Civil society march in Copenhagen. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

By Raúl Pierri and Daniela Estrada

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva)  COP15 proved to be a “spectacular failure even according to its own terms,” but civil society had “some successes,” such as the inclusion of certain issues on the climate agenda, and making the voice of the South heard loud and clear.

That was how activists assessed their efforts at COP15 as the climate change talks came to an agonising end Saturday in Copenhagen.

Barred from the Bella Center, the official venue, and treated harshly by security forces at some of the massive demonstrations held throughout the two weeks of the conference, representatives of civil society – gathered simultaneously in the Danish capital at their own people’s climate summit, Klimaforum09 – highlighted a series of victories achieved.

“Despite the lack of transparency, civil society organisations have given visibility to positions that are more in line with climate justice, which we see as the only way to move towards a sustainable planet,” Eduardo Giesen, Latin American and Caribbean coordinator for Friends of the Earth International’s Climate Justice and Energy Programme, told TerraViva.

“We focused our efforts on supporting developing countries so they could present a united front against the demands of the industrialised world, and not give in to pressures that in some cases bordered on colonialism,” he added.

Klimaforum09 closed its two weeks of activities with a concert and a ceremony where this year’s organisers transferred organisational duties to representatives of Mexico and Latin America, where the next parallel summit will be held in 2010.

“The general sensation is that what wasn’t achieved at the Bella Center was achieved at Klimaforum” in terms of content consensus and forging of alliances, Giesen said.

For her part, Canadian journalist and researcher Naomi Klein called on activists to not give up hope. “I think it’s really important to make sure that we don’t leave this gathering feeling discouraged,” she said.

According to Klein, the fact that negotiators at the Bella Center were unable to reach an agreement even within their own conception of how to address climate change is proof that it is a failed model.

“That’s why it is very important to go forward and tell a different story of what happened here in Copenhagen. That story must be that their model reveals itself to be a spectacular failure even according to its own terms,” she said.

“And because their model failed, it’s our turn now. So don’t allow yourselves to get depressed,” she added.

In Klein’s view, the model has failed because of its emphasis on the carbon market and other market-based mechanisms.

“Discourse about climate change has been really taken over by technocrats, (it’s become) very bureaucratised, and has been extremely exclusive. This is actually similar to the discussion on trade a decade ago, where it was all acronyms, all incredible impenetrable long talks,” she said.

“And many people felt: I can’t be part of the discussion, I don’t have an advanced degree on economics, I can’t participate,” she added.

Klein underlined the need to reject “the model” in which negotiations are conducted under the Convention.

“We need to reject any measure that allows the countries that created the problem to evade their responsibility, (which is) that they need to cut their emissions,” she stressed.

For his part, Giesen condemned international NGOs that “toe the line” of industrialised countries and back counterproductive mechanisms.

“Our NGOs work with communities to achieve environmental justice. We haven’t turned into consultancy firms seeking to finance their activities by any means, like certain multinational NGOs who have found in the carbon market a way to make a lot of money. They’ve bought into capitalism,” he said.

Klein, meanwhile, highlighted what she saw as the “successes” of the last two weeks. “The rich world can no longer claim not to know (what) failing to act (entails). The voices of the South, the cost of millions of lives, the disappearance of countries and cultures – all that has landed on the agenda,” she said.

Changing the system

“System Change – Not Climate Change,” is the title of the final statement from Klimaforum09, signed by some 360 organizations from around the world.

Drafted months ago and discussed over the last week in the Danish capital, this “People’s Declaration” argues that “there are solutions to the climate crisis,” and puts forward six demands.

“What people and the planet need is a just and sustainable transition of our societies to a form that will ensure the rights of life and dignity of all people and deliver a more fertile planet and more fulfilling lives to present and future generations,” it states.

The signatory organisations called on governments to take urgent climate action, most importantly the “complete abandonment of fossil fuels within the next 30 years, which must include specific milestones for every five-year period.”

They also demanded “an immediate cut in GHG (greenhouse gases) of industrialized countries of at least 40 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2020,” and “recognition, payment and compensation of climate debt for the overconsumption of atmospheric space and adverse effects of climate change on all affected groups and people.”

The statement goes on to reject “purely market-oriented and technology-centred false and dangerous solutions,” such as “nuclear energy, agro-fuels, carbon capture and storage, Clean Development Mechanisms, biochar, genetically ‘climate-readied’ crops, geoengineering, and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).”

The “real solutions” are “based on safe, clean, renewable, and sustainable use of natural resources, as well as transitions to food, energy, land, and water sovereignty.”

The signatory organisations also proposed that an “equitable tax on carbon emissions” be established instead of “the regime of tradable emission quotas,” and that multilateral financial bodies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund “be replaced by democratic and equitable institutions functioning in accordance with the United Nations Charter.”

They also demanded a “mechanism for strict surveillance and control of the operations of TNCs (transnational corporations).”

“Irrespective of the outcome of the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, there is an urgent need to build a global movement of movements dedicated to the long-term task of promoting a sustainable transition of our societies,” the statement concludes.
(END/2009)

Climate activists arrested by the Danish police. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/TerraViva

By Stephen Leahy

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) There is no Copenhagen climate treaty. History was not made here and no deal was sealed.

