1 – It’s all the play for!

I arrived in Copenhagen over the weekend, after a grueling 23 hour train journey, to find a city brimming with over 25,000 negotiators, campaigners, lobbyists and journalists from over 192 countries, all here for a conference that will make history, whatever the outcome.

The atmosphere is electric, twinged with excitement and anticipation of what is to come. The first day of negotiations was largely taken up with speeches, ceremonies and agenda setting – the real negotiating, dealing and influencing will begin tomorrow as we move into smaller, more informal meetings that will look at the issues in more detail.

One of the key issues at the negotiations is emissions reductions, or ‘mitigation’ in negotiations speak. And there is hope here – in recent weeks all industrialised countries and most of the big emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa have all put emissions reductions targets on the table. While most developing country targets are pretty good, industrialised targets are lacking in ambition. The average target for industrialised countries reductions is just 11-17% on 1990 levels by 2020 – and the higher number is only conditional on a number of other outcomes being agreed. If we are to prevent catastrophic climate change, this target must be at least 40%.

There is a lot still to be done and it can be achieved. At previous conferences, negotiators have lacked the mandate to make the big political decisions. But next week in Copenhagen we will be blessed with the presence of environment ministers and over 100 heads of state and government – the people that have the power to take the decisions we need to secure a safer future for this generation and all those to come.

At present we are heading towards a future that could see global temperatures rise by well over 3°C. While this may not seem like much to us, for those in developing counties and small island states such as those in the Caribbean and Pacific this would be a huge threat to their very survival. Small island states are calling for Copenhagen to secure an outcome that will limit global temperature rises to just 1.5°C because in their words – we need “1.5 to stay alive”.

Click here for Day 2 - the next installment.