Preserve Copenhagen’s spirit for endearing at Mexico

Preserve Copenhagen’s spirit for endearing at Mexico

(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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U.S President Barrack Obama had an interview with the PBS Newshour programme in which he had openly admitted that "I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen." According to him, at least he was able to secure non-binding agreements from what he called world’s would be largest emitters, India and China!

He said "What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn't too much backsliding from where we were."

The climate change conference held over the past two weeks in the Danish capital concluded by an Accord, a legally non-binding agreement that skeptical observers believe that it is unlikely to limit emissions sufficiently to halt global warming.

"The science says that we've got to significantly reduce emissions over the next 40 years. There's nothing in the Copenhagen agreement that ensures that that happens," Obama had acknowledged it.

The US President who had attended the summit in its final days to push for a comprehensive agreement, said the deal established an "important principle" but also admitted: "It didn't move us the way we need to."

He said the agreement was hard to win, and came after talks nearly broke down entirely. "The prime minister of India was heading to the airport and the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping negotiations," he said.

Being a person who have kept abreast with the developments of the summit on a day to day basis, I thought it fit to request Obama and all international leaders not to high-light more on the flaws on it’s outcome as each and every nation either directly or indirectly were responsible for the same.

Let me put forth the following for their kind perusal:

The main imperfection in the legally non-binding Accord arrived at the hurriedly concluded Climate Summit was nothing other than one of the missed-out critical points which should have incorporated as a thrust in case a legally binding would have become a reality; it is that the Obama and leaders of Basic Bloc had to ignore in the Accord to commit to a deadline of 2010 for a legally binding global treaty. Further in the last phase of the summit, E.U not only perplexed themselves and made others like African-Island nations to get confused and pre-determined that there will be a just a blemished declaration through the camp of Basic Bloc at the summit.
The global community should not give much credence to the British Environment Minister Ed Milibands’ accusation that China had ‘hijacked’ efforts to agree to significant reductions in global emissions, which tempted Beijing to counter-accuse that U.K and other E.U nations plotted to divide the G77 and basic Bloc at Copenhagen. Fantastic… Obama maintained cool… did not directly accuse any nation or group!

Obama had commented that people are justified in disappointing on the outcome of the Copenhagen Summit. I would like to say like this…. there will be no harm….he and leaders of the Basic Bloc have to positively brag on the subject to motivate themselves and muster support for the mission of getting a legally binding Treaty in the summit to be held next at Mexico City.

Citing too much on the draw-backs of the Accord at Copenhagen should not only dishearten the world community but also disintegrate whatsoever small sketches of mutual understandings and trust gained at Copenhagen. World leaders should not abscond from the spirit gained from Copenhagen and have to remember that the world will slowly get united when each group attempts to take note of grievances of the rival group with a positive mindset.

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An ingenious swerve around Western Perceptions on Climate Change?

An ingenious swerve around Western Perceptions on Climate Change?
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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Government on Tuesday rejected Opposition charge of compromising with the country's interests at Copenhagen climate meet, insisting that the Accord will in no way affect India's sovereignty.

The Copenhagen Accord on Climate Change is no “sell-out” as far as India is concerned, Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh assured the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, in response to the Opposition charge that it compromised the nation’s interests.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, while informing the Rajya Sabha on the outcome of last week's Climate Summit, however, admitted that the government had digressed from its pre-Copenhagen assurance given to Parliament ,allowed the provision for "international consultation and analysis" rather than just informing the UNFCCC about domestic mitigation programmes.
He said the decision to this effect was taken collectively by Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC nations) which did not want to be responsible for the failure of the summit and become “blame boys.” “I plead guilty. I moved from information to consultation. [But] there has to be flexibility.”

The Minister asserted that the accord will in no way affect India’s sovereignty as clear guidelines would be evolved. “The guidelines for international consultations and analysis will be devised and defined in due course. We have been able to incorporate a specific provision that these clearly defined guidelines will ensure that the national sovereignty is respected.”

"I plead guilty. I moved from information to consultation. Yes, there has been a shift," Ramesh said responding to Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley's contention that government had digressed from its commitment on reporting of mitigation actions on climate change.
Equating the Copenhagen Accord with Sharm-el Sheikh Indo-Pak Joint Statement, Jaitley had said the government was trying to interpret the Accord differently by engaging in "spin doctoring".

"These clearly defined guidelines will ensure that the national sovereignty is respected," he said, adding India will ensure that the consultative process is not "intrusive". Normally there will not be any issue on international measurement; reporting and verification (MRV) on projects funded by foreign donors but will never agree for foreign inspection on domestic mitigation projects when submitted on the floor of the House.

The indigenous mitigation projects were to be reported to the United Nation as a part of India’s national communication every two years. A clear diversion in the Copenhagen Accord, therefore, worries many. According to Pradipto Ghosh, a former Union environment secretary and a member of the Indian negotiating team, it was an “extremely difficult and contentious” issue. “The most difficult and contentious task will be finalisation of the guidelines for international consultation and analysis of the mitigation actions while respecting national sovereignty,” Ghosh said.Rajya Sabha Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley said that in a clear violation of the UN principles the Copenhagen Accord attempted “to obliterate the distinction between supported and unsupported verification.” Similar sentiments were echoed by CPM’s Sitaram Yechury who was part of an Indian delegation.Arun Jaitley had said that there was complete repugnancy between the obligations under the Copenhagen Accord and the Kyoto Protocol. As “Word by word, phrase by phrase the language of the UNFCCC, Bali Action Plan and Kyoto Protocol stands diluted. Obviously, the Copenhagen Accord is the one which will prevail.”

Jairam Ramesh said that India had to relent because the US had insisted on a transparency clause before agreeing to release funds to India’s neighbours like Bangladesh and Maldives. “Transparency clause is directed at China which emits 23 per cent of the world’s total greenhouse gases. Nobody has anything against India,” he said. Ramesh brushed aside apprehensions, arguing that the negotiations, expected to culminate in mexico city, would not undermine India’s sovereignty.

The US wanted words like ‘scrutiny’, ‘review’ and ‘verification’, which was resisted by the BASIC group. BASIC’s suggestion to use ‘dialogue’ or ‘discussion’ was not acceptable to the US. Both sides finally agreed on the clause on “international consultation and analysis.” “India has been holding consultations with the WTO and the IMF for years. There is no erosion of sovereignty. We should not fear the clause as there is no great sell out,” Ramesh clarified.

The Copenhagen accord sparked a heated debate in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday December 21,2009. The opposition’s criticism identified it as “disappointing" and "a compromise-document."Jairam Ramesh reiterated that the accord and the International consultation on climate action it entails will not affect the sovereignty of India.

The opposition had been making hue and cry while expressing concern on the Accord , the contour of which were described in a suo motu statement made by Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh.

Sitaram Yechury called the Accord a “compromised document”.said, “we have opened up windows for the possible jettisoning of the Kyoto Protocol.”

By accepting for the international consultation and analysis of mitigation actions,he remarked that it will be a reframing of measures for reporting and verification and if any developing nation violates the same will be susceptible to face trade sanctions in future.
Yechury described the financial commitments under the accord is vague, and the Intellectual Property Rights regime on ‘Technology Transfer’ was effectively negated in the accord.
D. Raja described the Accord for being “no step forward and several steps backward.” And is an attempt to kill the Kyoto Protocol!

The BJP, the CPI(M) and the CPI described the accord as “several steps backward!"

Jairam Ramesh had said “Our thinking on climate change has to evolve and not remain frozen in time“ in the Rajya Sabha. Political Analysts believe that his Ramesh’s obscure statement whether deliberately intended or not, may be a signal that the current Indian government is becoming more futuristically conscious and dynamic while it could be swerving around the perception of developed nations on the responsibility of growing economies toward emission cuts. Jairam Ramesh’s statement on the back-drop of the deal that struck with U.S on the concluding day of the Copenhagen summit may be a relevant proof for the subtle shift of the climate policy of India and other the developing nations!

Seeking “flexibility within a framework of certain non-negotiable,” Ramesh said that the Copenhagen summit was “not a destination but the beginning of a long process”

Less than week after the climate conference ended, many analysts not only believe that Copenhagen was a failure but they apprehend that the summit may lead to a new climate order deviating from the path charted by the Kyoto Protocol.

Now we have many a number of forward thinking people in our great nation; let them judge who is thinking forward and who are not yet?

Achievement by Accord: Let some corpus Flow….

Achievement by Accord: Let some corpus Flow….
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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One of the most tangible outcomes of the climate agreement announced here Friday, December 18, 2009 turned out to be Money.