After two years of intense negotiations by 194 countries, what is abundantly clear is the enormous divide between the rich and poor countries. Poor countries want deep cuts in emissions by the industrialised world, and the latter continue to resist significant cuts and legally binding targets.

Despite the enormous pressures, high expectations and last minute efforts by 128 heads of state, all that emerged is a vague agreement of sorts called the “Copenhagen Accord”.

“Sealing the deal” on a new climate treaty has been postponed for at least a year.

Speaking of divides, civil society largely calls Copenhagen an utter disaster. It is a failure that “condemned millions of the world’s poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life”, said Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International.

On the other hand, U.S. President Barack Obama argued that a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” had been made at press conference in the Bella Centre just before midnight Friday. “All major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change,” he said.

Evidently, world leaders hadn’t been paying much attention to the previous 15 years of climate treaty negotiations.

“Heads of state are now fully engaged,” agreed Robert Orr, U.N. assistant secretary general for policy planning, speaking at a press conference. “Copenhagen was the first time leaders were using the climate vocabulary.”

“This has put climate on the map for leaders and leaders on the map for climate,” he said.

Orr also said the gap between politics and science is finally beginning to close.

The hour is late for waking up to the reality of climate change. Two new scientific studies suggest that climate feedbacks will make the two-degree C target unlikely to be achieved without “going negative” – meaning not only does the world have to go carbon-free in the coming decades, carbon will need to be removed from the atmosphere to lower concentrations to perhaps 350 ppm from today’s 389 ppm.

It was late last night in the final hours of the meeting when the U.S. president announced that India, South Africa, China and Brazil had agreed to a backroom agreement called the Copenhagen Accord.

However, since it only involved five out of the 193 countries whose officials had spent a long two weeks in Copenhagen, some delegates were visibly upset they’d not been involved previously and the meeting continued all night. By Saturday afternoon, confusion remained over the accord’s legal status, and half a dozen nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bolivia, declined to support it.

In the end, the accord has no legal standing under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and participating countries merely “note” its existence and express their support or not.

Friday night, Obama acknowledged that this was just one step on a long road to meet the apolitical targets of climate science. He insisted the Copenhagen Accord is an important first step because countries agreed to deep long-term cuts in emissions with the goal of holding the increase in global temperatures below two degrees C.

Developing countries also agreed to take both voluntary action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to increase those actions if financial support was provided. And there was agreement that rich countries must mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to help developing countries protect their forests, adapt to climate change and reduce their emissions.

They also agreed to work towards a legally binding treaty to be concluded by the end of next year in Mexico.

“The U.S. is not legally bound by anything that took place here in Copenhagen,” Obama was careful to point out.

Domestically, the United States is a divided country, and a long way from making binding commitments on climate.

Not an hour after Obama’s opening speech to the plenary Friday morning, several Republican members of Congress and the Senate held a press conference in the Bella Centre denying climate change was caused by emissions of fossil fuels and saying the science of the International Panel on Climate Change and dozens of scientific academies around the world was suspect.

None of the U.S. politicians are scientists and all hail from regions with powerful fossil fuel or automotive interests.

“We have lost many things along the way,” said Dessima Williams of Grenada, spokesperson for the 43-member Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), regarding their reluctant acceptance of the accord. “We have lost a vigourous commitment to stabilising global temperatures at 1.5 C.”

“We believe this is critical to the survival of our member states,” Williams said in a final plenary session Saturday.

Women were also hoping for gender-sensitive text to acknowledge the reality that women are by far the most impacted by climate change, said Ana Rojas of Energia, an International Network of Gender and Sustainability based in the Netherlands.

Only a third of the delegates attending the conference this year are women, which can make it more difficult for equal representation of women and men’s views in relation to climate change.

“We need a shared vision of gender in a final agreement. And not just concerning adaptation but also mitigation and financing,” Rojas told TerraViva.

While acknowledging that the accord represents some progress, it fell far short of the “fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement” that civil society had advocated. Outside the meetings, 1,800 protesters and media spokespersons were arrested on the suspicion they might do something illegal, in what civil society called attempts by the Danish government to suppress legitimate opposition and free speech.

The use of “tear gas, pepper spray, mass cages, baton charges and mass preemptive arrests sets a precedent dangerous not only for Denmark, but for the future of the world,” said Tadzio Müller of  Climate Justice Action, an international network of environmental and social justice groups.

“The world is facing tragic crises of leadership [on climate change],” said Greenpeace’s international executive director, Kumi Naidoo.

The accord represents a “major concession to climate polluting industries, especially in the fossil fuel sector”, Naidoo said. “Averting climate chaos has just gotten a whole lot harder.”

"It will take lot of us – probably in the streets" to make politicians face the truth, says climate scientist James Hansen. Credit: TerraViva/Stephen Leahy

No Real Deal, and No Exit

Analysis by Stephen Leahy

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) The roof of our house is on fire but our leaders, our economic system and we ourselves are ignoring the alarms and continuing to add more fuel. There are no exit doors in our house; there is nowhere else to go.

