Global climate experts and senior politicians from every country on earth as well as thousands of activist gathered at the Annual Climate Summit, or the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP19) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in Warsaw, Poland between 9 and 22 November. This Annual Climate Summit brings together thousands of the most senior government officials and senior scientists to whom we have entrusted the future of the atmosphere of the planet on which we live. They come together each year for two weeks to try to decide what coordinated action all states will take, because we know if we do not act soon life as we know it will change and could even end much sooner than we had expected. Climate change is a natural phenomenon, but it is also caused by human action. We know this from decades of studies measuring the effect of human action on our planet's climate. The effect is that the planet is warming and this is causing significant interferences with individuals' most basic human rights in all corners of the world. It is so serious that the UN has determined that climate change is the greatest challenge to the most fundamental human rights of the most people facing the international community during the rest of this century. Thus, while COP19 is a climate conference it is also about protecting human beings. Just a few weeks prior to COP19 the well-respected International Panel on Climate Change published its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) evaluating what we know about the physical science of our planet's atmosphere. The report said with almost complete certainty that climate change is taking place and that it is caused by the actions of human beings. This conclusion is not different from that of the past four reports, but it does emphasise the urgency of international climate action. Whether this alert is being heard is another question. As much as COP will have some strategic importance it is one of somewhat silly and mundane controversy. For example, the Polish hosts seem to view COP19 as a way to show how they can please their European neighbours and other primary trading partners. For this reason, COP19 ironically runs simultaneously with the World Coal Summit that Poland is hosting to boost the European coal industry, one of the most destructive contributors to climate change. In true European fashion, Poland is putting economic profit over protecting the human environment in a manner that smacks of the same hypocrisy that was at the bottom of European colonial thinking for centuries. That thinking devalued Europe and America, with its slave trade, morally; now this thinking may cause us all serious problems, maybe even extinction.
INSTITUTIONALISED FAILURE: More surprisingly, the executive director of Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and UN undersecretary-general for climate change, Costa Rican Christina Figueres, seems as concerned with ensuring the continuation of coal pollution as she does with dealing with climate change. She expressed this view by her scurrying to the Coal Summit shortly after she participated in the opening of COP19. She displayed her insensitivity to the human suffering caused by climate change by banning from COP19 three activists who held a banner drawing attention to the suffering of the people of the Philippines who had just been subjected to a climate-related natural disaster that left more than 10,000 dead. The sultry insult to the climate negotiations by the Polish hosts, which was announced months in advance, may have had unintended consequences. Although perhaps only by strange coincidence, both the United States and China announced before COP19 that they were taking steps to cut their dependence on coal. They both justified their actions because of the damaging contribution coal burning makes to climate change. While the action of these powerful countries did not seem to faze either the UNFCCC chief or the Polish hosts, the action did see to rally states to at least talk more about transitioning to renewable energy sources. Nevertheless, as COP19 opened there was no consensus on any of the many proposals on the table to ensure that developed states, who have legal obligations to cut their emissions, ensure that levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases do not rise further above the dangerous levels they have already reached. Instead, Poland and most of its European neighbours seem more concerned with how they can maintain the economic benefits that industrialisation and over-exploitation of the atmosphere have bestowed on them. Even the Polish youth and the ever-powerful Catholic Church, despite a reform-minded Pope, seem stuck in the industrial age. To be fair, this is not all Poland's fault. Since COP15 in December 2009, these annual climate summits have turned out varied and often conflicting results. At COP15 in Copenhagen, developed countries tried to protect the benefits centuries of advantages in pollution have provided them by trying to force an agreement on developing countries. Although it did not work, subsequent COPs in Mexico, South Africa and Doha managed to ensure no more than limited progress towards combating the adverse impacts of climate change. Thus, any progress towards the legally agreed objective of cutting emissions had to be shared among all states, including those who have not benefited from centuries of excess pollution. Developed states called this equity, or merely said it was necessary, of course without stating that they were defining necessity as the protection of their accrued benefits. Developing states' demurs only resulted in developed states refusing to take adequate action or to support developing states in taking action to green their economies. This also ignores the basic principles of the UNFCCC that differentiates between developed and developing states. The former as beneficiaries of centuries of over-exploitation of the atmosphere agreed in the UNFCCC to take on the historical responsibility for their actions. Such responsibility was morally, and is now legally, justified. Yet developed states seem to be having second thoughts as they are pressed by economically hard times. They seem oblivious to the fact that they still enjoy a significant advantage in development and that this advantage is in no small part due to their over-exploitation of the atmosphere that they share with others. Instead, developed states have been holding developing states hostage. The developed states argue, in effect, that if any progress is to be made it must be financially lucrative for them. This means that the states that have built up advantages through pollution are to be rewarded. It also means that developing states will suffer even more. In short, developed states want to remain developed while preventing developing countries from catching up. This tug-of-war was behind the battles at COP18 held in Doha, Qatar, in December 2012. It is also why COP18 ended with a whimper instead of resounding action. There was general relief that a new commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol was adopted, but significant frustration at how weak the extension was and with the fact that it did not apply to some of the developed states that pollute the most. And since COP18, few states have to date actually ratified the agreement made in Doha, thus leaving it a dead letter. This Pyrrhic victory in the war to protect humankind against the most serious adverse impacts of climate change meant little, but was perhaps better than a complete defeat.