The Accord, though not legally binding and thus set no goal for conclusion of a binding international treaty, leaving months, and perhaps years, of additional negotiations before it emerges in any internationally enforceable form. But money in notable quantities should, in principle, start flowing next year.

The Accord was “a big step forward” since talks on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007, when countries committed to control emissions but offered no financial support mechanisms, Ban Ki-Moon, the U.N. secretary general, said in an interview Saturday.

“This time we have $100 billion a year,” Mr. Ban said, and “$100 billion a year is significant big money.”

To Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace, the environmental group, the funding pledge was one of the few “plus points” in an otherwise grossly inadequate document.
The accord calls for the establishment of the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund to support immediate action to help curb emissions and to help communities adapt to the effects of global warming.

An initial, fast-start fund worth $10 billion annually would operate from 2010 to 2012.
As per the Accord, towards a long-term finance, developed countries have agreed to support a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries.

Naidoo said the long-term fund needed to be closer to $140 billion annually by 2020 to be truly effective.

But he said that the decision to raise and disburse hundreds of billions of dollars to help the most vulnerable nations showed that “the principle that poor countries with least responsibility for climate change need resources for adaptation has been recognized.”

Naidoo said some of the money should go to small island states like Tuvalu that are vulnerable to rising seas and need help in starting to move people to higher ground.

Naidoo said other candidates for such funding were low-lying coastal communities in countries like Bangladesh where levies are needed to channel seawater to keep it from contaminating sources of fresh water.

Ban Ki-Moon said that he foresaw that the fund would oblige recipients to have reporting and verification systems, and that he envisaged a “comprehensive governance structure” to manage the aid disbursements.

“This is a new step toward the era of clean energy security and toward an era of green growth,” he said.

But Oxfam, the anti-poverty campaign group, immediately warned that the offers were full of “caveats and loopholes,” raising questions about whether the money would ever be disbursed in adequate amounts.

Robert Bailey, a senior spokesman for Oxfam International, said the amount of $100 billion was only half of what was needed.Bailey also warned that rich-world governments could end up diverting money from important education and health care projects in poor countries to pay for new projects like flood defenses.

There were also concerns that governments would generate money for the fund on revenue raised from private-sector activities, like taxes on trading in greenhouse gas pollution allowances.

If that turns out to be the case, then forecasting the precise amount of aid flows could prove difficult, as the prices of allowances fluctuate, partly depending on how strongly governments enforce quotas, or caps.

“If the carbon markets are expected to provide any significant portion of that $100 billion, then developed countries will need to commit to cap emissions tightly to drive demand for allowances,” said Tom Brookes, the director at the European Climate Foundation, a research organization based in Brussels.“But right now there are no caps in the accord,” said Brookes, referring to the outcome in Copenhagen.

The E U had pledged $3.6 billion annually to the initial fast-start fund. Japan and the U. S too had made pledges to that fund.

But where large portions of the rest of the money will come from remains uncertain.Announcing that the U.S would contribute to the long-term $100 billion-a-year fund, Secretary of State -Hillary Rodham Clinton insisted that those details could come later.

“There are a number of different ideas about how we can pursue the financing,” Mrs. Clinton said."The important point,” she said, was “not to talk about how we would fund money that we haven’t yet agreed to fund, but to make the agreement that that is what we’re going to do.”

Yvo de Boer, the head of the U.N. climate office had acknowledged that the Accord did not specify how responsibility for the money would be divided up among industrialized countries.
“That means we have a lot of work to do on the road to Mexico,” he said, citing the next U.N. climate conference, which will be held by mid 2010.

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EU’s Frustration on Climate Accord

EU’s Frustration on Climate Accord
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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The atmosphere at the European Union pavilion at the Bella Centre was moving into that of a funeral.Depressed-looking European negotiators sipped beer from bottles in dim light while crews began dismantling food stalls, television monitors and giant displays of the Union’s blue and gold flags.

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, and Fredrik Reinfeldt, the prime minister of Sweden, which holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, were telling European leaders that to reach a strong global deal eventually, they would have to endorse the Copenhagen accord despite its shortcomings.

Brian Cowen, the Irish prime minister, had an air of grim resignation as he trudged out of that meeting shortly before 2 a.m.“It’s less than what we wanted, but the process has to go on,” Cowen said.

And in what appeared to be a sharp reference to the wrangling between China, the United States and African countries that had blocked a more far-reaching accord, Cowen, as he headed for the exits, shouted: “Certainly it’s not Europe’s fault!”

Reinfeldt said President Barack Obama had been “very constructive” at the talks, creating a basis for the accord by smoothing over the dispute with China over an international monitoring system for emissions.Still, the Swedish leader hinted that the Europeans had been caught badly off guard.

Reinfeldt said he had gotten his first signals that a deal had been struck while still engrossed in meetings. “We had very tough negotiations two and a half hours after I read on my mobile telephone that we were already done,” he said.

If there was a rush by the Americans to announce the deal, he said, it appeared to have been because of bad weather in the United States.

“He was in a hurry home, he said, because they were closing the airport in Washington,” Reinfeldt said of Obama. “There was a snowstorm coming in.”

Ed Miliband, the British secretary of state for climate and energy, acknowledged Europeans’ disappointment in the talks’ result but said he was “absolutely not in the blame game.” Rather, he said, negotiating strategies needed to be examined.

Delaying discussion of the toughest issues until the final moments of the conference came close to dooming the chances of an accord, Miliband said. “My biggest frustration at this conference is not talking about substance, apart from the last day, frankly,” he said. Miliband said the months of jockeying leading up to Copenhagen had resulted in some benefits.

“The process has been a nightmare, but the substance of the last year means you have ambitious targets from lots of countries,” he said.

He noted that Brazil, South Africa, India, China and Japan were among the nations that had proposed limits on their emissions before the talks.

“The success of this process has been the fact that it has concentrated minds and has made all the major players put numbers on the table,” Miliband said.

But he added: “I would have preferred a much more comprehensive agreement. I think going forward there are some difficult issues if emerging economies don’t want to be part of a legal treaty — which they obviously don’t — about what is the framework in which you operate. We do want a legal treaty, and we will be campaigning for it, but I think there are some difficult issues there.”

Jo Leinen, a German member of the European Parliament who led the chamber’s delegation, said Saturday that the talks “demonstrated the highly unsatisfactory and inefficient method of U.N. conferences” and that “deep reform of the decision-making in the framework of the United Nations” was “an urgent necessity.”

For European industry — which has long complained that policy makers in Brussels, by passing binding limits on emissions, have been moving too far ahead of the rest of the industrialized world — the result in Copenhagen could scarcely have been worse, according to one of its top representatives.

“Our major economic partners only repeated their limited mitigation commitments,” said Philippe De Buck, the director general of Business Europe, a powerful lobby group representing European industry.

Therefore the Copenhagen accord has not brightened the prospect for a global level-playing field in the future,” said De Buck, adding that “we strongly regret” that result.
He suggested that industries based in Europe would increasingly move their operations to less regulated parts of the world.

Representatives of the renewable energy industry were also bitterly disappointed at what they considered Europe’s marginalization at the talks.

“The E.U.’s strategy of leading by example failed and left them without influence,” said Christian Kjaer, chief executive of the European Wind Energy Association.

China and the United States “managed to get India, Brazil and South Africa on board” before departing Friday, “leaving it to the remaining 188 countries to work through to Saturday morning on accepting or rejecting the empty accord without changes,” Kjaer said.
Apisai Ielemia, the prime minister of Tuvalu, a small island state that could disappear under water if sea levels rise dramatically, said he was “gravely concerned” with the way the conference had gone.

Ielemia said the decision came down to “backroom deals by a select few.”

Tuvalu had pushed strongly for a global agreement that would ensure temperatures would peak at 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above average pre-industrial temperatures.
Instead, in the accord in Copenhagen, there was a reference to limit temperatures to a peak of 2 degrees Celsius and no specific timetable to achieve this.

In the past, Pacific islands like Tuvalu have worked in tandem with their larger neighbors Australia and New Zealand at United Nations conferences. But they appeared to be sharply at odds in Copenhagen.

In an apparent reference to noisy campaigns led by some nations at the front lines of climate change during the two-week conference, Tim Groser, the New Zealand minister of trade, criticized the “extremist negotiating culture” of some delegates.

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A Deal Away From Goals

A Deal Away From Desired Goals
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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President Obama succeeded in his job at Copenhagen while broking for a climate deal with a group of leading nations that provides for monitoring emission cuts by each country despite no global target for cutting greenhouse gases, and no deadline for reaching a formal international climate treaty.

Actually the deal falls far short of many countries' expectations for the summit and leaves a complete plan for climate change potentially years away. Although the agreement included some major players -- China, India, Brazil and South Africa -- it was not universally agreed upon by the 193 nations attending the summit. In fact, some leaders left early Friday in apparent frustration.