Dangerous climate change is already here.

The two-week climate summit in Copenhagen came to an end with disappointing results and details that are still vague.

A ”Copenhagen Accord” was agreed by the US, China, South Africa and India by Friday night. It was unclear which other countries were willing to support it.

But coral reefs are dying, the Arctic is melting and rising sea levels threaten the homes of millions. And we’re on our way to a planet-transforming four-degree C rise in global average temperatures in as soon as 50 years.

Future generations could face an utterly transformed planet, where large areas will be seven to 14 degrees C warmer, making them uninhabitable. In this world-on-fire, the one to two metre sea level rise by 2100 will leave hundreds of millions homeless, according to the latest science presented at the “4 Degrees and Beyond, International Climate Science Conference” at the University of Oxford in September.

That’s the science-based, slap-in-the-face reality as the Copenhagen climate talks fizzle out here with little progress Friday.

“Our leaders do not get the scale of the problem or the rapidity of the changes. They don’t get that it must be dealt with now,” said Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at Canada’s University of British Columbia and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

“Now” means that global carbon emissions peak in five years and begin to decline shortly thereafter to near zero by 2050, according to a report summarising the very latest science by the world’s top climate scientists, including Weaver. Called “The Copenhagen Diagnosis, 2009: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science”, it was released a week before the talks began here Dec. 7.

“More modest, achievable targets in the short term will get the planet on the right track,” Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been often quoted as saying. Harper’s “modest” target for Canada amounts to a three-percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2020. The U.S. target is little better.

Based on the scientific evidence, the world’s best and brightest climate scientists conclude that Canada and other industrialised nations must reduce emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 to have any hope of keeping the warming at two degrees C.

“Two degrees C will be a very difficult for modern society to cope with,” said Pål Prestrud, an Arctic researcher and director of Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway.

Even if all emissions were cut off today, global temperatures would decline very slowly – over a period of a thousand years. “If we wait too long, it will be too late to do anything,” Presetrud warned TerraViva here.

No scientist considers stabilising the climate at two degrees warmer to be getting the planet on the right track. The Arctic is already melting at the present 0.8 C of warming. There may be no sea ice in the summer in just 5 to 10 years.

What happens when the cold top of the world that drives the global weather system warms up? Temperature and precipitation patterns in Europe and North America will change, affecting agriculture, forestry and water supplies, the “Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications” report warned in September.

Worse still, a warmer Arctic will emit large volumes of carbon and methane, which are currently stored in the frozen soils called permafrost. Once that process gets underway, runaway global heating may be unstoppable.

At two degrees warmer, the majority of corals will die due to a combination of warmer temperatures and ocean acidification. Coral reefs are the nurseries for much of the fish in the oceans and hundreds of millions of people are dependent on them. Sea level rise will displace many millions more.

Finally, two degrees C of warming is only the global average. What it really means is that temperatures will range from one to four or five degrees hotter depending on the region. It also means at least one metre of sea level rise by 2100. Countries in Africa, small islands states and the least developed countries are calling for a 1.5 C target here.

Humans have enjoyed 10,000 years of climate stability, in which the global average temperature varied less than one degree C – even during the Little Ice Age and Middle Warming Period, says Robert Corell, director of the Global Change Programme at the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment in Washington, DC.

Global emissions over the past five years have been above the worst case scenarios of the IPCC, and on a path for a five- to six-degree C rise in temperatures by 2100, Corell told TerraViva.

He also warned that Earth’s natural absorbers of carbon, the oceans and forests, are taking up less carbon every year, meaning concentrations of heat-trapping carbon will increase faster than expected.

All the commitments for reductions made in Copenhagen up to date translate into a 3.8-degree C rise in global temperatures, he said in an interview.

“Canada’s federal government doesn’t have a freakin’ clue what two degrees means,” said Canada’s Weaver with vehemence. Vested corporate interests from one sector are blocking the transformation to a low carbon economy, he said: “Big oil is running things.”

“I am sorry to say,” writes James Hansen, “that most of what politicians are doing on the climate front is greenwashing – their proposals sound good, but they are deceiving you and themselves at the same time.”

One of the most respected climate experts, Hansen is director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

“Governments are stating emission goals that they know are lies,” Hansen wrote in the Observer newspaper Nov. 29.

“Are we going to stand up and give global politicians a hard slap in the face, to make them face the truth?” he asked. “It will take lot of us – probably in the streets. Or are we going to let them continue to kid themselves and us, and cheat our children and grandchildren?”

Civil society's message to the leaders meeting in Copenhagen. Credit:Ana Libisch/IPS

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) Heads of state and government are working fervently to complete an agreement in Copenhagen, but texts coming out of their midst so far lack details on emissions cuts and long-term funding.

Negotiations – resumed after U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech failed to deliver any tangible targets – are likely to continue into tomorrow.

“While the reality of climate change is not in doubt, I have to be honest, as the world watches us today, I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now, and it hangs in the balance,” Obama observed.

