About 50 people have already asked me about my trip to Copenhagen and I have yet to give them a proper answer. I merely say something to the tone of “Hmm it was pretty cold” or “We didn’t really get that great a deal, I am sure you can read all about it in the papers”. The reason for that is because (and my buddy Abhishek will ditto me on this) Copenhagen was a very disappointing meet.
And on more than one grounds.
It had human rights violations, with the police capturing and beating up people, often for no fault of theirs.
One of the major issues for debate this time was the expulsion of NGO and civil society during the 2nd week of the conference. Rumors are that this was done so that Obama would face no difficulty when he was inside the center. It got so bad that there was an instance when R K Pachauri had to wait outside the Bella Center because the UN authorities wouldn’t let him in. (I had to confirm that twice before publishing it).
One interesting impact this had on the developing nations was that they lost a vital voice inside the Bella Center. Why? Well Copenhagen is an atrociously expensive city and I suppose that was a major reason why there was such little representation from the global south at COP. And so that made it all the more important for the NGO to propagate their message inside the center and put pressure on the negotiators to come up with a fair legally binding treaty.
So much money was spent on the conference ( a number going to hundreds of millions of dollars viz an average per delegate expenditure of 15000 USD) and yet we didn’t reach a conclusion. Well, sort of. What we finally got was something weird. A politically binding accord. Check this WRI piece on what it actually means
Ah, now doesn’t that put us straight into the crux of the issue. Everybody wanted a treaty. Finally what we got was much lesser than what the science demands. 2 degree rise in temperature, billions short of the funding that’s recommended and a deal that isn’t even legally binding.
There were of course other issues whose answers will be revealed in due course of time, such as who will get how much money from the adaptation fund. That will be a critical question as far as I am concerned.
There are decisions to be taken but time isn’t on our side. India has already rolled out a massive solar project earlier this year and it will be interesting to see how that come along. At the same time we have also been making nuclear deals with US, Canada, Russia.
The talks at the Fresh Air Center (media center belonging to Tcktcktck, who funded my trip) were amazing. We had Andy Revkin, UN officials, Yes Men, Climate Action Network (CAN) guys come to speak. CAN told us few days before itself that there would be a massive campaign to spread the propaganda of China (and maybe India) being the major culprit behind the failure at Copenhagen, to take some of the blame off USA [here is one example, though I am not doubting Lynas' credibility, I am merely saying that such an opinion was always there on the table]. Truth be told, its not as simple as that. There are too many parties involved, each trying to ensure that they aren’t caught on the wrong side of the deal.
It seems clear that the biggest issue here isn’t a political or an economic issue, but is an issue of trust. Apart from that there’s also the issue of big oil spending lots of big bucks, but that’s another story.
Also check out this excellent post by Dan Kammen who writes about the ups and downs that he experienced during the COP (he left Copenhagen after the first week).
