A summary of the Copenhagen climate agreement

The Copenhagen summit has come to a close as world leaders reached what the New York Times has called a “grudging accord.”

The final agreement failed to meet UN ambitions, with participating nations agreeing only to “take note” of the deal eventually brokered by China, US, Brazil, India and South Africa.

That falls well below the hope that the Copenhagen summit would result in a full and legally binding international agreement to reduce climate change.

Instead, the accord is a statement of intent, recording a promise by the 193 member states to combat climate change within their own countries, but lacking any real enforceability.

The UK’s climate secretary, Ed Miliband, has conceded that the agreement is less than he had hoped for, but warns against negativity, stating that the accord is a step in the right direction, and that it sets out goals in two key areas (emission reduction and climate finance).

President Obama, whose representatives called the deal a “meaningful agreement”, has also recognised that the progress made was “not enough.”

But representatives from environmental organisations and the developing world have denounced the deal as insufficient and unacceptable.

The Sudanese delegate and G77 (poor countries) representative, Lumumba Di-Aping, told members that the deal would “result in massive devastation in Africa and small island states. It has the lowest level of ambition you can imagine.”

The key issues and outcomes of the Copenhagen accord include:

Carbon emissions reductions

The intention was that Copenhagen would see the birth of a global commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 80% (of 1990 levels) before 2050, but that objective was dropped from the final agreement.

The accord instead recognises the need to keep temperature rises to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, but does not contain any formal or binding way of reaching that objective. Over 100 developing nations had pressed for a minimum commitment to keep global temperatures within 1.5C of today’s temperatures.

This means that signatory countries have committed to reducing climate change, but retain autonomy as to the methods and levels by which they do so.

Signatories have promised to implement their mid-term objectives (those goals already in place, such as the US pledge to reduce emissions by 17% from 2005 levels), but have made no promises with regard to 2050 emissions targets.

Provision of finance

The accord allows $30 billion of funding to enable poor countries to adapt to the challenges of climate change. But short of requiring rich nations to begin to prepare to help poor countries with the effects of climate change, there is little detail as to where that funding will come from.

From 2012, the accord allows $100 billion a year to aid developing nations with the effects of climate change.

Kyoto Protocol

The accord also preserves the principles of the Kyoto Protocol. As the only legally binding agreement on climate change in force before Copenhagen, the Kyoto Protocol and the principles behind it are of crucial importance to developing nations.

The Kyoto Protocol requires developed nations to take more responsibility for climate change than developing nations, based on the premise that rich countries caused pollution during their own rise to wealth.

Deadline for a formal agreement

Once it became apparent that a full and binding agreement might not be reached at Copenhagen, political leaders suggested that a final agreement should be concluded within six months of Copenhagen.

The Copenhagen accord does not set a deadline for the critical enforceable agreement. However, delegates have been vocal about the need to keep momentum, and to act quickly.

The fine print of the accord does suggest that signatories will attempt to have a legal agreement in place within a year (so by COP16 in Mexico, December 2010).

Where to next?

It’s clear that the Copenhagen accord is only a preliminary step in the very slow process towards an internationally binding agreement on climate change. Since the conference, delegates have spoken out against the system itself.

There are many issues remaining – for starters, Sudan, Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela have opposed the deal, and at the time of writing it is still unclear whether they will accept the accord.

Further, China’s resistance to a US-proposed and propelled international monitoring system has meant a minor breakdown in US-Chinese relations.

And as George Monbiot wrote last week in the Guardian “the interests of states and the interests of the world's people are not the same” – that is, we are still to overcome the problem of convincing developed nations to aid developing nations at their own cost.

There is much to do before the UN climate talks in Bonn in May, and the sixteenth summit in Mexico 2010. To borrow President Obama’s words as he left Copenhagen – “We’ve come a long way, but we have much further to go.”

By Natalya King