The latest draft Copenhagen accord suggests extending the mandate of the LCA and KP working groups to continue discussions, but so far major sticking points between developed and developing countries are not being worked out.

In the latest text the door is left open for a long-term goal of a maximum 1.5 degree rise in global warming to be adopted after 2016 when the agreement is reviewed. Till then, the leaders stick to the two degree temperature threshold spelled out by the IPCC.

No agreement has been reached yet on the amount by which overall emissions should be reduced before 2020, but an overall 50 percent cut by 2050 was adopted. Annex I countries will talk measures to reduce cuts by 80 percent by 2050.

Both developing and developed countries underline the need for emissions to peak ‘as soon as possible’, stressing that this will take more time in developing nations, where poverty eradication and economic growth are the first priorities.

The agreement highlights the need to measure carbon emissions per capita, mentioning “the right to equitable access to atmospheric space”. This point was very important for countries like China and India with large populations.

Other than a $30 billion start-up fund for the period 2010-2012, there are no hard commitments to funding for adaptation and mitigation.

An amount of $100 billion per year by 2020 is proposed for this, but it is unclear how the money will be gathered. On Thursday Friends of the Earth said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement of this figure was “inadequate.”

“We are not sure where the money is coming from; is it public, private, is it self-financing by the developing countries, is it from WB and IMF as well? We should have truly public finance coming from the U.S. as well as other Annex 1 countries, no strings attached.”

Developing countries’ demands for the creation of a new multilateral fund to administer and disperse funding under the Convention has been met with the establishment of the ‘Copenhagen Climate Fund’. Governance of the fund will be shared equally among developing and industrial countries. A Technology Mechanism will be started to accelerate development and transfer of technology.

Mitigation actions by developing countries are required, but not spelled out, and a REDD Plus mechanism is endorsed. There is no mention of women’s rights, or the rights of indigenous peoples, nor is there clarity about the controversial issue of intellectual property rights. The U.S. and China still disagree on the issue of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), while the other parties have agreed this should be ‘rigorous, robust and transparent’.

The draft of the ‘Copenhagen Accord’ was supposed to be submitted for discussion in the plenary at 6:00 PM on Friday, but this deadline passed as discussions continued.

Civil society organisations were still speaking of a “failure” in Copenhagen. “I’m not surprised that Copenhagen failed. It was the U.S. goal to obstruct any forward progress here. There is little changed from the Bush to the Obama administrations,” Anne Petermann, co-director of the U.S.-based Global Justice Ecology Project, told TerraViva.

Negotiators from developing countries remained critical about the lack of detail on funding.

“The amount of funding that will be provided to developing countries, especially the most vulnerable, to adapt to climate change as well as to adopt mitigation methods, still needs to be worked out,” said Sri Lankan U.N. ambassador Palitha Kohona. “You can’t expect to provide a pittance and also require them to make the changes, it just won’t work. We’ll need to have adequate sums so that these countries can make the changes necessary.”

“Ten billion dollars a year is a joke,” fumed Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. “The military expenditure of the U.S. is 700 billion dollars per year,” he told the plenary session. “If the climate were a bank it would have been saved already.”

* Claudia Ciobanu and Rajiv Fernando contributed to this report.
(END/2009)

Members of Friends of the Earth not allowed into the Bella Center. Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Claudia Ciobanu* COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) World leaders speaking in Copenhagen on Friday, the last day of negotiations for a deal on climate change, retreated into their national positions.

US President Barack Obama and his peers could not have been further from the call to “cooperate internationally to ensure respect for human rights everywhere in the world” contained in the People’s Declaration issued by NGOs working at the KlimaForum09 alternative summit.

While leaders of a group of several hundred NGOs were trying to submit a People’s Declaration to the UN in the Bella Center – the site of negotiations during COP15 – world leaders speaking inside the conference venue showed one more time why a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty cannot be agreed on today.

Leaders of the two major polluters, China and the US, both insisted that their countries will go on working on meeting their announced commitments, regardless of whether an international agreement is reached here in Copenhagen or not.

“We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say,” said Obama. The president reiterated the pledge made yesterday by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the US would contribute to a global fund of 100 billion dollars by 2020 to help developing countries deal with climate change.

But he insisted that the US would contribute this money “if and only if it is a part of a broader accord that includes mitigation and transparency.”

Developing countries have repeatedly asked for unconditional aid for adaptation to climate change.

Obama’s speech showed that the US took no heed of this call. And the insistence on transparency was a direct reference to one of the major bones of contention here in Copenhagen – the US demand that China’s emission reduction efforts are monitored internationally.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, in his turn, similarly said that his country would stick to its announced commitments regardless of whether a deal is reached in Copenhagen or not. Jiabao said that China would reduce its carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reminded, in a similar vein, that his country has adopted and started to implement a national action plan “relying on our own resources” and that the country would reduce energy intensity by 20 percent by 2020 on 2005 levels “regardless of the outcome of this conference.”

Singh added that committing to a document that means reduced expectations “would be wrong.” His statement echoed the warning issued by Friends of the Earth at the outset of the summit that “no deal is better than a bad deal.”

