Denying democracy is what ultimately led to the debacle of ineffective action on global climate change, write Curtis Doebbler and Margreet Wewerinke What started as a festive effort to do something good for our planet ended in a heap of acrimonious recriminations and a meaningless declaration that does little to slow our planet's journey down a path of mutually assured destruction. How did it all fail? The setting was ideal. The Danish hosts had planned the event so well as to entice over half the world's leaders to come to the otherwise unceremonious Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP15) on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the simultaneously held Fifth Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Danish government had also made a significant effort to ensure that civil society groups -- the real proponents of efforts to save our planet -- could also be in Copenhagen despite the prohibitive cost of visiting one of the most expensive cities in the world. The hosts went so far as to provide free accommodation (thousands of Danes hosted visitors in their homes), free local and sometimes international transportation, free Internet access, including computers, and a full schedule of political, social, educational and merely entertaining events. The Danish also resorted to some less welcoming techniques like giving the police overly broad powers to act in violation of individual human rights, which the police obligingly exercised regularly against demonstrators. As a result, reports of police brutality, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and gratuitous violence, significantly outnumbered reports of climate change activists causing problems. The Danish also put their own ecological ingenuity to work to ensure offsetting the huge carbon footprint generated by the nearly 40,000 airline passengers, 1500 limousines, and countless tons of waste and pollution that marked the conference. The stage was set. The setting could hardly have been better equipped. But for all the good intentions and meticulous planning, the hosts and many others had appeared to forget what was at stake. Problems were apparent early. Indeed, before COP15 opened it was clear to everyone involved in the past two decades of negotiations that only if the will and courage could be mustered to make hard decisions could the goal of protecting our planet from global warming be achieved. At the first plenary meeting of the COP15 the small island state of Papua New Guinea made an impassioned plea from a country threatened with extinction by rising sea waters and that ended in a simple request: let us make decisions by voting instead of waiting for everyone to reach consensus. The Danish minister of environment and newly elected president of the COP15, Connie Hedegaard, seemed flustered. She seemed unable to deal with this simple request and merely deferred it to an unspecified time. This deferral prevented a shift in power from the politically and economically powerful states to a majority of states that will be harshly hit by climate change impacts and for whom finding real solutions is a matter of survival. Copenhagen could have had a very different outcome had Papua New Guinea's simple request been honoured. STAGE SET FOR FAILURE: The cracks in the perfect planning suddenly became visible. And observers began to wonder, could it actually be that in trying to ensure the smooth logistics of running the event, the hosts had neglected to think about the substance? Suddenly it seemed a little as if everyone had been invited to the world's biggest concert by the most popular star, but nobody had bothered to invite the star attraction. In the days that followed it became clear that absent pre-planning on substance -- what we would actually do about climate change -- was a problem that the nearly 40,000 COP15 delegates faced as they tried to hash out an agreement that actually contributed to saving our planet. Insufficient effort had been put into trying to bring the negotiating parties together; instead, the Danes had apparently concentrated on hospitality and security. As the first of two weeks progressed, and negotiations spread into nights, a clear pattern of entrenched positions emerged. While the majority of the world was focused on finding solutions for climate change in a manner that would prevent its devastating impacts, business-as- usual scenarios were being proposed by the minority of rich states. The conclusion was obvious: the richer and more industrially developed states were more interested in protecting the advantages they had accrued, and trying to shift responsibility for climate change to emerging economies, than actually addressing the environmental risks faced by millions of people around the world. The political setting for negotiating these differences was as frosty as the freezing, sometimes snowing, weather in Copenhagen. Neither side had been drawn closer to the other by the hosts. In fact, the hosts, a rich developed country, acted in ways that exacerbated disagreements. Within days of the opening of COP15, the political preparation that the Danish had done became apparent. Rather than facilitating consultations with all countries, a text was circulated by the European Union, of which Denmark is a member, which was rumoured to have been drafted by the chair with the help of its European allies and the United States. Immediately the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the 50 plus African States Group, and the 130 plus members of the Group of 77 (G77) reacted in surprise and disappointment. For two