The climate debate shifted to the domestic stage. Though Obama voiced hopes for greater results, the modest agreement may help the administration as it presses Congress to pass landmark climate-change legislation. By not committing the United States to new standards and by insisting on monitoring cuts made by other nations, the administration can say passage of domestic legislation would not put the United States at a competitive disadvantage with other nations, particularly China.

While Obama too attended in the meeting of developing nations on late Friday , December 19, 2009 conceded its limitations- "Today we made a meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough here in Copenhagen.It is going to be very hard, and it's going to take some time" to get a legally binding treaty. He aadded "was not achievable at this conference."

In the deal, spelled out in a three-page document, each country needs only to list its current domestic pledges for emissions reductions and to promise to allow monitoring of their progress. It also outlines steps to help poor countries go green and prepare for the impact of a warming Earth.

But it sparked a rebellion among more vulnerable nations. They said they could not accept an agreement that lacked deep emissions commitments from the industrialized world.

"The science tells us we must act now, and urgently," said Ian Fry, climate-change representative for Tuvalu, which may be submerged by rising seas in a matter of decades. "To use a Biblical allusion, it looks like we're being offered 30 pieces of silver to bargain away our future. Mr. President, our future is not for sale." The summit venue burst into applause.

European officials, for their part, made it clear that although America's climate-change goals had improved compared to where they were under the Bush administration, they still were not in line with those of the European Union and Japan.

"This accord is better than no accord, [but] it wasn't a huge step," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. "The level of ambition is honestly not what we were hoping for."
Barroso and Swedish Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt said the EU would stick to its target of reducing emissions 20 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels, rather than going for the 30 percent goal they had pledged in the context of an ambitious agreement.

But Obama, as well as many U.S. environmentalists, said this agreement represents a turning point in international climate policy because it means the developing world, which will account for nearly all the emissions growth in coming decades, has joined in committing to cut carbon output.

The goal was to get the big emitters in the developing world under the tent with some sort of credible monitoring regime," said David Doniger, policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate center.

In fact, there was almost no deal in Copenhagen at all. The contentious talks appeared to break down at several points over recent days, with rich and poor countries at odds over nearly every issue. A group of developing nations staged a temporary walk out earlier in the week, and on the last day of the summit the talks seemed on the verge of collapse.

Obama had scheduled a private evening meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, whose nation, other leaders have said, poses the greatest challenge to forging a global pact. China had strongly resisted proposals for independent monitoring of each country's claimed emissions cuts, whereas the United States has said such scrutiny is integral to a meaningful deal. Wen had earlier declined to attend a pre-plenary emergency meeting with Obama and other world leaders, sending an aide instead.

But when Obama arrived for his meeting with Wen, he discovered that the Chinese leader was in a meeting with the leaders of India, South Africa and Brazil. Obama opted to join them, although at one point he threatened to walk out if no deal was reached. There, the final stages of the agreement came together, sources close to the talks said, with Obama discussing specifics.

Both the United States and the major developing nations agreed to list their existing pledges to fight climate change, and promised unspecified action to prevent the Earth's temperature from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius. In addition, they will provide information on their progress, which would be subject to international consultations and analysis.

To seal the deal, however, the United States had to sacrifice its goal of enshrining a global target of reducing greenhouse emissions in half by 2050 -- something developing countries, concerned the impact this would have on their economies, were reluctant to embrace. The deal also does not set a 2010 deadline for reaching a formal treaty, which several nations had sought.

Ned Helme, president of the Center for Clean Air Policy, said the administration made big concessions because it was unwilling to walk away from the deal. "Failure was not an option," Helme said, "so this deal traded off cutting global emissions in half by 2050 for a better transparency package that insures those promises will be kept."

Yet some environmentalists questioned how a document with an uncertain mandate could provide the foundation for a legally binding agreement.

"This is a sort of 'incomplete, I didn't turn in my term paper,' when it should have gotten a failing grade," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's fill in the blanks, fill in the numbers."

Even on the question of financing to help developing countries cope with climate change, which had appeared to be one of the talks' few tangible outcomes, the document was short on specifics. It included $10 billion in annual funding from rich nations for the next three years but set only an aspirational goal for raising $100 billion in annual funding by 2020.

It doesn't say what the level of public financing will be," Meyer added. "It could be 2 percent, with 98 percent coming from the carbon markets."

Throughout the negotiations, Obama officials advocated a strong provision to ensure the United

States' economic competitors were cutting emissions, saying it was essential to satisfying senators back home, who have yet to pass climate legislation. "It's important that the world knows the Chinese are keeping the promises they are making," Markey said.

The decision to remove a 2010 deadline for reaching a legally binding treaty was significant, because scientists have warned that the longer nations wait to make deep greenhouse gas emission cuts, the harder it will be to avert dangerous climate change.

The deal does include language calling for completing a scientific review of the accord by 2015, the same year the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue a comprehensive assessment of the latest scientific findings on global warming. But the document calls only for "consideration of strengthening the long-term goal" of reducing emissions.

Obama conceded that the commitments included in the deal fell far short of what scientists have said is required to avert dangerous warming. "We know that they will not be by themselves sufficient to get to where we need to get by 2050," he said. "But I want to be very clear that ultimately this issue is going to be dictated by the science, and the science indicates that we're going to have to take more aggressive steps in the future."
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Copenhagen’s Operational Accord?

Copenhagen’s Operational Accord?
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)

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The UN climate summit could reach an accord,which was ,finally passed on Saturday December 19, 2009 after two days of intensive negotiations and backroom maneuvers. The Accord, proposed by India and four other countries, is now ''operational'', a relieved UN chief said.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmuessen, who chaired the UN-sponsored meeting, acknowledged the lack of consensus and the inability to get the deal adopted. But after a break in the plenary session with a number of countries supporting the accord, the Conference chair announced the decision to “take note” of the agreement instead of formally approving it.
The Accord that is meant to be a first step towards fighting the climate change which affects millions worldwide was still held up for hours by four countries.

Tuvalu and Sudan said it was too weak, while Venezuela and Bolivia were upset because it had not been negotiated in the open form by all the 192 countries attending the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference.The stalemate lasted seven hours - including three adjournments - after the final plenary session of the conference was convened at 3 a.m. Saturday, already 12 hours behind schedule.

But when it was reconvened after the third adjournment, the chairman took just 30 seconds to say this conference was "taking note" of the Copenhagen Accord, and brought down the gavel before any of the surprised delegates in the main plenary hall could react.

The chair's only concession to the countries with objections: The countries that approved the Accord would be listed on the title page, he said.
Once they had taken in what happened, almost all the delegates stood and applauded loud and long. Soon afterwards, a relieved-looking UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon came out of the plenary hall to tell the media: "Finally we sealed the deal."

"It has been a long and interesting couple of days," Ban said, referring to the negotiations after US President Barack Obama got together with the heads of India, China, Brazil and South Africa Thursday evening to stitch the Accord together.Ban, who had not gone to his hotel room for two nights and had slept for a total of two hours during this period, said: "Bringing world leaders to the table paid off. This may not deliver what everyone hoped for, but it's an essential beginning."Four benchmarks:

According to the UN chief, the Accord had the four benchmarks. They are- a common long-term goal of keeping global temperature rise within two degrees Celsius; a commitment by all countries to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that are warming the atmosphere; progress on tackling deforestation and the start of a fund which developing countries - especially the poorest ones - could use to cope
With climate change effects.

Ban pointed out that the Accord was backed by money - $10 billion a year for the next three years, and then $100 billion a year that the US government had promised to put together from all sources around the globe.He added that now there was "convergence" on "transparency" over actions taken developing countries to control their greenhouse gas emissions, referring to a long-fought dispute between rich countries and emerging economies.

The Copenhagen Accord would "launch a new era of green growth", Ban was confident.
He listed the next steps in the process - turning the accord into a legally binding global treaty; the launch of the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund; and "turning our backs on the path of least resistance when it comes to mitigation actions".The Accord had to be passed by the plenary session of the conference so that these steps could now be taken, explained an expert on UN procedures.

Ban said: "It's a political accord, but with immediate operational effect."He expected the fund to have $10 billion next month. The Accord also says developed countries should report their mitigation actions by Feb 1, 2010, while large developing countries like India and China had to report their "mitigation ambitions by the same deadline.

Asked why the conference used the phrase that it had "taken note" of the Accord, Ban explained it was to satisfy "some member states that were still reluctant. These are very difficult and complex negotiations".The UN chief could not give a timeframe within which the Copenhagen Accord would be turned into a legally binding treaty, but said he would do his best to complete the process nextyear.

