From Barcelona to Copenhagen

It seems like hardly any time has passed since the penultimate round of climate talks took place in Barcelona. But in just over a week, world leaders will meet in Copenhagen where they must agree a fair, ambitious and legally binding climate treaty.

This is the big one, the one we’ve all been waiting for. The lives of many millions of the world’s poorest people are hanging in the balance so it is vitally important that the politicians get this right.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot still to do but rather than knuckling down, the leaders of some industrialised countries are talking about delay…

This week a number of key political figureheads called for decisions on a legally binding climate change agreement to be pushed back until next December. The Danish Prime Minister – whose country is hosting the climate talks – called for negotiators to come to a ‘politically binding’ agreement in Copenhagen, which will be followed with a legal agreement ‘sometime in the future’. This proposal was welcomed by ‘aggard countries including Canada, Australia and the US.

It’s hard not to be disappointed. The Danish proposal is an attempt to lower expectations and prejudge the nature and level of what we can expect from Copenhagen. And it’s playing right into the hands of those countries that are reluctant to do their fair share to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Last week, US President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Hu Jintao restored some ambition when they announced that they are looking for an accord that “covers all of the issues in the negotiations and one that has immediate operational effect." But this is not necessarily the fair, ambitious and legally binding deal we need.

Getting a legally binding outcome from Copenhagen is important. A political agreement will be essentially worthless if it is not rapidly translated into a legal agreement. Industrialised country leaders are forgetting that we already have a political agreement – it’s called the Bali Action Plan and it was drawn up at climate talks in Indonesia in December 2007. This plan gave countries two full years, until Copenhagen this December, to negotiate a legally binding agreement on reducing emissions and providing support to developing countries to help them adapt to the effects of climate change.

While some industrialised countries are pushing for delay, developing countries are demonstrating that they are ready to act. Brazil and South Korea have this week released fresh commitments to substantially limit the growth in their emissions below business as usual.

At the last round of talks in Barcelona, African nations walked out in disgust at the lack of effort being made by rich countries to secure a legally binding deal which will keep global temperatures below 2 degrees C (the level identified by climate scientists as a potential tipping point for long-term, catastrophic climate change).

Since then the G77 – a group of large developing countries – and AOSIS – an alliance of small island nations – have both released statements threatening to reject any outcome that falls short of a legally binding treaty.

Copenhagen is certainly shaping up to be quite a show down…