: If accepted by other parties, this tentative agreement would be an important step forward.”
The European Union accepted the accord but was not very happy with it. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said: “It’s a positive step but clearly below our ambitions.”
The EU had earlier said it would increase its 2020 greenhouse gas emission reduction pledge from 20 to 30 percent if there was a strong deal at Copenhagen. But Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said in the early hours of Saturday that the union would stay at 20 percent.