The deal was brought to the plenary as a draft document but was strongly opposed by Sudan, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and some other countries on the ground it lacked specific targets for reducing carbon emissions. They contended that it was
One-sided and suicidal.

Several countries including Japan, Germany and Britain besides Maldives supported the deal.
It is to be noted that earlier Rasmuessen had said, "If we strictly stick to the principle of consensus, this (the US-BASIC accord) cannot be adopted". Thus later he himself quoted this and said "I really regret it for this reason that we cannot adopt this document".

"It is true that this document cannot be put into operational effect. It is true but it is a reality," he said. But also said that Denmark can be proud of its efforts to secure an agreement.

The 3-page US-BASIC accord, taken as a final conference draft, contained elements like limiting temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible, factoring in overriding priorities of poverty for developing nations.

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Copenhagen Treaty

Copenhagen Treaty
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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US President Barack Obama reached a climate agreement on Friday with India, South Africa, China and Brazil. The deal outlined fell far short of the ambitions for the Copenhagen summit.

Here are key points from the agreement, which is titled Copenhagen Accord.

Long-Term Goals:

Deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science...with a view to reduce global emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius.
Legally Binding Deal?

A reference in an earlier draft to adopt a legally binding climate agreement by next year was missing in the final draft. This upset the EU and a number of other nations, such as the Pacific island country of Tuvalu, which fears being swamped by rising sea levels.

Financing For Poor Nations:
The text says that Developed countries shall provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology and capacity-building to support the implementation of adaptation action in developing countries. It mentions as particularly vulnerable and in need of help are the least developed countries, small island developing states and countries in Africa.

Developed countries set a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. The funds will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral.

An annex carries the following short-term financing pledges from developed countries for 2010-2012:
EU - $10.6 billion
Japan - $11 billion
United States - $3.6 billion

Emissions Reduction:

Details of mitigation plans are included in two separate annexes, one for developed country targets and one for the voluntary pledges of major developing countries.

These are not binding, and describe the current status of pledges -- ranging from under consideration for the United States to Adopted by legislation for the European Union.
Verification

A sticking point for a deal, largely because China refused to accept international controls, the section on monitoring of developing nation pledges is one of the longest in the accord.

It says emerging economies must monitor their efforts and report the results to the United Nations every two years, with some international checks to meet Western transparency concerns but to ensure that national sovereignty is respected.
Forest Protection

The accord recognises the importance of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals or greenhouse gas emission by forests, and agrees to provide positive incentives to fund such action with financial resources from the developed world.

Carbon Markets:
Mentioned, but not in detail. The accord says - "We decide to pursue various approaches, including opportunities to use markets to enhance the cost-effectiveness of and to promote mitigations actions."

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Disappointment at Copenhagen

Disappointment at Copenhagen
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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The US-brokered deal with four emerging economies, including India, on climate change that places no legally-binding emission cuts on developed countries ran into rough weather on Saturday with a majority of poor countries rejecting it, as it was one-sided.

The deal between the US and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) bloc is apparently a gain for developing nations which are required under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to take legally binding emission cuts.

The Protocol expires on 2012 and the 194-nation Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations here has apparently failed to get a word on its extension.

Indian negotiators -- Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and Prime Minister's Special Envoy on Climate Shyam Saran -- themselves acknowledged the fact that the deal is not done until it is approved by the plenary. However, Ramesh claimed that it was "a good deal."
"Right now we have a document that says that we continue with negotiations on what to do about the future, including the Bali Action Plan and Kyoto Protocol," Saran said.

Angry delegates of many countries like Tuvalu, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Cuba slammed the US-BASIC deal for showing them great "disrespect" by leaving them out of the drafting process and imposing their document on vast majority.

Cuban delegates said that US President Barack Obama, who brokered the US-BASIC deal, was "behaving like an emperor" and claimed that the draft was a "gross violation principle of sovereign equality."

Sudanese delegate Lumumba Di-Aping compared the deal to the "Holocaust." "This document cannot be accepted for adoption by the parties present here," said delegates from Costa Rica, adding that there was an absence of a legally-binding treaty.

The final draft contains elements like a limit of 2 degrees in temperature rise on the basis of equity, peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible, factoring in overriding priorities of poverty for developing nations. It calls on Annex I parties or industrialised nations to set their emission targets by February 2010 and also asks the developing countries to do the same.

In the contentious area of Monitoring, Verification and Reporting (MVR), it provides that unsupported actions could be subject to assessment only by domestic institutions but adds a new provision for international consultations and analysis without impinging on national sovereignty.

On the finance side, it provides USD 100 billion for long-term funding for developing countries and USD 30 billion for short-term, which would go to the poorest and most vulnerable.

The Chinese Premier (Wen Jiabao) took the lead in finding a compromise, and our Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh), President Lula (Da Silva of Brazil) and President (Jacob) Zuma (of South Africa) also participated," Ramesh said.

The four leaders, after holding their own discussions, approached Obama, who was not only negotiating on behalf of the US but was also acting as a mediator between Europe and the BASIC, he said. "Whatever the deal India has got is on behalf of the four (BASIC) countries."
However, Ramesh said they had a draft Copenhagen outcome which had been substantially approved by "this smaller group" .He said "Now this goes to the plenary, the plenary has to approve. There are still some differences of opinion. China and Small Island States are battling it out." During the 60-minute meeting between Obama and BASIC leaders, the US President was very appreciative of the unilateral measures India was taking.

Ramesh mentioned about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statment that there was no question of making our unilateral commitments internationally legally binding;we will reflect them in an international agreement in a suitable way but we are not going to take any internationally legally binding commitments. That is simply not on the cards. he added that Obama had appreciated Singh's statement.

During the meeting, the Minister said, "unfortunately" British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy did not seem appreciative of India's point of view.

"At a couple of moments, there were sharp exchanges between me and President Sarkozy," Brown told a TV channel, adding the Indian side also had some problem with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. However after the meeting these leaders Brown said that they have respect for Singh and knew what a "great Prime Minister he is and what good job India is doing."

Greenpeace UK’s executive director John Sauven said: “There are no targets for carbon cuts and no agreement on a legally binding treaty. It seems there are too few politicians in this world capable of looking beyond the horizon of their own narrow self-interest.”
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At Copenhagen: can Obama win another Nobel ?

At Copenhagen: can Obama win another Nobel ?
(Madan menon Thottasseri)
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Negotiators facing a Friday deadline hammered out an initial draft UN climate pact overnight that calls for a two degree Celsius cap on global temperatures and billions in aid for poor nations, sources said.

US President Barack Obama will join more than 120 other world leaders on the final day of the climate talks, designed to strike a deal to boost international efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions widely blamed for heating up the planet.

The draft still under discussion proposed limiting a rise in global average temperatures to within two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, the sources, who declined to be identified, said.
Small islands, called as low-lying countries worried about rising seas want a tougher target of 1.5 degrees. Temperatures have already risen half that level over the past century, the UN climate panel says.

Two sources said the draft pledged rich countries to donate $100 billion annually by 2020 to poor nations to help them adapt their economies and cope with climate change that threatens to bring chaotic weather.

Leaders from 26 rich and developing countries met into the early hours of Friday to try and overcome deep divisions that have plagued the negotiations since they were launched two years ago in Bali, Indonesia..

The draft agreement which may get changed did not currently mention carbon emissions reduction targets for industrialized nations, one source said. The two-week talks in Copenhagen have struggled to overcome deep differences over rich nations' targets to cut emissions, mostly from burning fossil fuels, climate funds and action by big developing countries to curb carbon pollution.

A major issue for rich nations will be of pressurizing China and India, the world's top and fourth-largest carbon emitters, to compromise and agree for outside scrutiny of pledged steps to curb their emissions.

Rasmussen hopes the leaders' meeting will yield a draft document that all 193 nations attending the UN talks could agree will form the basis of an eventual legally binding climate deal to expand or replace the existing Kyoto Protocol. The United Nations hopes this will be sealed next year.
Kyoto's first phase ends in 2012 and a key focus of the talks is finding a formula that captures stronger action by the United States, other rich nations and big developing countries to avoid dangerous climate change.

The United States never ratified Kyoto.

Obama is due to arrive on Friday and is expected to face pressure to pledge deeper emissions cuts. The United States is the world's number two emitter of greenhouse gases.
He is expected to meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of the talks, the largest ever climate summit.

Officials said the United States was making progress with China on outstanding issues but could not say whether a deal would result after Obama arrived.
One US official said there was progress on monitoring, reporting and verification requirements by China and other big developing countries on their emissions curbs. China has resisted such requirements.

