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What can we expect from Copenhagen?

For 12 days during December, the world’s leaders will descend on Copenhagen aiming to agree a deal on tackling climate change.

It’s been a long road. This agreement – if one is made – will be the replacement to the Kyoto Treaty, which has hardly been a glowing testament to fighting global warming. The US, under George Bush, didn’t sign up, which seemed to give every other nation the excuse of not doing very much.

Climate change has been on the agenda of every G8 Summit in the intervening years as politicians have inched towards progress. Copenhagen, the scientists say, is the Last Chance Corale. If world leaders don’t sign an agreement in December, we risk tipping into a climate where temperatures are raised by more than 2 degrees. And at that point, weather, food and water supply, everything becomes uncertain. So what can we expect from Copenhagen and what difference will it make?

Climate change has been big news this year as scientists, politicians and development agencies have made their views about the Copenhagen summit known in the press.

Here in the UK in September, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn warned that Britain needs to plan now for a future that will be both hotter and wetter, bringing intemperate extremes of flood and drought.

Launching the UK Climate Projections 2009 report, Mr Benn said that by 2080 London will be between 2C and 6C hotter than it is now. Every part of Britain is likely to be wetter in winter and drier in summer, according to the predictions.
‘Climate change is going to transform the way we live,’ said Mr Benn. ‘These projections show us the future we need to avoid and the future we need to plan for.’

In the same month, the World Bank reported that climate change will be a serious barrier to growth in poor nations and must be tackled. It called on governments to reach ‘an equitable deal’ at Copenhagen. It said that failure to do so would hit poor nations hardest.

‘Developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change,’ said World Bank president Robert Zoellick. ‘A crisis that is not of their making and for which they are the least prepared.

‘For that reason, an equitable deal in Copenhagen is vitally important.’
Aid and development agencies agree. Alliance member Tearfund has been lobbying world leaders on this subject for more than a decade. Its climate change spokesperson, Sara Shaw, said, ‘Climate change will affect all of us. But it’s hitting poor people now. It’s in our interests to act now and help poor countries.’

Whilst there is far from one voice on climate change, many scientists are also calling on politicians to act. In March, more than 2,500 researchers and economists attended a meeting in Copenhagen designed to update the world on climate change before the summit next month.

‘We have a problem,’ was the key message from Dr Katherine Richardson, who chaired the scientific steering committee that organised the conference.
Scientists heard that ice melt could lead to sea levels rising by more than a metre, leading to millions of people being made homeless. If the world’s temperature rose by 3 degrees, they heard, the Amazon rainforest could lose 75 per cent of its trees.
Lord Stern, whose report on climate change was published in 2006, addressed the meeting. A 5 degree temperature rise would have dramatic results for millions of people he said, including mass migration sparking conflict.

‘You’d see hundreds of millions of people, probably billions of people who would have to move and we know that would cause conflict, so we would see a very extended period of conflict around the world, decades or centuries as hundreds of millions of people move,’ said Lord Stern.

The Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen echoed Lord Stern’s words. ‘Business as usual is dead,’ he said. ‘I hope the whole world will join us and set a two degree goal as an ambition of a climate deal in Copenhagen.’

There is good news. The G8 countries said this summer, for the first time, that action must be taken to prevent a 2 degree temperature rise. In September, Japan promised a big cut in greenhouse gas emissions, aiming for a 25 per cent cut by 2020. This won praise from the UN this is recommending that developed countries commit to a 25-40 per cent cut by 2020.

Analysts are more hopeful that America will finally come on board, following President Obama’s positive statements about the need to tackle global warming.
But major developing nations such as India, China and Brazil also have to be persuaded to reduce emissions that could affect their burgeoning economies.

Not surprisingly therefore, the pre-Copenhagen talk is of stalled negotiations, less achievement, extended talks into 2010. In other words, the spin doctors are trying to manage expectations for failure.

‘Apprehensive’. ‘Daunted.’ That’s how lobbyists described their mood to me in the run up to Copenhagen. But they’re still pushing for a deal. ‘We can’t just negotiate endlessly,’ said Tearfund’s Sara Shaw. ‘It’s too urgent. It’s too pressing. We need an agreement urgently.’

in Environment

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