One of the few voices to bring some emotion into the series of official speeches was Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva, who started his speech by saying that he was feeling frustrated and that the negotiations in Copenhagen reminded him of his times when he was fighting business leaders as a trade unionist.

Lula bitterly commented on the inappropriateness of leaving the Copenhagen talks to the last minute discussions of heads of state. “I am not sure if such an angel or wise man will come down to this plenary and put in our minds the intelligence that we lacked,” he said.

Early in the afternoon on Friday, the choice seemed to be more and more one between a weak political agreement and no deal at all.

From the perspective of Friday’s country positions, the demands of civil society groups present here in Copenhagen to push for a fair deal on climate change seem catapulted from the moon.

The People’s Declaration, issued by participants in KlimaForum calls for “a complete abandonment of fossil fuels within the next 30 years; recognition, payment and compensation of climate debt by developed to developing countries; a rejection of purely market-oriented and technology-centered false and dangerous solutions (such as nuclear energy, agro-fuels and carbon-capture and storage); and real solutions to the climate crisis based on safe, clean and renewable energy and the transition to food, energy, land and water sovereignty.”

World leaders speaking Friday in Copenhagen were far from one another and far from the calls of citizen groups. The national mitigation plans of developed and large developing countries, that leaders promised to implement no matter what the outcome in Copenhagen is, are certainly market and technology oriented.

Speaking on Thursday in Copenhagen, US Congressmen Henry Waxman and Edward Markey (who give their names to the climate legislation recently passed by the US Congress) anticipated a “green technology revolution” that would help the world keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, even if a treaty sets the target only at a 2 degree rise. They insisted that competition between countries would ensure that better technology is developed and that mitigation efforts are thus increasingly successful.

Yet Copenhagen was not supposed to set the stage for competition. It was supposed to be based on international collaboration among all countries, which face the common threat of climate change.

In the corridors of the Bella Center, nothing is left of the enthusiasm of the first days. The NGOs have been excluded from the center ever since the high-level representatives started coming in on Tuesday. The People’s Declaration will never be submitted to world leaders, who will rush off to their planes and head home this evening.

The only people hanging around the corridors are journalists and lower-ranking members of the delegations, all reduced to listening to the speeches of the heads of state. There is nothing left to do in Copenhagen.

But, as Caetano Juanca, a peasant from Peru, said the other day: “We will continue to fight until they listen to us. Our struggle does not end here.”

*Stephen Leahy contributed to this report.
(END/2009)

Copenhagen demonstrators and police. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi*

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) – “It’s clear now – we’re not getting a binding deal at the end of tomorrow,” said the president of Friends of the Earth-United States, Erich Pica.

Industrialised nations are burying their heads in the sand and poor countries seem set to be forced to continue bearing the burden of global warming. The demonstrations, flyers, news media and all kinds of pressure to get the Western countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and compensate poor countries with financial resources and technology seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

Inside the Bella Centre, leaders from different parts of the world delivered more or less the same message about the impacts of climate change and why it is important to help poor countries.

The United States stimulated a lot of media interest when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put her government’s cards on the table. But her proposal of $100 billion a year of funding from 2020 confirmed the arrogance of the developed world: the South is looking for an immediate commitment to roughly $200 billion a year for mitigation, adaptation and technology transfers.

The U.S. plan would take a decade to make half of what developing countries estimate is needed available. Clinton rubbed it in by making even this limited offer conditional on countries such as China and Russia committing to transparent actions on cutting emissions.

“The developed countries are now trying to push the blame to developing countries so that when a deal fails to come up tomorrow, they’ll blame it on China or Russia for refusal to cooperate,” said Pica.

Other observers also noted that the U.S. proposal was silent on practical questions such as where the money will come from, how the fund will grow over the years, and very unclear on when it would end.

Several heads of state, whether by design or default, seem to be shying away from this meeting. Indian Prime Minister Mohamed Singh, who was supposed to fly from India to Copenhagen this afternoon, was reportedly delayed because of a technical problem with his aircraft.

This delay means that a consensus between the four largest developing economies – China, India, Brazil and South Africa – whose leaders were supposed to meet tonight, will take longer to emerge.

U.S. President Barack Obama also did not pitch today, postponing a much-anticipated address to the Conference.

A leaked internal document from the U.N. Secretariat spells out how much remains to be done: assessing the emissions reduction pledges from industrialised nations who are part of the Kyoto protocol and the voluntary offers from everyone else, the expected rise in temperature will be roughly three degrees.

The last day of negotiations now dawns with everything left to accomplish: a yawning gap remains between major blocs of countries, between the negotiations in the Bella Centre and the demands of civil society, and – still – between what the markets can conceive and what scientists say is the minimum needed to protect the diversity of life on this planet.

* Claudia Ciobanu, Servaas van den Bosch and Terna Gyuse contributed to this report.
(END/2009)

Adriana Marquisio and Maude Barlow at the Klimaforum09. Credit:Stephen Leahy/IPS

Stephen Leahy* – Tierramérica

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) Similar market-based solutions will be used to “solve” the growing water crisis, warned experts at the Klimaforum09, a parallel meeting a few kilometres away from the official COP15 talks.