The United States had helped the mood at the talks on Thursday by promising to back a $100 billion a year fund for poor nations from 2020. Such funds would be more than all current aid flows to poor nations, a UN official said, and in line with demands put forward for African nations. "That's very encouraging," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said of the US pledge.

Accord on finance is one part of a puzzle that also includes a host of other measures, such as saving rainforests, boosting carbon markets and stiffening global carbon emissions curbs. But any deal will have to be agreed by unanimity. Some small island states and African nations - most vulnerable to climate change - say they will not agree a weak deal.

"We are moving out of the valley of death. We are beginning to see the outlines of a compromise, helped by the US offer on finance," said Kim Carstensen, head of the WWF environmental group's global climate initiative.

When the Secretary of State – Hillary Clinton repeated the U.S. would cut emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, China reacted by confirming that its voluntary emissions target was nonnegotiable. China announced last month it would cut its “carbon intensity,” or the amount of emissions in relation to production, by 40 to 45 percent.

The European Union said Thursday that it will not raise its 20 percent cuts to 30 percent, as it has offered, unless it sees more ambitious actions from other countries, especially China.

The money announced by Clinton, to help poorer nations cope with climate change and develop clean—energy sources, was not guaranteed. The secretary of state said the U.S. agreement to an annual transfer of $100 billion in richer nations’ public and private funds to developing countries was contingent on reaching a broader agreement that covers the “transparency” of China’s measures to limit heat-trapping gases.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei told reporters Beijing had no legal obligation to verify its emissions actions, but was not afraid of supervision or responsibility.

“We will enhance and improve our national communication” to the U.N. on emissions, He said. The Chinese official indicated his country’s emissions-cutting actions would then be open to international scrutiny, saying China was willing to provide explanations and clarifications on its reports. Laureate

“The purpose is to improve transparency,” He said, adding that Beijing was ready to take part in “dialogue and cooperation that is not intrusive and doesn’t infringe on China’s sovereignty.”

Still the world is looking at the Nobel Winner to wrest some credible success from the negotiating process. And on Thursday, with almost 120 heads of state and government already in attendance, there were some signs that a meaningful political deal might be at hand, including a slight shift in China’s position and a pledge by the United States to help the poorest nations cope financially with global warming.

Top negotiators suspect that could prove a humiliating failure, because China and the United States, the world’s two largest emitters, remain deeply divided over a number of difficult problems. China, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, has brought the talks to a virtual standstill all week over this issue, which its leaders claim to be an affront to national sovereignty.

But the Chinese balkiness on the issue is matched in large measure by Obama’s own constraints. The Senate has not yet acted on a climate bill that the president needs to make good on his promises of emissions reductions and on the financial support that he has now promised the rest of the world.Many U.S experts believe that if the Chinese will not accept monitoring of emissions, then a deal is not worth doing.”

Obama is putting a measure of his and the nation’s prestige on the line by entering a debate with so much still unresolved. It was only 11 weeks ago that he left this same city empty-handed after pleading for Chicago to be selected as the site of the 2016 Olympics!

But the manipulation and brinksmanship that have characterized the final week of the talks is also a sign of their seriousness; never before have global leaders come so close to a meaningful agreement to reduce the greenhouse gases linked to warming the planet.

A Promise worth $100 : Will India and China fall prey?

A Promise worth $100 : Will India and China fall prey?
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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World leaders were racing against time to hammer out a deal to combat global warming, Still, a confident India represented by jairam Ramesh interacted with US and other key negotiators in an attempt to reach a "coordinated" position prior to the table at the final meeting.

Ramesh remarked that Todd Stern representing U.S had expressed a desired support for some of the elements but could not agree for other elements that was put forth to them,. He said that India is continuing to work out a coordinated position. In fact India and the US held discussions on the contentious issue of monitoring, review and verification (MRV) and made some progress but there was no major breakthrough.

According to Ramesh Seventy five per cent of the formula has been accepted. The remaining 25 per cent originates to the review mechanism issue wherein India had given the understanding that only informations can be provided and no inspection by outside agencies are not agreeable. US has been pushing up for a consultative mechanism , unacceptable to India and China as well.

Of course Ramesh had welcomed the US secretary of state, Ms Hillary Clinton’s announcement of American contribution to a $100 billion climate cleanup fund.

Earlier on Thursday Denmark seemed to have given up efforts to push a text for the meeting that was strongly resisted by India, China and the G-77 nations. Just a day before the closure of the climate change summit, its fate still hangs in balance as heads of state and government in Denmark began hectic parleys to approve an agreed document which has so far proved elusive. Now it would be up to the leaders of the US, China, India and other G-77 nations to forge a last-minute agreement.

Denmark was said to be working on a “political agreement” text that would postpone the decisions on the Kyoto Protocol and the long-term cooperative action to next year. British PM Gordon Brown was also said to be bringing together negotiators for an agreed text.
After the meeting, Ramesh said that he had told the Americans- "You should be transparent about the word transparency."

The U.N. climate talks ran into serious problems Friday morning as negotiators tried to forge a political agreement for the summit meeting of President Barack Obama, China’s premier and more than 110 other world leaders.

Delegates spoke of continuing disputes behind closed doors between developed and developing countries, the divide that has dogged the two-week U.N. climate conference from the beginning.
Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said that no agreed text had emerged just an hour before the presidents and premiers were to gather at a Copenhagen convention hall.

With negotiations reaching a final stage at the climate change meet, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived here last night to lead the Indian delegation at the crucial talks.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao on Friday held talks in a bid to consolidate the position of developing countries ahead of the world leaders' meeting in Copenhagen.

In his opening remarks during his meeting with Wen, Singh recalled that the two countries have been cooperating at various front including the G-20.

"We need to continue the cooperation," said the Prime Minister, who arrived in the Danish capital late last night to take part in the high-level segment of the 12-day UN climate talks.

Besides Singh and Wen, US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicholas Sarkozy are among the 110 world leaders who would attend the 15th Conference of Parties (COP) on its final day today.

The developing countries have been resisting attempts by the rich nations to set aside the Kyoto Protocol, which sets legally binding greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets for industrialized nations. The 1997 protocol also has a strong compliance mechanism which penalises the rich nations if they do not meet emission reduction targets agreed upon by them.
Prime Minister man Mohan Singh arrived at Copenhagen at a time when the consensus is getting eluded. He landed there with a message to preserve the areas of consensus on mitigation actions and finances and transfers of green technologies to developing countries enshrined in the Bali Action Plan.

Prior to the meeting of over 110 world leaders at the climate change conference, Singh is scheduled to meet with his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao in a bid to consolidate position of the developing countries for the plenary.

"The UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol embody the international agreed regime for addressing the global challenge of climate change," the Prime Minister had given a press statement before flying from New Delhi.

The 12-day 15th Conference of Parties, which concludes here on Friday, is expected to issue a short communique on the need and urgency to arrest climate change instead of a political statement which could form a basis that could be the basis of a legally-binding agreement in the future.

The rich nations are expected to make a Strong pitch for limiting the global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius, agreeing to achieve 80 per cent emission cuts by 2050 and prompt e developing countries to undertake strong mitigation actions which would see a significant deviation from the business as usual approach.

However, the above points do not mention a base year for from which the emission reductions would be undertaken but stresses on transparent verification actions for all the parties.
As mentioned earlier, the group of four comprising Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC) cannot compromise and will strongly oppose this proposal contending that it makes no reference to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Bali Action Plan and the Kyoto Protocol.

Despite certain nations not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, the Bali Action Plan of 2007 and the UNFCCC were adopted by consensus. It wants nations which have not ratified Kyoto to take commitments comparable to those agreed to it.

The Prime Minister is there just to reiterate the Indian stand and apply pressure by thrusting this point for insisting that it is of prime importance to preserve the areas of consensus and agree to continue negotiations based on the Bali Action Plan and the UNFCCC.
India and other developing countries have been insisting that neither would they take up legally binding emission cuts, nor accept a year by which their emissions would peak.

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No Breakthrough……. Heading to collapse?

No Breakthrough……. Heading to collapse?

(Madan Menon Thottasseri)

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There is no sign of breakthrough in the tough negotiations in climate change conference at Copenhagen.India has an apprehension that that the talks could collapse, but for a miracle.

There is a competition against time to knock-out a deal. India, Brazil, South Africa and China had issued a Joint statement on December 15, 2009 and condemned rich nations of trying to derail negotiations.

Jairam Ramesh, leading the Indian negotiators for working out some sort of a compromise to get developed nations commit to emission cuts and funds transfer to poor countries, said the talks were going “too slow”.