STRONG-ARMING IN WARSAW: Already in the first days the same battles of will are being fought at COP19. Developed states are dangling the allure of REDD, Loss-and-Damage, a Technology Centre, capacity-building, and financing in front of developing countries. At the same time, developed states are threatening not to fulfil their legal obligations in each of these areas unless developing states capitulate to their demands for taking even greater responsibility for cutting emissions of carbon dioxide. It is ironic that combined, although they account for less greenhouse gas emissions, developing states are already voluntarily doing more than developed states to cut their emissions. In addition, developing states are acting with much more serious consequences for their development than developed states face for similar actions. REDD is predominately a UN-sponsored package of projects to encourage reforestation and combat deforestation. Without a doubt it is a good idea to protect our forests, but REDD tries to do it through economic incentives that don't really combat climate change. Instead these incentives allow countries with forests to sell their unused right to pollute to rich countries or their transnational corporations, which while agreeing to protect the forests in the “seller's” country, increase or continue their own pollution. In other words, while the pollution due to deforestation is avoided, other forms of polluting our common atmosphere are allowed or sometimes even created. At the same time, REDD often tramples the basic human rights of indigenous peoples. These peoples have often contributed the least to climate change, but they suffer the most. REDD significantly contributes to that suffering by making the divestment of land rights final and often irreversible, and the making lands that are sacred to indigenous peoples merely monetary commodities. Perhaps most ironically and unfairly, indigenous peoples offer us the answer to sustainable living. They have lived in harmony with nature for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. REDD schemes, however, often mean that indigenous lessons and values are ignored in the name of profit or profit-driven economic development. COP19 moved closer to making REDD an inherent part of strategies to deal with climate change and a new climate agreement that is to be finalised by 2015 and to go into effect in 2020. Many reservations remained about REDD, but with the help of the UNFCCC Secretariat REDD inched closer to being a reality. The UNFCCC executive director, a former carbon market lobbyist, touted REDD as the answer to climate change, even though after four COPs she must realise that this is a false promise that even REDD proponents shy away from. Even states that oppose REDD's commodification of the environment seemed eager to get some money from it. For that reason, states adopted a decision moving REDD forward and giving lip service to non-market approaches. At future climate meetings debates are sure to continue about how non-market approaches should play a role, and much attention should be given to the market-approach to REDD, which is the darling of developed countries. Another idea that was high on the agenda in Warsaw is compensation for loss and damage. This was the last substantive item to be decided in Warsaw. It refers to a process for taking precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimise the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. It is an idea that makes much sense, but it is also an idea that needs to be developed cautiously, so as not to extinguish rights that states have under international law. Loss and Damage, as the agenda item is known, is something that should not even be needed if all states live up to their obligations of mitigation in accordance with the objectives of Article 2 and the obligations in the rest of the UNFCCC. In other words, if developing states had been assisted with adequate new and additional finance, capacity building and access to technology, many of them may not have suffered loss and damage. And if developed states had mitigated their emissions as required by the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol, the loss and damage that is being addressed may not have happened. In Warsaw, developing states were pushing for an independent Loss and Damage mechanism with integrity. To push their point they walked out of marathon talks at around 4am on Tuesday morning. The final decision on Loss and Damage was not adopted until late Saturday afternoon. And when the text appeared it was clear that COP19 had agreed to an ambiguous compromise text in which it seemed that indeed a mechanism will be formed, but that, as COP19 President Marcin Korolec described it, it is a mechanism that has yet to be defined. In addition, it was agreed that the mechanism would not be independent but under the Cancun agreed Adaptation Framework. Perhaps most dangerously for developing states, loss and damage may also turn out to be a way of extinguishing legal rights that they already have, or trading these rights for illusionary promises of compensation from funds that do not even exist.