years they had been working along the lines of the Bali Action Plan that was adopted at COP13 and which called for work to be done on extending the Kyoto Protocol and a separate treaty to be prepared to complement or eventually replace it with more ambitious commitments. The new draft that was attributed to COP15 President Hedegaard, despite her denials, became known as the "Danish Draft". It was an agreement drafted by a few states and that was intended to be adopted by all states, as if it were an ancient monarchical decree that had been ratified with little choice. The "Danish Draft" infuriated the majority of countries for several reasons. At face value, it was an attempt to kill the Kyoto Protocol and deny the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" that is one of the foundational principles of the international climate change framework. It was also the product of a process that was characterised by exclusiveness. Speaking with Terraviva, a group of African journalists, Bolivian Ambassador Angélica Navarro wondered who had decided that 30 handpicked states could decide for all 190 states. "What really drew my attention was the lack of democracy, participation, inclusiveness and transparency in this process, which we are not used to from our European friends, who we want to urge to return to the route of democracy," Navarro reportedly said. DEFLECTING CRITICISM: Cries of "foul play" from developing countries were answered by British Climate Secretary Ed Miliband with the misleading claim that the talks might stall due to disagreement between developed and developing countries on "procedural issues". Substantively, the Danish Draft merely re- entrenched what the developed countries had been claiming for years without compromise: there were no binding commitments on developed countries to tackle climate change as the draft suggested that global warming "ought" to be limited to two degrees Celsius. At this level many small island states will entirely disappear under rising seawaters. The Danish Draft also reiterated that developed states were not willing to provided the financing that developing countries need to mitigate the effects of climate change or to adapt to it adverse effects. The developed countries also claimed that they would only provide de minimus financial contributions to developing countries if developing countries with emerging economies agreed to emission cuts that would be fatal for their own development. And the developed countries, especially the United States, demanded that they be able to closely monitor how their de minimus financial contributions were being spent, and how developing countries were cutting emissions, even though they refused to accept monitoring of their own obligations to provide even the inadequate 10 billion Swiss Francs a year. Reacting to the Danish Draft in an exclusive Al-Ahram Weekly interview, G77 lead negotiator, Sudanese Ambassador Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, said: "It offers no change. The critical issues are being avoided." He went on to hope that "common sense will prevail," but lamented, "So far all indications are that many developed countries have not moved an inch from their positions for the last two years." In fact the Danish Draft was the best indication during COP15 that the hosts had planned the logistics so pedantically so as to be able to impose the will of the rich on the poor. Even CNN, a television network that unabashedly campaigns for wealthy countries' values and policy objectives, described the situation on its Operations Room programme with Wolf Blitzer as using a map that divided the world into North and South or developed and developing countries. Thus the scene was set for a battle between the majority of the states in the world who will be most affected by adverse climate change against the minority of states who have benefited from development and produced the pollution that causes climate change. For developed states, it was a matter of protecting what had been gained through exploitation of the environment and the natural resources of the South, versus the right of all other people to achieve equal development. Few delegates explained it in this way, however. Especially the so-called Umbrella Group, a loose coalition of non-European Union (EU) developed countries usually encompassing Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the United States, was at pains to stress that capacity, instead of responsibility for climate change, should determine a country's obligations to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, the EU focused on the need for all countries to cut emissions and the apparently reasonable request that they be able to track the money they give to developing countries. In doing so the EU insisted that financing mitigation and adaptation in developing countries is a matter of charity, rather than compensation for the damage caused by their centuries of disproportionate exploitation of the earth's natural resources. Little was said about the fact that developed countries' "voluntary funding" has been largely provided to the smallest developing countries that are considered insignificant in terms of competing with the industrial prowess of the North and the "most vulnerable" to political manipulation. ALTERNATIVE PROPOSALS IGNORED: The G77 made several proposals for more rationalised ways of funding, including the establishment of a financial mechanism under the authority of the Conference of the Parties with equal representation of all states. These proposals were all rejected by developed states. For the developing countries cutting emissions and taking other mitigation steps would mean virtually suspending their own development if they did not receive financing or access to new technology from developed countries. For the poorest countries, even steps to adapt to climate change would cost them hundreds of billions of dollars that they didn't have. For industrialising countries like China, India, Brazil and South Africa, cutting emissions without compromising poverty eradication is virtually impossible unless they have more affordable access to the most ecologically efficient technology. At the moment most "clean technology" is in the hands of large corporations in developed countries and protected by stringent intellectual property rights. This technology thus remains unaffordable for most, if not all, developing countries. