D-Day of the long-awaited Copenhagen climate summit
A team of journalists and facilitators of the Climate Change Media Partnership arriving in Copenhagen on Saturday ahead of the UNFCCC talks
By Henry Lutaaya in Copenhagen
It has been a rather unfriendly one and a half day of stay in Copenhagen. The extreme cold and strong winds have conspired with very high cost of almost everything the malls to ensure that we remain indoors.
I and a colleague of mine Emmanuel Okella who works with Radio Simba in Kampala jetted into Copenhagen from Entebbe through London, on Saturday afternoon.
We are part of the Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) that is sponsoring over 40 journalist fellows from the developing world with the view of increasing the coverage of the forthcoming climate change negotiations starting December 7, 2009, from a developing world perspective.
With registration badges already around our necks, we’ve spent much of Sunday, acquiring tips on how to find a good story amidst what someone has called a shower of information.
As you would expect, the run-up to Copenhagen has generated immense interest from across the world with most people talking about the meeting nearly as the one that’s gonna decide the fate of the world.
That’s pretty much where the expectations have reached and it may explain the huge media interest in the negotiations. It is said that about 5000 journalists from around the world were accredited to cover this COP 15 meeting. This represents about 33 percent of all total number of participants. Alex Kirby, a veteran journalist in climate negotiations reveals for example that unlike previous meetings, quite a number of journalists from his home country Britain who used to turn up during the second week of talks, are already here before the conference is even underway.
But the meeting isn’t short of delegates from other spheres of society. In fact, to say that the civil society, who comprise NGOs and campaign groups have a heavy presence already at the COP 15 is an understatement.
On top of a strong army of journalists and civil society experts and campaigners, you have quite a significant number of government representatives who are the principal negotiators as well as the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat staff.
Rumour has it that the host city has been overwhelmed by the number of guests and they simply don’t have enough accommodation for all the 15,000 plus delegates.
Many of them, I established, managed to find accommodation across the border in Sweden from where they commute every morning to attend the negotiations and return for sleep.
The Danish government is providing transportation free of charge to all delegates and those sleeping over in Sweden have to top up with about 100 Cronos (Danish currency equivalent to Ushs 37,000) to enable them make daily trips – very cheap, considering that a handful of potato fries cost 20 Cronos.
Many close followers of past climate negotiations, particularly those that have covered previous Conference of Parties or COPs, say there has been great progress in terms of political will to have an agreement.
Lowered expectations
Experts on climate negotiations including, Mike Shanahan from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), who spoke to our group on Sunday as part of the orientation programme, laboured to explain that the likelihood of achieving a legally binding agreement at the end the next two-weeks process, are very slim.
Their argument is that there are still some fundamentally intractable problems over which many countries in the 192 UN family don’t agree.
Quite a number of countries under their groupings such as the European Union and the Alliance of Small Island Nations (Oasis) insist that the United States – which is the second biggest polluter after China, commits to some meaningful target of reducing its emissions if the world is to avoid a catastrophe because of global warming.
On the other hand the US, which, as I understand has a historical record of not signing up to many of similar legally binding global treaties, except the WTO, wants fast developing countries like China, Brazil, South Africa and India to make serious commitments of making targets in limiting their emissions, before it improves its target of reducing it by about 17% of 2005 levels.
China and India are not moving in that direction and are giving rather interesting proposals that they will reduce emissions through increased efficiency i.e producing more goods per a certain quantity of carbon than before.
Danes throw up some confusion
The urge to squeeze success out of this meeting is weighing heavy on the Danish government and the whole process of negotiations.
Over the past several hours, the Danish government has introduced a new text that is totally different from what negotiators have been working on since the COP 13 that was held in Bali in 2007 and subsequently improved upon in Born, Poznan and Barcelona.
Dr. Saleem Huq, a senior fellow with the International Institute for Environment and Development expressed concern that a number of experts are quite puzzled as to whether politicians are going to throw out the UNFCCC text that has taken years to frame in exchange for a political agreement which they say will not help solve the key questions arising from climate change that are facing humanity.
For now, the Danish government has tired to keep the contents of the text secret by introducing it to Parties and taking it back. But reports say that the Danes want everyone to agree some emissions reductions and have every country open to inspection.
The G77/China led by China have rejected the Danish proposal. China has said it will not open up to inspection, unless developing countries are willing to put some money on the table.
African perspective
UGANDAN CONNECTION: L-R, Ugandan journalists Sunrise's Henry Lutaaya, NTV's Kevin Doris Ejon and Simba's Emmanuel Okella stand besides an enlarged logo of the conference.
From the African perspective, things don’t look very exciting.
According to Shanahan, Africa should focus its attention on getting money for adaptation as opposed to focussing on mitigation since it has contributed almost nothing in terms of emissions to the problem.
However, unlike China which is a big polluter and a fast-growing economy, Shanahan argues, Africa has very little to put on table to boost its bargaining position.
Africa is part of a bigger negotiations group called the G77/China which actually has 133 countries in it including nearly all the developing countries and China.
However while speaking to a delegate from Kenya, Heads of State under the African Union umbrella recently decided that Africa negotiates as a single block. To this end, Ethiopia, whose Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has been at the forefront of the push for a single African position, is leading the African group together with the DR Congo.
The Kenyan official however hinted that Africa will equally be interested in ensuring that developed countries actually stop their emissions, because, as he put it, the effect of their increased emissions ends up disproportionately hurting the poor who are the majority in developing countries than the rich countries.
Well, having listened to the experts, the world may not get the announcement they have probably waited for in as many months. Rather, it may be a number of declarations that are not legally binding but can lead to more negotiations in the coming year where a legally binding agreement may arise.
But talk of serious diplomatic fights are forecast nonetheless, with a number of groups like the Oasis and the African group threatening to cause a stir if they don’t get commitments on mitigation targets and money for adaptation respectively.
great story that i never saw till now..wow i look great in the middle