“Corporations do not want regulations and have convinced governments that they can deliver continued economic growth and save the planet,” said Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, the largest citizens group in Canada and author of several books about water issues.

“It shows the power of the corporate lobby that nearly everyone, including many big NGOs, all see the market as the solution to climate change,” Barlow told Tierramérica.

Meanwhile, the climate justice movement is fighting against carbon trading and carbon offsets and advocating for real emissions cuts, while recognising that the commons – air and water – are a public trust, she said.

“I’ve spent five days in the Bella Centre (the site of the official COP15 negotiations) and the real issues around water and land are being ignored,” said Adriana Marquisio, vice president of FEOSE, the union of employees of Uruguay’s public water agency.
“The little countries who are suffering real impacts (of climate change) are trying to bring attention to this,” Marquisio told Tierramérica.

Both Uruguay and Bolivia have pushed hard to broaden the vision on this issue, but the United States is dominating the talks with its agenda of corporate interests, she said.

In 2004, Uruguay approved a reform that gave constitutional priority to the right to water, and banned its privatisation. Other countries are considering similar measures.

To properly address vital issues dealing with water and climate, “we can’t be talking about profits,” she said.

“Why should we have to defend water or air as a commons?” wondered Italian expert Riccardo Petrella, founder of the International Committee for the World Water Contract and a member of the World Political Forum’s Scientific Committee.

“If water or air are turned into commodities, that is equivalent to commodifying life itself and leads to the privatisation of democracy,” Petrella said. “If we do this, it will make democracy a lie.”

The negotiations to reach an agreement for confronting climate change ignore water, biodiversity and land. It is all about energy and finance, which are the only interests of the rich countries, he says.

But water is an essential ingredient for energy production: 44 percent of freshwater in France is used by its energy sector. And the portion reaches 60 percent in some other countries, according to Petrella.

“The reality of resource depletion, including water, and the reality of two billion hungry people are peripheral in the official talks,” he said.

The central focus of climate justice is food, land and water, he explained.

Petrella and others are lobbying for a global agreement on water and a new United Nations agency to “prevent and settle international disputes on the property and use of water through common monitoring systems,” states a proposal from the World Political Forum.

Having seen the widespread distribution of mobile phones in Africa and elsewhere, some water companies believe they can do the same with bottled water so that their products become the only source of drinking water and negate the need for investing in public water infrastructure, said Barlow.

“Around the world, investors are buying up water rights and land. India and China are doing this already in Africa,” she said.

If water becomes just another commodity, in many parts of the world farmers will sell water rather than grow food because they can make more money that way, she said.

Water is also a crucial element in the manufacture of many goods: an automobile requires 400,000 litres of water to produce the steel, plastic, electronics and other components.

Oil production also uses enormous amounts of water. Petrella believes that the urgency of the water crisis is such that no country in the developing South should export products to the industrialised North that require water to produce.

It is equivalent to exporting water, he said, and “that is one of the biggest problems we have to deal with in future.”

A model for effective water protection is that of the small northeastern U.S. state of Vermont, says Barlow. Water there belongs to all the people of the state and the government oversees its distribution.

The state issues permits for water use, with first priority going to people, nature and agriculture. Industrial uses are second, and the government has the right to deny water access to companies that pollute.

Looking to the future and the potential for millions of climate refugees, Barlow believes that most of those forced to relocate will be due to lack of water.

With water excluded from the formal climate negotiations and the predominance of corporate interests, the best outcome in Copenhagen is a total failure, she said.

Petrella argues that peace, justice and democracy have never come from pricing common resources: “Commodification of carbon and privatisation of the atmosphere will cause enormous conflict and devastation.”

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

(END/2009)

Kumi Naidoo. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

Claudia Ciobanu interviews Kumi Naidoo, head of Greenpeace International

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) “Climate change is an opportunity to deal with all the issues of equity and justice that we have been struggling for all along,” said Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International in an interview with IPS on Thursday in Copenhagen.

“And perhaps this is why there is such resistance from rich countries: they know that if they do the right thing in Copenhagen, they have to begin to share economic power and to have a more equitable trading system because all of those things have to follow, otherwise you cannot deal with climate change.”

IPS: With less than two days before the end of negotiations in Copenhagen, world leaders seem reluctant to commit to a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal. Why?

KUMI NAIDOO: I think that developed countries are still in denial about their responsibility, even if they formally acknowledge it. The bottom line is we have global economic apartheid and essentially what we are seeing here is a sort of climate apartheid.

I want to stress that it is the developed countries’ governments that do not care. The publics in the developed countries see the injustice of it and I think that not only do rich country governments betray the people of poor countries but they are also betraying the citizens of their own countries and they are betraying democracy.

Q: They are also using their publics as an excuse not to act?

A: Absolutely. And that was indicated on Saturday, 12 December, with all the mobilizations around the world.

The level of mobilization on Saturday shows there is momentum building up now and what was most important for me is that it was not only the usual suspects (Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and other environmental organizations), but also churches, trade unions, and development organizations that traditionally did not focus on the environment.

Q: So the environment works as a catalyst for a global movement?