STACKING THE DECK: In the UNFCCC, states agreed to take on common but differentiated responsibilities based on their capabilities. This means that states that had polluted the earth's atmosphere longer and more intensively agree to cut their pollution and pay for other to play their part. These states, which have been the primary polluters for a long time, are listed in Annex I to the UNFCCC and other states may be added as they develop. There were no similar obligations for developing states. Faced with economic crises, Annex I states no longer want to abide by their agreement. Changing this agreement, however, ignores several important facts. First, the developed states listed in Annex I of the UNFCCC still have significantly higher levels of development. It will still take some time, probably decades, for developing states to catch up. Second, imposing emissions obligations on developing states without providing them the means to green their development can significantly handicap their development. Third, despite not having legally binding obligations to cut their emissions, collectively, developing states have cut their emissions at greater rates than developed states. They have done this despite the failure of developed states to fulfil their obligations to provide adequate new and additional finance, capacity-building and easy access to the necessary technology. For more than a decade developed states have dragged their feet on support for developing countries. They have refused to provide access to affordable technology. Instead of capacity building they have drained developing states of their most talented citizens and continued a form of neocolonialism that propelled them to their superior states of development. And they have promised financing but failed to come through. The financing gap is painfully apparent in variety of ways. There is practically no money in the newly established Green Climate Fund and the all-important Adaptation Fund is scheduled to run out of funds next year. The second of these challenges was addressed in Warsaw. In the last hours of the meeting, Poland's deputy environment minister, Beata Jaczewska, announced that states had agreed to put $100 million into the Adaptation Fund. She did not tell the gathered reporters that this figure was based on vague commitments and oral statements made by states. Whether this money will ever materialise, and especially whether it will be new and additional money from donors, is a question that still begs an answer. The pledges certainly did not seem to impress the Polish hosts. As COP19 was coming to an end, on the next to last day, the COP president and Polish Environment Minister Korolec was fired by his government so that, according to Prime Minster Donald Tusk, the government could undertake a “radical acceleration of shale gas operations”. In other words, Korolec's defence of the environment seemed to be at odds with his government's intention to support a polluting fossil fuel industry. This Polish action seemed to set off a flurry of environment bashing moves. The United States announced that it was refusing to announce emissions reductions for a further two years and a Canadian delegate tweeted that his delegation was acting to protect the Canadian people, implying that Canada did not care about the rest of the world. Japan and Australia also added their voices to this embarrassing show of insincerity in dealing with climate change by announcing that they backing away from commitments they have already made. Some observers were left asking if COP19 had not taken us backwards. Many of the largest environmental NGOs answered this question by walking out of COP19 a day before it ended.
WORST CLIMATE CONFERENCE EVER? When it finally ended in the evening of Saturday, 23 November, likely no one was surprised that the end came with few surprises and few accomplishments. Friends of the Earth issued a press release stating: “This summit has been shrouded in farce — dominated by rich, industrial nations who have put the interests of big polluters first. They leave Warsaw with an agreement that will allow them to do as they please.” This assessment echoed that of most environmental NGOs and some politicians. Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May, for example, asked: “Is Warsaw the worst climate conference ever?” Many observers would answer that COP19 is likely be remembered for the audaciousness of the greed and selfishness that some of the most developed, most powerful, and richest states showed in the face of a global challenge. The problem of agreeing on adequate action to address the adverse effects of climate action remains unresolved, and with little progress being made towards a resolution for another year. Warsaw was hostile territory, but neither Lima, Peru, where next year's COP20 will be held, nor Paris, France where the text of a new protocol to the UNFCCC that is to enter into force by 2020 is supposed to be agreed, are much better venues. At his closing press conference on Saturday evening, COP19 President Marcin Korolec said that both Peru and France had worked with him closely and deserved credit for the outcome. This does not bode well for the next two opportunities that states have to try to protect our planet and its people from the dangers of climate change. If as much progress as was made in Warsaw is made in Lima and Paris, our failure will be felt in a much greater way than has been even this year.
The writer is an international human rights lawyer and a member of the NGO International-Lawyers.Org.