India is of opinion that if a compromise was not arrived at, negotiations to keep Kyoto Protocol alive beyond 2012 will continue into next year. Jairam Ramesh had said India was disappointed that developed nations were being unreasonable. Basic Bloc called on the developed countries to commit to legally-binding quantifiable targets and not to ignore or sideline the Kyoto Protocol.

The four ministers also elaborated on their own national voluntary mitigation programmes, and slammed the developed countries for offering "less than ambitious targets" in both technology transfer and finance as well as deliberately slowing down the process.On the issue of MRV Ramesh said there is "no greater MRV" than the Indian parliament, NGOs and India."Transparency and accountability is built into the Indian system," he said. Ministers of four countries had elaborated on the plans that they will be taking domestically to battle climate change.

The South African minister noted that developing countries remained vulnerable to water, food insecurity, health and infrastructure but had still decided to take on national voluntary targets to battle climate change even though it was not mandated in the UNFCCC.India's commitments include the pledge to reduce emission intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020 from 2005 levels, to double renewable energy from 7 to 8 per cent by 2020, to ensure that 7 to 10 per cent of greenhouse gases will be sequestered by forest cover and to double in 10 years
The 3 million trees already planted.

India reiterated its stand that the national domestic measures will not be subject to Monitoring,
Reporting and Verification from overseas.

Even at the verge of collapse of the summit, main parties at Copenhagen have no consensus and are undivided on key issues. While India’s Jairam Ramesh was highlighting the stand against international scrutiny, UN Chief envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern was addressing a press briefing where he stressed the need for all major emerging economies to report their national actions in an international treaty.

"So far what we have seen is a derailment of the mandate agreed in 2007," Buyelwa Sonjica, the environment minister of South Africa, read out a part of the BASIC statement, noting that there had been constant efforts to "renegotiate key principles". "We will not accept the demise of the Kyoto protocol: She added.

The overall climate negotiations are moving under two tracks – the first track is Long Term Cooperation Action (LCA) under Bali Action Plan that requires parties to produce a legally binding treaty before the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.The second track is the extension of the Kyoto Protocol into the second commitment period from 2013 to 2018 where developed countries will have to take binding cuts.Any how U.S is not a party to the Protocol.

The Basic Bloc and African group within G 77 want the developed countries to make mitigation pledges under the second commitment period from 2013-2018 but the European Union, Australia, Japan, Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) want a document broader than the existing Protocol that puts obligations on the United States and on emerging economies.

The European Union is still adament and has categorically stated that it prefers a single agreement that “goes beyond Kyoto”, following protest by environment ministers of BASIC countries and Africa that negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol were being ignored. “We prefer a single agreement,” Stavros Dimas, the European commissioner for environment, told journalists.

As the developing nations suspect that that EU is trying to move away from Kyoto Protocol to get out of their commitments, the Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said, “We are not at any level trying to elude the level of our binding commitments. Its not that we’re try to weaken the binding of our targets“. Instead they want legally-binding economy wide targets that should cover all developed countries and need commitments to actions from the emerging economies as well , he remarked. EU also noted that it had always been a strong supporter of Kyoto having set up emissions trading system and invested in Clean Development Mechanism with 80 per cent of the of 23 billions Euros in CDM projects coming from the bloc.

Denmark's Environment Minister Connie Hedegaard has formed five small groups to sort out the five "crunch issues" at this summit, as she put it: Improving the targets to be set by developed countries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) that are causing climate change;

* The mitigation actions of developing countries;
* The long-term finance to be provided by rich nations so that poor countries can cope with climate change effects;
* How to deal with emissions caused by the aviation and shipping industries; and
* Special circumstances of some countries (such as Russia) in relation to mitigation.

Each group is co-chaired by a minister from a developed and a developing country in an effort to sort out the main problem, the anger of developing countries at what they see as the foot-dragging of industrialised nations.

Desperately India had made it clear that there would be no treaty at this summit while s he said: "This conference must make it clear that negotiations towards legally binding treaties will continue in 2010".

Hedegaard accepted that there was a "discrepancy between citizens' concerns and calls for action and what they hear coming out of our conference".

She claimed that there had been progress, "but it's very clear that ministers have to work very hard in the next 48 hours. There are many major obstacles."

UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer also said: "We've seen significant progress but we haven't seen enough; there's enormous ground to be covered."

Referring to representatives of 192 countries gathered here, de Boer added: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. We've brought 192 horses to water."

His words reflected the frustration as the climate summit threatened to collapse repeatedly during intense closed-door negotiating sessions, with rich nations sticking to their point that they would not do anything more to avert climate change unless emerging economies agreed to international inspections of their own actions.

This was rejected once again by India, China, Brazil and South Africa, whose environment ministers shared a podium to indicate that their BASIC group was now a reality.

Ramesh had said: "We are coordinating between ourselves on the hour and we are continuing to resist pressure to hijack this conference."

Indian Initiatives:
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has said that there have been some developments in the three provisions of the draft prepared under LCA track, which India presently finds "unacceptable".

This comes following a brief halt of the proceedings by the Africa group and the BASIC countries.
Noting that the three disputed provisions have come from the Alliance of Small Island States, Ramesh said he had met with ministers of several AOSIS nations including Bermuda, Grenada, Barbados and would also be meeting the Maldives later.

India had suggested alternative formulations and our objections to para 3, para 4 and para 8 in writing to Michael Cutajar",who is heading LCA. As per the draft Article 3 calls on all parties to reduce the emission cuts by 50, 85 or 90 per cent by 2050.

Article 4 calls on all parties to “peak” knowing that fact that that developing nations will do it later than developed countries. Article 8 calls for a comprehensive review of the implementation of mitigation obligations with the first one in 2016.

Stressing that para 3, 4, 8 have been presented without alternatives, India had cautioned that 3, 4, 8 are red lines as far as India is concerned. India clearly informed that find problems not only with the drafting but also with the ideas!.

It is to be noted that article 3 also deals with the limit to temperature rise and puts options of two degree Celsius and 1.5 Celsius. The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) are fighting to change the temperature limit from 2 degree Celsius to 1.5 degree Celsius, and also to place more obligations on emerging economies.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that several of these island states would go sink or face catastrophic consequences due to rising sea level even if temperature rise was limited to 2 degree Celsius.

The minister also noted that India's opposition to 3, 4 and 8 had also been taken up by the developed nations and intimated to UK as they have considerable influence over AOSIS countries. Australian Environment Minister Peggy Wong is also informed.
India wants to treat AOSIS as an important entity. Of course cannot take them grantedbut can take note of their grievances.

India's opposition to the three provisions was supported by the BASIC countries and several nations in the G77, especially Saudi Arabia.

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Toughening stand…… Fantastic Jairam Ramesh!

Toughening stand……
Fantastic Jairam Ramesh!

(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
_______________________________________________________

Still India maintains tough in own stand and had to join with China while walking out of negotiations, apparently unhappy when developed nations go-off on their commitments under the Kyoto protocol to undertake emission cuts.

On Monday December 14, 2009 when negotiations at Copenhagen were briefly stalled over the opposition of developed countries to discuss their previous commitments under Kyoto Protocol, China stepped up pressure against the US and other Western powers. China’s Ambassador to India Zhang Yan calling for greater unity among developing countries amid what he termed as efforts to “split” this group.

Zhang reeled out statistics to make the point that the West was responsible for 72 per cent of the total CO2 emissions from 1850 to 2005 and then 50 per cent of the emissions in 2006. He had remarked that an empty talk about international cooperation or only talking about so-called shared responsibility, without taking up their historical responsibility can hardly convince the international community. The developed nations should remember that they have increased emissions when they needed to collectively reduce emissions by 5.2 per cent on 1990 levels according to the Kyoto Protocol.

As India and China sail on the same boat in the summit Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have to meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on the backdrop of current position of EU and U.S before the commencement of the final summit. Probably this will be the beginning of a new era wherein India and China have to jointly participate for the cause of the developing nations in many forums here after wards.

The Chinese Ambassador Zhang took exception to remarks from US questioning the rationale for offering financial support to growing economies like China for adapting to climate change. He had pointed out that providing financial support is their legal obligation (under Kyoto Protocol)and If they change their position or retreat from it, then it only shows that US and other Western countries don’t have the sincerity to fulfill their commitments. How the funds will be used is a matter to be worked out after the conference. Taking the argument further, he felt such statements could only be interpreted as a ploy to divide the developing countries. While he desisted from speculating on the final outcome of the conference, Zhang minced few words. “The developed countries are trying to split the developing countries. That is why it is important for developing countries to work together.”

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, who is leading the Indian delegation, along with his counterparts from China, Brazil and South Africa walked out of the negotiations to meet Connie Hedegaard, the Danish President of the COP, and conveyed their protest to Connie Hedegaard, the Danish President of COP.