A: Yes. Because people can see the interconnections. How can we have human rights if the planet is uninhabitable, how do we make progress with development if people end up in a situation where every progress they make gets lost. Look at Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world – it had huge innovations on the part of the NGO community, many of those progresses have been reversed already by the effects of rising sea levels that are contaminating the water supply and creating water scarcity.

Take gender equality for example. If we look at Africa, where climate change is already having a devastating impact on agriculture, and then we ask who are the most vulnerable, it is small farmers and many of them are women.

One of the things that rich countries don’t pay attention to is that climate change has already lead to conflicts, and it will continue to increase conflicts because, sadly, the new wars won’t be about oil but about water.

If you take the genocide in Darfur, people always see it as an ethnic conflict, but they forget that Lake Chad which neighbours Darfur was one of the largest inland seas in the world and now it is virtually dry. Water scarcity, along with land scarcity, is one of the biggest drivers of the tragic conflict in Darfur.

The US is spending 30 billion dollars annually now just on the war in Afghanistan. If they are worried about the kinds of money we are asking for, then what is the point of spending money on war, military conflict and conflict resolution when in fact they could actually create real life opportunities for people who have been desperately poor and socially excluded. If we address that, it is a way to prevent conflict and war.

Q: Climate change is a major security issue…

A: It is a fundamental security issue and, even if everyone knows it, the summit has sadly not given enough attention to that.

At the end of the day it is a matter of political will. If months ago they could mobilize trillions of euros to bail out the banks, why can’t they mobilize in the same way to save lives and turn this crisis into an opportunity.

Because there is a real opportunity here. In Africa, we have not even begun to scratch the surface with solar energy. If we make serious investments in solar, it is very likely that within the next 20 years Africa, particularly North Africa, could be net exporters of energy into Europe.

And I think all developed countries here, particularly the EU as a collective and within it Germany, and mainly the US have behaved pathetically, especially when we put it in a framework of justice. Developing countries have been least responsible for the situation we find ourselves in and they are the ones who are paying the first and the most brutal price.

They were told that they needed to put targets on the table and they have done so in the run up to Copenhagen. India and China for example passed or are in the process of passing domestic legislation, and they are moving in the right direction, but the rich countries have not reciprocated.

If you want to put it bluntly, if we don’t deliver a fair, ambitious and binding treaty here, we are issuing a death warrant for small island states and the least developed countries.

Q: The way things look today, global leaders are just about to sign such a death warrant this week.

A: We should remember that two years ago in Bali, at a similar time in the conference, people were even more pessimistic. It was on the last day that the moral pressure coming from the intervention of Papua New Guinea forced the US to compromise in the early hours of the morning.

In some cultures they say ‘it ain’t over until the fat lady sings’ and so I say ‘it ain’t over until the thin man from Washington DC sings.’ So let’s see when he (US President Barack Obama) comes.

Q: What do you think of the exclusion of NGOs from the negotiation center in the last three days of the conference?

A: I think the actions against the NGOs represent a betrayal of democracy, a betrayal of the informal compact that civil society has with the United Nations. It is desperately unjust and cruel, especially for small NGOs.

For them – who have spent this year saving money and preparing to come here – to be so brutally, unceremoniously and without any sense of dignity tossed out is a really big betrayal. When you look at some of the smallest grassroots groups present here, people who actually have the most authentic voices, being treated as they have been is very painful.

It’s been very painful for me to be here inside and I have actually thought about walking out myself. But if you are going to get any movement in the negotiations we have to use any limited capacity we have (Naidoo, who explains that he comes from a background of small NGOs, has moist eyes as he speaks about this topic).

We cannot blame the exclusion of NGOs on the Danish government. We are here in a UN space and the UN should know very well that this conference would not take place without the activities of civil society over decades, the heads of states would not be here if it wasn’t for us putting pressure on them in virtually every country around the world over the last year to come here because this issue is too important to be left to junior delegates.

Also, the legitimacy of any outcome here is undermined if it’s being done behind close doors, behind people and civil society.

The UN needs to realize that even if by some last minute trick a fair, ambitious and binding treaty is agreed on – and we can live without the legal exact wording right now, we need a clear set of ambitious targets, with the right kind of money, with the right kind of specific actions agreed and drafting the deal language in the next couple of months – the real work starts the day after to actually implement the deal.

And who is going to hold governments accountable and complement government capacity if not the NGOs?

Even if CoP15 will be a failure, what I would say to all NGOs, community groups, social movements, big NGOs, trade unions and everyone who came here is that they must take heart. It is not their failing. It is a failing of political leadership and what we have done has created a global momentum. We need to consolidate that, unite more, work more aggressively and continue the struggle.
(END/2009)

People's assembly. Credit: TerraViva/IPS

By Rajiv Fernando*

COPENHAGEN (IPS/Terraviva) Negotiators worked through Tuesday night without a positive outcome on providing financing for poor countries, commitments on emission reductions or a legally-enforceable treaty.

NGOs were definitely not happy with the move to limit their access to the conference during the last few days.

