Key states have reached what they consider to be a "meaningful agreement" at the Copenhagen climate summit. Five nations, including China and the US, reached a deal on a number of issues such as a recognition to limit temperature rises to less than 2°C. US President Barack Obama said it would be a foundation for global action but there was "much further to go."
However, the deal could yet be rejected as a number of nations expressed dissatisfaction with the contents. To be accepted as an official UN agreement, the deal needs to be endorsed by all 193 nations at the talks. The five-nation deal promised to deliver $30 billion of aid for developing nations over the next three years, and outlined a goal of providing $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with the impacts of climate change.
President Obama said that the US, China, Brazil, India and South Africa had "agreed to set a mitigation target to limit warming to no more than 2°C" and, importantly, to take action to meet this objective. He added, "we are confident that we are moving in the direction of significant accord." The agreement also included a method for verifying industrialised nations' reduction of emissions. The US had insisted that China dropped its resistance to this measure. Small island nations and vulnerable coastal countries had however been calling for a binding agreement that would limit emissions to a level that would prevent temperatures rising more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso commented, "I will not hide my disappointment regarding the non-binding nature of the agreement here. In that respect, the document falls far short of our expectations." However, he added that the EU would accept the US-led deal. The two-week summit had been deadlocked as world leaders had struggled to hammer out an accord. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, "The text we have is not perfect. If we had no deal, that would mean that two countries as important as India and China would be freed from any type of contract. The US, which is not in Kyoto, would also be freed, that's why a contract is absolutely vital."
However, reacting to the Copenhagen "deal", executive director of Greenpeace UK John Sauven said, "The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport. There are no targets for carbon cuts and no agreement on a legally binding treaty. It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here at Copenhagen."
Key points of the Copenhagen Accord
The Copenhagen climate summit resulted in a document called the Copenhagen Accord, put forward by the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters. The conference as a whole did not accept the Accord, but voted to "take note" of it.
On the positive side, the Copenhagen Accord unites for the first time the US, China and other major developing countries in an effort to curb global greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol did not achieve this - it imposed no obligations on developing countries to restrain the growth of their emissions, and the US never acceded to it. The Accord also says developed countries will aim to mobilise substantial finances to address the needs of developing countries.
On the other hand, the summit did not result in a legally binding deal or any commitment to reach one in the future. The Accord calls on countries to state what they will do to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but these will not be legally binding commitments. In addition, there is no global target target for emissions reductions by 2050 and the Accord is vague as to how its goals, particularly providing finance to developing nations, will be achieved.
So what are the key points of the Accord?
Why is a new agreement needed?
The Copenhagen talks sat within the framework of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was established in 1997 and spawned the Kyoto Protocol.
However, neither of these agreements have managed to curb the growth in greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to avoid the climate impacts projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In particular, the Kyoto Protocol's targets for reducing emissions apply to only a small set of countries and expire in 2012. Negotiations therefore began on a new treaty that was bigger, bolder, wider-ranging and more sophisticated than the Kyoto agreement, and the plan was that these would conclude in Copenhagen.
Will the Copenhagen Accord solve climate change?
We have seen the global average temperature rise by about 0.7°C since pre-industrial times. In some parts of the world this is already having impacts - and the Copenhagen Accord will not stop those, although it could provide funding to help deal with some of the consequences.
Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide stay in the atmosphere for decades;
and concentrations are already high enough that further warming is almost inevitable. Many analyses suggest an average rise of 1.5°C since pre-industrial times is guaranteed. Tough action to reduce emissions might keep the temperature rise under 2°C, but given uncertainties in how the atmosphere and oceans respond to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, it might not.
This is why developing countries put such an emphasis on adaptation, which they argue is necessary already.
IPCC figures suggest that to have a reasonable chance of avoiding 2°C, global emissions would need to peak and start to decline within about 15-20 years. Currently, the cuts pledged by industrialised nations are not enough to halt the overall global rise in emissions. In addition, countries that went into the Copenhagen conference prepared to offer bigger cuts in emissions if other countries took tough action, appear to be sticking with pledges to cut emissions at the lower end of their range.
