Day 12: Report from Reed Smith Delegates in Copenhagen at the United Nations Climate Change Conference
This post was written by Larry Demase.
Just like our Day 1 report from Copenhagen, we are back to a bunch of “C” words. This time they include: commitments, cost, China, closed door meetings, and, of course, confusion. We will certainly post a COP-15 recap and try to explain “what it all means.”
As of this 22:00 GMT posting, it is being reported that “developed and developing countries have now agreed to listing their national actions and commitments, a finance mechanism, to set a mitigation target of 2 degrees Celsius and to provide information on the implementation of their actions through national communications, with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines.”
It remains to be seen how this agreement compares to the last (and fourth) draft of the “Copenhagen Accord”. The fourth draft had called for global GHG emissions to be cut by 50% from 1990 levels by 2050, with Annex I Parties (industrialized nations except the United States) committing to reductions of 80% by the same time. Other nations would “implement mitigation actions”, in the form of national action plans, that would be updated every two years. The fourth draft also acknowledged the scientific view that nations need to keep emissions below a level that stops the global average temperature exceeding a 2 degrees Celsius increase above pre-industrialized levels.
Earlier in the day at the high level Plenary Session, President Obama said that the framework for an agreement was clear and had three parts: “mitigation, transparency and financing”. He added that all major economies must take decisive national action to reduce emissions, there must be a mechanism in place to insure commitments are being kept and there must be accountability among nations and finally developed countries must provide financing for the “poorest and most vulnerable” countries. He agreed on to $10/100 billion aid number but clearly indicated that there were issues to be worked out on how the money was to be distributed. He guaranteed that US would meet its commitments despite what happened in Copenhagen (a guarantee that the GOP will likely seize upon).
President Obama was preceded at the podium by the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao who said “trust us” on our emission reduction program and emphasized that in China there were still more than 125 million poor people in China. President Obama and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao also had two meetings over the course of the day.
Also at the Plenary Session this morning at the COP, Business and Industry groups delivered a high level statement for the entire COP/CMP, and written copies of the states were provided in the room for the UNFCCC secretariat and others. Recognizing that as a stakeholder group, BINGOs have a big “stake” as over 80 per cent of the resources required to fund global activities to halve emissions by 2050 and develop and deploy the required technologies will come from the private sector via investments and carbon markets, the BINGO statement called for (1) predictability through the adoption of medium- and long-term realistic and ambitious objectives and actions in all major economies, and (2) clear, simple and flexible processes to stimulate the innovation.