Friends of the Earth, who have several thousand members present in Copenhagen, found themselves barred from the conference centre after their leading role in protests outside. Disruptions inside the venue were also putting pressure on the conference organisers to take action.

“It is a crisis of democracy when campaigning charities like Friends of the Earth are prevented from speaking up on behalf of communities around the globe within the talks themselves,” said FoEI executive director Andy Atkins.

“We were stunned to discover that every Friends of the Earth delegate has been banned from attending these crucial talks – if this is a consequence of our role as one of the most prominent groups calling for a strong and fair agreement, this is even more disturbing.”

What may have come as a disappointment to some was a surprising move at the beginning of the high level talks. COP 15 President Connie Hedegaard resigned from her position. It was announced that she would still be involved in negotiations with ministers in closed ministerial meetings but Danish Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen took over duties guiding the conference.

Rasmussen seemed to struggle in his new role, when what must have been only the third or fourth sentence he uttered as conference president was interrupted by a point of order. Led by Brazil and China, the developing world insisted on absolute clarity that the draft text being discussed was the one negotiators had wrestled over through the night, and that Rasmussen was not again attempting to abandon the dual track – Kyoto Protocol and long-term successor – that the G77 plus China have insisted upon.

Rasmussen’s efforts to dismiss concerns and proceed were firmly rebuffed, and he had some trouble keeping order and limiting speakers to their allotted five minutes when the agenda was resumed.

With the second speaker, Prime Minister of Ethiopia Meles Zenawi, Rasmussen certainly knew he had a tough job ahead of him.

Zenawi not only spoke for an extended period, but also came up with his own proposal text – one which undermined the positions of other African negotiators and ministers. Zenawi’s words drew sharp criticism from watching civil society who believed his words threaten the very future of Africa.

“If Prime Minister Meles wants to sell out the lives and hopes of Africans for a pittance – he is welcome to – but that is not Africa’s position,” said Mithika Mwenda of Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance.

The Ethiopian Prime Minister wasn’t the only one to float a proposal. A leaked Danish text caused considerable commotion during the first week; now, apparently there is a fresh Danish proposal that has not yet been seen.

The Indian Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, did not want to comment without having seen the proposal, but he did tell TerraViva, “It could have been handled in a better way. But still they have said that they would indicate the two texts, the LCA and the KP text, into one Danish text. Let us see whether they have done that.”

In terms of the United States and its acceptance of the Kyoto Protocol, Ramesh said, “The sense we get is that Kyoto is in intensive care if not dead. Kyoto needs a number of oxygen cylinders. One of them is in the White House.”

*Nasseem Ackburally, Servaas van den Bosch, Claudia Ciobanu and Terna Gyuse contributed to this report.
(END/2009)

Protesters demanded that developed countries respect Kyoto Protocol commitments and reduce emissions. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

By Claudia Ciobanu and Servaas van den Bosch

COPENHAGEN (IPS/Terra Viva) – Fed up with the lack of progress in the climate negotiations, campaigners marched on the Bella Centre. NGOs at the negotiations staged a walkout to connect with civil society outside, but police violently broke up this ‘people’s assembly’ and arrested the ringleaders.

A morning of protest started around 10.30 at the Bella Centre with a sit-in of ninety members of international environmental NGO Friends of the Earth (FOE), who despite having access passes to the conference venue were excluded for security reasons.

“This is a militarisation of the conference,” said Friends of the Earth chairmen Nnimmo Bassey. “Copenhagen is a city under siege.”

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer, who came to speak to protesters, admitted that accreditation had been withdrawn because of indications FoEI would try to break out of the centre to meet protesters outside.

Sit-in by members of Friends of the Earth. Credit: Nasseem Ackburally/IPS

Just after De Boer agreed to negotiate with the activists, hundreds of indigenous people marched through the Bella Centre towards the exit beating drums and chanting “Join the people’s assembly!”, “Claim power now!” and “Respect the rights of indigenous people!”

“We demand the rights of indigenous people be respected in this agreement,” said a protester from Mexico, Maria Sanchez from Mexico. “The Kyoto protocol must be respected and developed nations must lower their emissions.”

Police in riot gear arrived outside the Bella Centre in massive numbers and prevented  the indigenous people from joining the People’s Assembly outside the Bella Centre. The ‘people’s assembly’ was declared illegal despite having been granted a permit earlier.

Outside, helicopters hovered overhead and wounded cops were carried away behind the barricades, police stormed the truck from where organisers were rallying the protesters.

“Come help us now, the police are getting in,” screamed one organiser through the speakers before he was silenced and loaded into a police van.

Activists under arrest outside the venue. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

The protest caused chaos at the Bella Centre’s entrance which was immediately sealed off  for security reasons. Ministers and diplomats were stuck in the waiting crowd. Journalists rushing to the scene of the protest were turned away.

Reporter Jose Siles from A-TV in Spain was arrested when he tried to get inside. “They are hurting me,” he cried out in pain when dragged away by Danish police. “I have done nothing wrong, this is not a democracy.”

Inside the Bella Centre, journalists were barred from covering the ongoing sit-in in an attempt to isolate the protesters.

(END/2009)