All formal meetings at the Summit here were put on hold following the development. Though there was no official word on what led the leaders to stage a walkout from the ministerial-level talks, sources said the development followed a disagreement between the developing countries and the developed nations on the second commitment period after 2012.

It was known to all delegates that these four countries protested that due respect to their grievances and no focus was given to the second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol that puts obligations on developed nations to undertake emission cuts.

In fact India had initiated for merging the Basic Draft ( of India, China, Brazil and S.Africa) with that of the draft of African nations of G-77 and there is an Afro-Basic draft getting declared. Basically, developing countries including small island countries have the same objective; it is just the matter of approach. But if we are divided by developed countries, then we reduce our own strength.

India thinks it right in not compromising on’ teen murti’ doctrine –NO LEGALLY BINDING EMISSION CUTS, NO PEAKING YEAR,NO INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF DOMESTIC FUNDED MITIGATIONS.

Fantastic Jairam Ramesh, you have rightly and boldly toughened Indian stand that the outcome of the summit have to be within the framework of UNFCC adhering to the Kyoto Protocol abiding by the Bali Action Plan.

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The Global week-end at Copenhagen

The Global week-end at Copenhagen
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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Thousands of people were arrested in Copenhagen on Saturday December 12, 2009 as demonstrators consisting anarchists and left-wing activists fought running street battles with police in the Danish capital while negotiations continued at the climate summit. They marched from Christiansborg Slotsplads or Castle Square,Southward to The Bella Centre.

Actually the main demonstration by the coalition of hundreds of environmental groups, human rights campaigners, climate activists, anti-capitalists and freelance protesters from many countries was mostly peaceful. In the peaceful march, a rolling sea of flags and banners swelled across the city. Most bore slogans related to global warming or urging world leaders to resolve the vast differences that still make an international treaty seems elusive as negotiations move into the second and final week.

In Saturday’s throng was 26-year-old Jemimah Maitei, dressed in traditional clothing from her native Kenya. She said she had travelled to Copenhagen to be part of a delegation representing indigenous peoples at the talks, which are overseen by U.N. She said about the impact of the climate change to her ethnic community-‘Masai’, and cited relentless droughts that had affected crops.

On a day when little progress was made in the climate talks, activists spread out on foot across the city holding banners in English reading, "There Is No Planet B," and rocking back and forth inside a long ring of fabric that constituted a human boat, complete with a sail. Many had the number 350 -- which stands for an atmospheric concentration of carbon equivalent to 350 parts per million, the more stringent climate target many scientists embrace -- sewn or printed on their hats and clothes.

Demonstrations, which unfolded in crisp temperatures under cloudless skies was not the exclusive province of climate campaigners. Groups of diverse social and political pedigree took advantage of the huge gathering to advance their agendas, too. One sign urged the overthrow of the Iranian government. Another, with the words “Earth in Need: Delete Meat,” was one of many promoting ‘vegetarianism’. People calling for a free Tibet were well represented. Another small contingent of climate skeptics and libertarians derided the United Nations summit.

A group chanted and carried banners reading “Demand Climate Justice,” “The World Wants a Real Deal" and “There is No Planet B” as they marked for miles past officers in riot gear, police dogs and the flashing lights of dozens of police vans.

Only by afternoon, when the crowd was marching southward over the canal towards the Bella Center, small bands of black-clad youths chanting anti-capitalist slogans and carrying sticks and rocks infiltrated into the peaceful crowd. These spontaneous demonstrations by bands of radical protesters resulted in police arrests.

Cobble stones were thrown through the windows of the former stock exchange building and foreign office buildings in the city even though police had resorted to large number of pre-emptive arrests under a controversial anti-hooligan law.

The fact that a lion’s share of greenhouse gases have been emitted by industrialized nations, developing countries have argued that they have a duty to help poor lands deal with the consequences of global warming, like drought, floods and tropical storms.

The demonstration when it started was very beautiful with all the colors and the music .What had begun with exuberance was seemed to simply fizzle at the end.

Many demonstrators made for the Metro trains, others decided to avoid the crush of the crowds and walk back to the city the way they came.


Suspected troublemakers were herded into a closed-off street, made to sit down and then tied up with plastic cuffs. They were then transported by buses detention locations ear marked for the purpose. As per police version, four cars were set on fire during the evening. One policeman was hurt by a stone and a Swedish man injured by a firework.

"You don't have to use that kind of violence to be heard," said Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister presiding at the United Nations talks. She condemned rioters after welcoming the main march at a candlelit vigil outside the conference centre.

One activist group accused the police for forcing the protestors to sit on the road for hours in near-freezing temperatures. The day's main demonstration - a march involving 40,000 people - remained good natured but there remain fears that a hard-core of more violent demonstrators may still be waiting until later in the week, when President Barack Obama and other world leaders will arrive, to protest.

Inside the Bella Centre, delegates at the summit gathered around flat-screen TVs, showing both the police crackdown and the peaceful rally of environmental campaigners. There is a growing fears that the summit could degenerate into an undignified global squabbling match with poor nations accusing their rich counterparts of forging a "backroom deal" at a secret dinner.

The divide in the summit between wealthy, developing and poor nations was laid bare with news that ministers from a select group of 40 countries were dining together away from the summit venue. The meal, held behind closed doors at an undisclosed location, was viewed as a last-ditch attempt to cobble together a politically acceptable deal after a week of discussions marred by in-fighting, and "greener than thou" posturing over who is most to blame for global warming. Ministers are desperate to have a document ready when heads of state arrive for the final stages of the two-week conference on Thursday.

Leading them will be the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has fashioned himself as a global champion in the battle against climate change, and who is arriving ahead of other top statesmen in a bid to stamp his authority on the meeting.

But so far officials from 194 countries have failed to make any substantive agreements on even the most basic goals.

Arguments are still raging over targets and deadlines for limiting global temperature rise, as well as the extent to which rich nations should fund green projects for poor ones, and whether emerging economic superpowers like China should balance green considerations against much-needed development.

Washington and Beijing have also traded insults over whether China should fund its own green measures or receive handouts financed largely by the West.

With signs of an irreconcilable split growing between the large and powerful and the small and poor, last night's dinner, attended by countries including Britain, the US, China and India – was viewed as an attempt by mostly bigger, better-off nations to strike a deal in private.

"A lot of the deals are done in back rooms but there has to be transparency at the same time," said Keith Allott, of the World Wildlife Fund, which claims smaller nations are being left out of the process.

Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, attempted to paint a brighter picture of the conference, insisting he was optimistic of a deal by the time heads of state arrived. This remains difficult in process terms because we have 100 and something leaders arriving on Thursday and we have to get to an agreement by the time they leave," he said

"The world is doing what it has never done before, which is trying to peak emissions and see them fall. It is not a done deal, it remains in the balance."

Gordon Brown plans to travel to Copenhagen on Tuesday evening, a day earlier than planned, in an attempt to help "seal the deal". Downing Street sources said the Prime Minister was expected to hold one-to-one meetings with key figures including Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General. He will attend a formal dinner on Thursday and an all-day session on Friday before returning to Britain that night. A source said: "He remains concerned that the commitment for a deal is still short of what is required."

A productive meeting at Copenhagen is widely seen as being crucial to the credibility of the global campaign on climate change. But the first week saw slow progress. Rich and poor repeatedly clashed over the need to reduce greenhouse gases, with Africa and the small island states threatening to walk out unless the developed nations committed to deeper cuts.

Many of the exchanges were bad-tempered, souring an event that aspires to be a vehicle for better global co-operation. He Yafei, China's vice minister of foreign affairs, said he was "shocked" at US climate change negotiator Todd Stern's assertion that Beijing did not need any American money. "It's not just about the US and China, it's the whole international community," he said, insisting that climate change was historically the fault of the West. "The US is a developed country and China is part of the developing countries. To tackle global climate change we need to work together."

China's chief climate negotiator, Su Wei, told reporters Saturday that his country was simply sticking to the Bali Action Plan that negotiators agreed to in 2007, calling it "quite clear."

Ian Fry, the representative of the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu, has also claimed that even the more vulnerable countries' intended target to restrict global warming to a rise of 1.5C will leave his island underwater because of rising sea levels.

However, the G8 and major developing economies believe it is realistically impossible to restrict temperature rises to less than 2C. They have also accused developing nations of demanding more "go green" cash than they actually need.

After seven days' negotiating there is so far only a draft agreement on the table. The framework for a possible "Copenhagen Protocol" talks about cuts for developed nations of between 25 and 45 per cent by 2020, and calls on rich nations to pay their poorer cousins to reduce their emissions. But blanks remain in what negotiators term the "square brackets" – where officials must eventually insert precise figures and dates.

