A leaked draft document has caused distrust between developing and developed nations at the Copenhagen climate change conference. (Photo of COP15 president, Connie Hedegaard courtesy of United Nations/Claus Fisker)

Pacific Scoop
By Oxfam NZ’s Barry Coates in Copenhagen.

Is this the real deal?

If the world fails to deliver a political agreement at the UN climate conference in December, it will be “the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century”, says COP15 president, Connie Hedegaard.

The dramatic story from yesterday was the appearance of a draft proposal from the Danish government for the final outcome. As host, the Danes are President of the conference and if there can’t be agreement from negotiating 20 pages of documents, there are precedents for the President to introduce a draft themselves. While it was ‘leaked’ to the Guardian newspaper, it has been an open secret that the Danes were talking to a few countries about a draft document.

As soon as we got the draft, things went crazy. Everyone was wanting to know what was in it, what it meant, whether it pointed to a deal from Copenhagen etc. My role was to go through the document with an Oxfam colleague and assess whether it meets the criteria for a fair, ambitious and binding deal. That’s tough to do under normal circumstances but with thousands of people around and some media interviews to do, things got a bit frantic. Finally now, at midnight, they are calming down!

The top line is that:

It’s not fair because it primarily reflects the interests of some major developed countries (notably the US and EU)
It’s not ambitious because it talks about a reduction of 50% in global greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2050; that’s way off the cuts that science demands and will be necessary to avoid catastrophic impacts on millions of vulnerable people – Oxfam is calling for at least 80% cuts; and there are no figures for mid term targets for the rich nations (the science demands at least 40% cuts by 2020)
It’s also not ambitious because the funding mechanisms are weak – a real deal from Copenhagen needs to scale up funding to meet the needs for adaptation in vulnerable countries and to support emissions reductions in the developing world. Oxfam estimates around US$200 billion will be needed each year. It sounds a lot, but is tiny compared to the US$8.4 trillion spent responding to the financial crisis (hence the signs around Copenhagen “if the climate was a bank, it would be bailed out by now”)
And it’s not binding because it is not a fully legally binding agreement, and crucially, because it doesn’t have a mechanism to ensure that emissions reductions in the rich countries are enforceable (like the Kyoto Protocol).

So, in summary, the draft is not great on the headlines. But the good news is that many of the details are a step forward, and include issues that developing countries have been calling for, like direct access to funds for adaptation (instead of them being tied up in red tape), and funding from taxes on shipping and aviation fuels.

Other news from today – I had a rather disappointing meeting with the New Zealand government delegation. Lots of vague generalities but they weren’t open with what they are doing in the negotiations.

I also went to a Board meeting of the Global Campaign for Climate Action (GCCA), the coalition behind the TckTckTck campaign. Yesterday we presented a petition with 10 million signatures to the head of the UN climate change secretariat and the Danish Prime Minister. GCCA has been doing great organising to amplify the campaigning messages of hundreds of NGOs, faith groups, trade unions and others around the world. It has been gratifying to see this quite amazing initiative playing a major role in cranking up the public pressure (check out www.tcktcktck.org).

This leak of a draft outcome for the meeting brings it home that there are few negotiating days left. Ministers will be here on Wednesday next week and the pressure is on to craft a document that they can complete negotiations on, in time for Heads of State to sign on Friday week. The Danish draft was a disappointment but there is still time to substantially improve it. At the end of Day #2, a fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement is still possible.

More tomorrow….