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke strongly in favour of technology transfer, calling it a pre-condition for action on climate change by developing countries. Again, linked to technology transfer was the issue of financing. But to bridge the financing gap that was estimated to be 400 billion Swiss Francs per year by the United States-controlled World Bank and as much as one trillion Swiss Francs per year by credible independent experts, the developed countries did not offer to put any significant money on the table. Instead they offered less than 25 per cent of what the World Bank had estimated was needed (and about 10 per cent of expert estimates) while it was not even clear where that money would come from. The main message they sent to developing countries was that they must rely on the gamble of the market. The same market that had recently plunged millions of mid-income citizens in developed countries into ruin and which has been exploiting the natural resources of developing countries for decades. "Talk about markets would not address anything," responded Lumumba Di-Aping. "It basically says that [developed countries] have no historical responsibility." Di-Aping stressed that developing countries were urging developed countries to live up to their historical responsibility. In the two years of negotiations preceding Copenhagen, according to Di-Aping, the G77 was edging its way towards this end by relying on "the merit of our case" which developed countries "cannot deny". Although the G77 was not united, they had reached a point whereby a core of African states and the overwhelming majority of G77 and AOSIS states agreed on some basic principles. Emissions must be lowered enough to kept temperature rises under 1.5 degrees Celsius. Developed countries must agree to provide financing based on their historical responsibility, which meant hundred of billions of dollars, not the tens of billions that were on offer. And the Kyoto Protocol must be extended with or without the United States. The merit of these arguments could surely not be denied. VESTED INTERESTS PROTECTED: This is how the situation had evolved as negotiations went late into the night last Tuesday and into Wednesday, on the eve of the arrival of heads of states and government. But with the arrival of heads of states the dynamics began to change. The careful positions of expert negotiators became diluted by political compromises. This was not unusual for international negotiations, but these negotiations were supposed to be different. After all, planet earth was in the balance. The Danish had promoted -- and civil society had responded to -- a global call to take the action necessary to save our planet and deal with climate change. Leaders had more than a mere mandate to arrive at conclusions that "save face". But just as the ultimate decision makers, the heads of states and government were arriving, was when the Danish hosts pulled the rug from under civil society by coordinating the obstruction of their activities with the UNFCCC Secretariat. The lengths to which they went have rarely been witnessed at UN conferences. From 2am to 4am on Wednesday night, security personnel "cleaned" the entire negotiating venue, the Bella Centre, of NGO delegates, threatening them with arrest if they would not leave immediately. Civil society representatives that were forced to leave included a group of youth representatives from all over the world who intended to stay in the Bella Centre until governments concluded an agreement that was "adequate, effective and legally binding". The group was reading out a list of millions of signatures on a petition asking world leaders to seal a meaningful deal in Copenhagen. In the following days only 300 out of 1,500 NGO representatives were granted access to the Bella Centre, with even a smaller number being able to access the decisive plenary session. Thus NGOs were kept out of the Bella Centre at crucial times. While NGOs were evicted, urgent consultations took place on the ministerial level between the United States, the European Union, China, India and Brazil. The excuse for limiting NGOs to fewer and fewer participants was that the venue could only hold a limited number of participants, despite the fact that the Bella Centre was almost empty Wednesday night and often looked sparsely inhabited in the final days. NGOs were pushed further and further away for what was happening until their influence became negligible. NGOs -- which under the UNFCCC system are divided into nine groups -- were marginalised in their ability to submit documents or address the gathering. One NGO representative who asked not to be identified fearing reprisals described the situation as one where "now the governments will do the dirty deed