There is also the question of making the agreement enforceable in law. Britain has already suggested that a further summit will be necessary in six months' time to address the issue.

Conference delegates took the day off on Sunday December 13, 2009, enjoyed sights of Copenhagen, although environment ministers and their top negotiators met informally at the Danish Foreign Ministry and at hotels around the city to reach agreeable financing terms and emissions targets under a new deal. An agreement is likely to include a green tax on the shipping industry.

Scattered protests continued on Sunday too, but climate activists in Copenhagen were largely quiet after a day of mass demonstrations resulted in nearly 1,000 arrests. Danish police had arrested about 230 people by midday Sunday, most in an illegal protest in the northern part of the city. The Bella Center, where negotiations have been going on to craft a global strategy to combat global warming was closed for the day.
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No need To Go beyond Kyoto Protocol?

No need To Go beyond Kyoto Protocol?
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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India has opposed to any amendments of the Kyoto Protocol despite the pressure from EU for an agreement which can be more broader than the 1997 treaty putting obligations to developing nations for emission reductions.

India’s spokesperson, Vijai Sharma who is the Indian Environment Secretary made it clear to press that India focuses on heightened implementation of the convention. He rightly said” the spotlight is on existing commitments”.

There was anew proposal for adding a fresh protocol to the Kyoto protocol, knowing the fact that developing nations especially India, China, Brazil and S.Africa adhere to the a one protocol approach. It was the tiny island nation TUVALU which situates at just two meters above the sea level and prone to get swamped by raising sea levels, put forth the new proposal.

Tuvalu's representative Ian Fry requested the minister of the Copenhagen Conference, Connie Hedegaard to immediately form a contact group to consider the proposal for a new protocol that calls for vigorous action, such as binding cuts and puts less than 1.5 degree limit in warming, by developed nations and emerging economies.

President Connie Hedegaard had to suspend the work of the COP following a deadlock on the Issue with EU and Australia supporting it.

Developing nations like India, China, and oil producing states including Saudi Arabia have opposed it on the ground that there should not be any detraction from Kyoto Protocol, the treaty that imposes legally binding sanctions on industrialized nations, excluding the US. Developing nations will be suspecting that Europe's support for a new protocol is to weaken the Kyoto Protocol. Vijai Sharma had remarked that the several provisions in the new proposal are inconsistent and obviously in conflict with the convention provisions pertinent to historical responsibility and equity. He said that there are articles bracketing the Annex 1 and non-Annex countries and allows Annex 1 to abandon Kyoto, which is not the right message to give at this point of time.

The Kyoto Protocol sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries, called Annex 1 countries, for reducing greenhouse emissions to an average of 5% against 1990 levels between 2008-2012. However, Tuvalu and Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) have said here that the Copenhagen summit needs to produce a document much stronger than the Kyoto Protocol that neither puts obligations on U.S nor on developing and emerging economies!

Sweden's environment minister Andreas Carlgren told reporters, "If we were to end up with an agreement where the only legally binding part would be the Kyoto Protocol then we would not manage to achieve what is needed”.

Fry has repeatedly stated that his country do not want to "kill" the Kyoto Protocol but to make it tougher to both developed and developing nations.

A major portion of this conference is to extend the Kyoto Protocol into its second commitment period starting from 2013 where developed countries have to make cuts will be listed in Annex B, which is a top priority for India and China at this climate meet.

Liu Zhenmin, the deputy Chinese permanent representative to UN clarified that the Kyoto Protocol will not expire in 2012 and that is the reason for all nations to gather at Copenhagen!
In fact the protocol will be very much effective after 2012.

The Kyoto Protocol had given targets for developed countries to quantify their (emission) targets between 2008 until 2012. Thus the need for continuation of negotiations beyond 2012 arises. He remarked that Kyoto Protocol also has some other provisions and the other mechanisms."

In his opinion, Kyoto Protocol being a legally binding document has to continue to be effective. So there is no reason for developing nations to support the view that Copenhagen has to negotiate a fresh legally binding document to replace Kyoto protocol. It's a kind of a follow-up. It's an update, a continuation of the Kyoto process."

Climate change negotiations started over 20 years ago. The UNFCC is the first mile stone in the negotiation process and the Kyoto Protocol is the second one. The Copenhagen can be the third. Efforts for human kind to respond to climate change will not end in Copenhagen and it has to continue for ever.




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LOCKING HORNS WITH DRAFT AGREEMENTS

LOCKING HORNS WITH DRAFT AGREEMENTS
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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The Copenhagen climate change summit to leading to end with two rival texts because none of them could not agree on the key issue of sharing the burden of cutting emissions to a safe level.
The disagreement became more visible when two more draft agreements were released wherein no mention was there on clear parameters, commitments, obligations or stipulations on any of the most contentious issues, despite two years of negotiations before the summit.

The US refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol has forced negotiators to work on two separate texts and there is now little chance of the twin-track process producing a single document. The negotiators from 193 countries are hoping that the early arrival at the summit of several leaders by December 16 or 17 may break the stalemate. Fortunately the commitment on a three-year climate fund for the developing world to Adapt to global warming, is getting close to agreement which will prompt to pledge for limiting the global temperature increase to 2C though no clear plan is arrived at for delivering it.

Gordon Brown raised Britain’s contribution to the fund yesterday by 50 per cent to £1.2 billion, with another £300 million if other countries made comparable efforts, although the Government later admitted that it was re-allocating money previously pledged for overseas aid. The main difference between the rival texts at the end of the summit will be in how to regulate emissions cuts from developing countries. Many rich countries, including the US, want the bigger developing countries, especially China and India, to make commitments to reduce the rate of growth of their emissions.

Developing countries insist that under the Kyoto Protocol only the rich countries, responsible for most of the greenhouse gases, should be forced to cut their emissions. Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary of U.K admitted that significant obstacles remained to agreeing a single text. He said: “This remains tough. This is absolutely not a done deal. I don’t want to hide the scale of the challenge that remains. It is very complicated and difficult.”

Miliband said that his key objective in Copenhagen was to secure agreement on emissions peaking in 2020. However, the draft text from the working group that includes the US failed to mention any date and merely said that emissions should peak as soon as possible. The text contained a very broad range of possible targets on global emissions cuts. At one extreme they would fall by 50 per cent by 2050 and at the other by 95 per cent.

On the issue of long-term funding for poor countries to cope with climate change, the text mentioned no amounts but said simply that the sum provided would be adequate, predictable and sustainable. He said that he wanted the summit to set a six-month deadline for agreeing a single, legally binding treaty. Some negotiators, however, are privately expressing doubt that this will even be possible by the next climate change summit in Mexico in a year’s time.

Miliband declined to say what proportion of Britain’s contribution to the long-term fund would be additional to existing aid commitments. He agreed with the US that none of the short-term fund should go to China.

This issue has been one of the most divisive this week, with He Yafei, China’s Vice-Foreign Minister, criticising Todd Stern, the US chief negotiator, yesterday over his comments that no US money should go to China. He yafei said: “I think he lacks commonsense or is extremely irresponsible.”

Kemal Djemouai, the Algerian chairman of the African group, said: “The developed countries found $1.4 trillion to combat the financial crisis. Now they are offering just $10 billion to fight climate change.

Small and tiny island nations floated their own group and released a Draft. India took note of this as an attempt to bracket as an attempt to bracket developed and developing nations together by junking the Kyoto Protocol under which rich nations have to undertake legally-binding emission cuts. Led by Tuvalu, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) circulated a draft — ‘Copenhagen Protocol’ and called for amendments to the Kyoto Protocol. The groups contention is that they can secure the twin objects of old survival of Kyoto to strengthen the UNFCCC with a new ‘Copenhagen Protocol’ that can be adopted now. Tuvalu wanted India and China to take emission cuts like other developed countries

The new draft follows the Danish proposal and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) document.India cannot agree with AOSIS and will not accept any changes or extension to the Kyoto Protocol, which is the only legally-binding document that imposes emission reduction targets on industrialized nations except U.S.

India’s Environment Secretary Vijay Sharma rightly pointed out that by bracketing both developed and growing nations together will the weaken legal obligations of developed nations under Kyoto protocol.

India views the small nations’ move as a strategy of the European Union to weaken the Kyoto Protocol and get out of the commitments made in the document. “We want the standing of the Kyoto Protocol to be maintained,” Sharma told reporters here. “We are looking to making the roots of the Kyoto Protocol stronger and go deeper into emission cuts for the developed countries.”“Many of these proposals are bracketing the Annex 1 (countries mentioned under the Protocol that should take cuts) and non-Annex 1 countries and may be allowing Annex 1 to abandon Kyoto,”

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