Copenhagen: the great failure

The hub of the Copenhagen conference centre was an enormous globe. Whenever I walked by during the two weeks of negotiations, climate diplomats were having their staged photo ops there. Weighed down like Atlas, they were carrying the world on their shoulders for the media back home: «Look, here I am, saving the world.»
And now this fiasco at the end of the conference. Copenhagen is a failed summit. That simply cannot be whitewashed. Copenhagen is not just a missed opportunity. It is a collective failure by the world's top political «dignitaries».
The more than 120 Heads of State and Government made their appearances with powerful eloquence, grand gestures and theatrical demeanour. Not one speech failed to contain the sentences: «Climate change is the greatest challenge of the 21st century.» «The time for talking is over, we must act now.» «What is at stake is nothing less than the future of our children.» «We dare not fail.»
After three days and nights of the frenzied gridlock, the 30 mightiest players on the world stage presented the «rest» of the negotiating States with a document called the «Copenhagen Accord». For the purposes of effective climate protection, it can only be described as worthless. Even more ludicrous was that they took note of, then criticised the inadequacy of the very policy declaration they had presented: «It is not sufficient to meet the threat of climate change,» said the US negotiator. How true.

Bitter outcome

The outcome is bitter. Despite the urgent warnings from the scientific community that time is running out, despite dramatic appeals from developing countries and island States threatened with disaster, the world community has ended up with empty hands.
Copenhagen failed to deliver on what the 193 countries had already promised and agreed two years ago in Bali: to build further on the Kyoto Protocol, which runs until 2012. If there was still common will and mutual trust back then, what predominated this time around was selfishness and distrust. The industrialised countries, the USA first and foremost, lacked any serious readiness to reduce their emissions quickly and drastically. They were unwilling to assume their historic responsibility for climate warming. China does not want to «hamper» its fast-growing economy by means of a climate protection agreement.
The rift between industrialised, emerging and developing countries could not be bridged. Hardly anything was heard in Copenhagen about solidarity and justice.
The upshot is that there is no binding agreement that would effectively slow down climate change. Missing were decisive reduction targets by industrialised countries, the funds to provide help to developing countries, as well as the commitment by emerging countries to allow their announced endeavours to be monitored.
It is pure cynicism to call urgently in the document for the temperature not to be allowed to rise by more than two degrees centigrade, whilst at the same time being unwilling to consent to the required short and long-term CO2 reduction targets. What this means in plain language is that the climate catastrophe is being knowingly and willingly accepted, because «business as usual» will lead inexorably to a temperature rise of three to four degrees. The laws of physics are not negotiable.

Threatened stalemate

Now the global climate policy is threatened with stalemate. Time is getting shorter. Those hampering progress will not be the first to bear the consequences. Once again, the victims are the poor and defenceless people in the developing countries that are already being hard hit by climate change today. The representative of one Pacific island hit the nail on the head when he said: «Copenhagen is a betrayal of the poor, a betrayal of the particularly vulnerable countries, a betrayal of our small island States and of all this planet's children and grandchildren.»
Awareness of the problem on the part of critical and concerned world public opinion is obviously greater than the readiness of politicians to take action. This is why it is so important for civil society and non-governmental organisations, which had strongly advocated a «bottom up» global climate policy in Copenhagen, to keep up the pressure on their governments back home. In any event, we will not discharge the Swiss Federal Council from its responsibility. Switzerland must now pursue a climate policy that represents a genuine contribution to global climate protection. Only in this way will the community of nations still stand a chance of finding the «Nodudgang» (emergency exit), which was written, to no avail, above the main entrance to the Copenhagen conference centre.

Rosmarie Bär

Rosmarie Bär is a climate specialist at Alliance Sud. She took part in the Copenhagen climate conference as a member of the Swiss delegation.

Article published in: Alliance Sud News No.  62, Winter 2009/10