of confirming the destruction of our earth by their ineffective action and they don't want us to see, to be able to record their failure, their gross crimes against the majority of the world that they are perpetrating for their own selfish interests." The Danish also seemed to have coordinated with their Western allies to impose huge pressure on other states to act as they wanted and not seal a real agreement to save the planet if such an agreement would affect their level of economic wealth. The first signs that this pressure had been successful came from Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. In his first statement to COP15 on behalf of the African states he expressed sympathy for the de minimus financing being offered developing states. After negotiators had been working for two years to improve the financing, their efforts had apparently been devalued by very the person who was suppose to lead them. One negotiator speaking anonymously because he was not authorised to speak to the press on behalf of the African group called Zenawi's words a "betrayal of the African people". Later Bernaditas de Castro Muller, one of the G77 negotiators, would wonder if the leaders really knew what they were doing when they took action contrary to the interests of their own people and all developing countries. Muller, a senior Philippine diplomat well known among veteran negotiators for her expertise on climate change, was too outspoken to be a part of the official delegation of her own government in Copenhagen. Instead, she was accredited by the Sudanese -- who did not want to lose her expertise in climate change negotiations -- as a G77 coordinator. Muller referred to the "backroom deals" that were constantly being made as "unwarranted". The executive director of Greenpeace International, Kumi Naidoo, was more direct calling Copenhagen "a climate crime scene" because world leaders who "had a once in a generation chance to change the world for good, to avert catastrophic climate change" confined their efforts to producing "a poor deal full of loopholes big enough to fly Air Force One through." Within hours it was clear other betrayals had been arranged via European Union pressure and the dozens of American diplomats who were under orders to use all means of persuasion and threat to ensure that President Barack Obama could claim victory. It was exactly the kind of scenario that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had warned would emerge when he suggested that "top secret" texts were being prepared by the most powerful countries with an aim of forcing poor countries to accept them. A WATERED-DOWN WHITEWASH: What was now being negotiated were not the carefully prepared texts reflecting two years of labour involving almost all 193 parties to the UNFCCC, or even a new text reflecting the consensus of the COP15 states that were concerned with combating the adverse effects of climate change. What was on the table, as the blog Climatechange.blogs.fr reported, was yet another text initiated and finalised by a handful of states that were focused on saving the face of a few world leaders by obscuring the great disservice they were doing to all people on earth. Most of all, it was "Obama's agreement", as it reflected a deal brokered between the United States and emerging economies under which each country could decide on its own non- binding emission targets. It was described by Lumumba Di-Aping a "suicide pact" for small island states and Africans that was tantamount to the policies adopted by the Nazis to implement the holocaust. When it finally emerged, accompanied by hollow claims of success, the agreement contained no commitments. It limited global temperature rises to only two degrees Celsius and not 1.5 degrees Celsius, which scientists agree would result in 3.5 degrees Celsius warming in Africa. It contained no commitments on financing, instead using vague words to restate commitments that had not been met for the best part of four decades. In effect, it condemned several island states to extermination and much of sub-Saharan Africa to decades of deadly desertification, decreasing water sources, and increasing disease and hunger. Nevertheless, some developing countries and even small island states supported it. Most strikingly, the president of the Maldives, Mohammed Nasheed, whose state will disappear under the terms of the agreement because of rising seawaters, supported it. He had been apparently convinced to abandon his bid to save his own people from disaster. Similarly the Ethiopian and South African governments thought it was the best they could do, despite the fact that it would condemn their people to the deadly impacts already described. In the end it was not the logic of science or the integrity of just arguments that prevailed, but rather the brute force of political and economic power that forced an outcome that threatens the planet that the indigenous peoples call Mother Earth. The calls of indigenous leader and Bolivian President Evo Morales to ensure global warming would not exceed 1.5 degree Celsius fell on deaf ears. The plea by Reverend Desmond Tutu that "no agreement is better than a bad agreement" was ignored. The impassioned logic of Ambassador Lumumba Di-Aping to act in the interest of all the people on earth and not just a selected few elites went unheeded. In the end, selfishness and greed triumphed as the legacy of Copenhagen. Curtis Doebbler is professor of law at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine, and Margreet Wewerinke represents Nord-Sud XXI, an international NGO, at the United Nations.
