Hiiraan Online

The conference was a follow up to COP 14 (The 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), along with the 4th Session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol), which ended on December 12, 2008 in Poznań, Poland. The ultimate objective of the Copenhagen climate conference was to reach an international agreement that would stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere in conjunction with climate change adaptation and funding mechanisms to deal with such issues. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, the man at the helm of the conference, spelled out these objectives further in an earlier interview with Environment & Energy Publishing (E&E) “1) How much are the industrialized countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases? 2) How much are major developing countries such as China and India willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions? 3) How is the help needed by developing countries to engage in reducing their emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change going to be financed? and, 4) How is that money going to be managed?” These stated elusive, but tangible objectives were suppose to be negotiated by the conference parties following a complicated road map set up by the UNFCC that included working groups meetings during first six days of the conference, followed by a high-level ministerial segments to take up any unresolved issues for two days, in time for the arrival of head of states for a ceremonial victory parade.

 Well, there was no grant agreement signing ceremony per se. Although the conference started with an unprecedented sense of urgency to act on climate change, the gathering in the old, but slick Danish city that rebranded itself as “Hopenhagen” was marred by large-scale confusion. Tens of thousands of delegates including some delegate heads were turned away from the conference venue because of over-subscription, various draft texts leaked early, and multiple sided deadlocks appeared at the onset, delegates started walking out of meetings in protest of heavy handed diplomacy of rich countries, and thousands of protesters descended on the city. Glenn Thrush of Politico captured well when he wrote that at times the conference appeared to be” be imploding from within and exploding from without. “

After stormy overnight sessions including accusations of president Obama crashing a secret Chinese climate meeting, Copenhagen produced a bare-minimum, frail and non-binding agreement when the conference “took note” of what has been dubbed as the “Copenhagen Accord.” The three-page agreement brokered between U.S. and other emerging economies set a target of maximum two degrees Celsius global warming (a temperature increase that has been associated with catastrophic events) over pre-industrial times. The deal also included a call for 30 billion U.S. dollars for immediate action until 2012 and 100 billion U.S. dollars annually by 2020 to enable developing countries finance adaptation, technology transfer, capacity building and emissions reduction. At the conclusion of the summit, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said "finally we sealed a deal, the “Copenhagen Accord' may not be everything everyone had hoped for, but this is an important beginning."

The outcome of the conference is not a precise legal agreement, and it underscores shortcomings of industrialized nations to negotiate in good faith in dealing with what is unarguably large-scale disaster in the making primarily caused by their growth. Some conference participants cried foul, Greenpeace criticized the accord for not having “targets for carbon cuts and no agreement on a legally binding treaty.” Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat, denounced the accord by saying “The developed countries have decided that damage to developing countries is acceptable,” he further stated the 2-degree target would “result in massive devastation to Africa and small island states.” Other conference attendees were rightly more vocal, Mary Robinson, former UN Commissioner for Human Rights delivered a climate change judgment at the conference by stating “International human rights law says that in no case may a people be deprived of its means of subsistence. Yet because of excessive carbon emissions, produced primarily by industrialized countries, millions of the world’s poorest people’s rights are being violated every day. This is a deep and global injustice.”

As the conference came to a dismal conclusion with potential devastation for Africa, I could not help, but notice the stark contrast between Copenhagen fiasco, and the conclusion of “Out of Africa”, a memoir by Isak Dinesen, nome de plume adopted by Karen Blixen, the literary Danish writer who was ironically named after one of the plenary halls of the climate conference venue, Bella Center-Karen Blixen. The conclusion of Karen Blixen’s memoir details her deteriorating farming business in Kenya in the early part of the twentieth century in part due to several unexpected dry years with low yield. Karen Blixen ends up selling the farm, and bids farewell to the land, paradoxically a true tale involving a Somali steward of the land named Farah Aden, “Farah and I Sell Out.”    

 The author is associated with Harvard University and University of Massachusetts Lowell where he works and researches on environmental, health and safety issues. The author is also appointed Commissioner with City of Lowell Green Building Commission.