COPENHAGEN: And so the UN Climate Change Conference came to its conclusion. A quiet, miserable conclusion, according to most countries. There was no cheering or hailing. Even the politicians could not sell it to the people. Everyone could see immediately that the green-washed text was far from anything hoped for. A document drafted by US president Barack Obama after consultation with five nations was handed to the rest of the world on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. In fact, Obama did not even wait to see the final vote before travelling back to the US, satisfied he had an agreement. But in the back halls, the only emotions left were anger, despair, and disappointment. A group of Latin American countries, including Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela, were angry at the “undemocratic†process by which the document was passed. In fact, Claudia Salerno, a Venezuelan delegate, asked the plenary president whether “under the eye of the UN secretary general†he was “going to endorse this coup d'etat against the authority of the United Nations.” The African group was filled with despair at a deal that was far from what would have saved their nations. With no binding agreements on emissions levels, any country can proceed at a business-as-usual pace. And even the pledged emission reductions, when taken at their highest numbers, were not enough to save the world. The numbers on the table were taking the world down a 3 degrees Celsius temperature increase, which would spell certain doom for the poorest people in the world. Increased adverse climate effects, rising sea levels, and displacement are bound to create millions of environmental refugees, as well as bring hopes for development to a near halt. Small island states were disappointed. In the closest scenarios, they were bound to lose the most. TH rising sea levels would flood whole countries, such as Kiribati and the Maldives. President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives spoke in his speech of his will to see the grandchildren of his two daughters, and to do so in the Maldives. With the agreement on the table now, this was highly unlikely. But the deal presented by the world superpowers, mainly China and the US, was forced upon all of those groups. With the EU clearly lacking the ambition to play a leading role on the issue, it too agreed to the Obama-backed text. And finally, the strength of the UN to play a leading role, and bring nations together to fight global problems, is now highly questioned. Most of the poorer countries of the world have lost faith in this process. In fact, this may be the future of how deals will be made, with a group of superpowers working together to present something to the rest of the world. And so was born the “Copenhagen Accord,†which Ban Ki-Moon endorsed today as an “essential beginning,†but calling to make it legally binding next year. Obama, however, was careful not to give a time on when the agreement will be recognized as legally-binding. In fact, he pointed that “it will take time.†The Copenhagen climate change summit will go down in history, but for reasons very different from what the thousands of people who fight the blistering cold every day, were hoping for. BM
