Their economic privilege in mind, rich countries and corporations are thwarting hopes for a fair and progressive deal in Copenhagen. But outside the negotiation halls, people have moved far ahead with their solutions for the climate and visions for a just planet.

In December 2009, leaders from 192 countries will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark to determine the fate of the climate, the planet, and its six billion inhabitants. The summit is the 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Thorny road to Copenhagen

COP 15 is the culmination of a two-year negotiation process that started in 2007 at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia, when developed and developing countries, agreeing to step up efforts to combat climate change, adopted the “Bali Roadmap”. The Roadmap set countries out on two parallel negotiation tracks. First is a negotiation limited to rich countries under the Kyoto Protocol for post-2012 emissions reductions commitments – a process that started in 2005. Second is the “Bali Action Plan”, a new negotiation process that encompasses all members of the UNFCCC. It seeks to hammer out a deal for long-term cooperative action between developed and developing countries aimed at an enhanced and fuller implementation of the Convention “now, up to, and beyond 2012”. Both tracks will conclude at the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009.

The Copenhagen summit is expected to yield two basic outcomes. First is an ambitious long-term global goal for emissions reductions, towards which industrialized countries are to carry out binding emissions cuts far deeper than they have committed under Kyoto’s first commitment period. Second are commitments from developed countries for the enhanced provision of financial resources to developing countries to support them in carrying out 1) adaptation action and 2) non-binding nationally-appropriate mitigation actions that contribute to the long-term global emissions goal.

Negotiations between developed and developing countries have been thorny around both these two key issues. On the issue of emissions, rich and poor countries are divided on how much emissions cuts should be carried out, by whom, and at what pace. It is estimated that commitments developed countries including the US have so far announced amount to a mere 11%-17% reduction against 1990 levels by 2020. The G8 club of industrialized economies are also only willing to pledge a 50% cut on emissions by 2050. Developing countries insist that these are not enough, and demand that Northern emissions decline steeply and rapidly: 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 95% by 2050.1

Northern governments have dragged their feet in pledging more ambitious cuts in the absence of comparable commitments from the South, especially from major developing economies like China and India. Particularly alarming is the attempt among developed countries at merging the Kyoto and UNFCCC negotiation tracks, and pressing for a new treaty that would abandon internationally legally-binding emissions targets, and impose on developing countries new emissions obligations that were never previously agreed to.2 Developing countries object to these moves as a distortion of the mandate set at Bali, and an abandonment of the balance of obligations among countries enshrined in the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. They insist on keeping the distinction between the two tracks and their outcomes, and that their mitigation actions, as agreed in Rio and Bali, are non-binding and will only go so far as these are enabled by financial transfers from the North.

But present and future funding from developed countries have not been forthcoming – another sticking point in the climate talks. Currently, only $21-$28 billion3 in climate funds for developing countries have either been pledged or made available. The UNFCCC estimates that the developing world needs $262-$615 billion annually to fund mitigation and adaptation actions.4 Rich countries have stalled on putting comparable figures on the table, insisting advanced developing countries should assume a share of the bill.

The United States has not indicated any amount at all, while the European Union, after much haggling, came out with a number only in September: a measly €22-€50 billion annually ($32-$75 billion) in international public financing for the South, of which they promise to foot €2-15billion ($3-$22 billion) – on the condition that countries like China, India, and Brazil chip in.5 Developing countries oppose these moves, and demand that the North face up to their mandate of providing adequate funding for Southern climate action as part of their historical responsibility for climate change.

Also at issue with regard to financing is the manner by which funds are to be delivered to the South. Developed countries wish to maintain existing institutional arrangements for climate finance, where funds are entrusted to bi- and multi-lateral Northern development agencies such as the World Bank, and delivered in the same manner as official development assistance (ODA), or voluntary aid. This permits Northern governments to count climate funds as ODA, whose current levels fall short of longstanding developed country ODA commitments (0.7% of Gross National Income). Unaccountable and donor-controlled development institutions are also feared to use climate funds as levers for pro-North and pro-corporate policies in the South. Developing countries demand that climate funds come as mandatory payments channeled through a new and more representative financing mechanism6 directly accountable to the COP, where they compose the majority.

Business as usual

But whether by sheer majority developing countries would be able to secure a socially just and progressive outcome is uncertain. Corporate influence runs deep in the climate negotiations and cuts across North-South battle lines. A recent investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, a US non-profit research group, reveals that governments of both developed and developing countries, especially major economies, are under heavy pressure from businesses back home trying to tug the outcome of the negotiations in directions that work in their favor.7 The Center’s research finds that the climate negotiations are as much a venue for tackling climate change as they are for high-stakes haggling between governments and the corporations they are wedded with to secure an outcome that would guarantee them sustained growth and economic power.

The corporate capture of the UNFCCC process goes as far back as the Rio Earth Summit.

Coming into the event, it was clear that profit-hungry corporations and their free reign had been responsible for much of the planet’s environmental woes, and that a fundamental shift in how they and the global economy operate was in order. But corporations walked away from Rio as part of the solution. Speaking before an audience of corporate executives, Maurice Strong, the Summit’s secretary-general, flatly asserted: “The environment is not going to be saved by environmentalists. Environmentalists do not hold the levers of economic power”.8 So came the idea that corporations – having control of capital and technologies – can, out of self-interest, lead the way to ecological sustainability, and should be entrusted the task of solving the climate and environmental crises. Profit, economic growth, and corporate power need not be disrupted to achieve ecological balance; they could very well pave the road to it.

Corporations have since claimed the leadership of global climate action. Despite evidence that these exacerbate global warming and pose other social and environmental threats, market-based and technological solutions promoted by corporations – which include emissions trading and carbon offsetting, carbon capture and storage, agrofuels, nuclear and hydropower energy –dominate the range of options governments and policy elites would conceivably pursue. And the UNFCCC process appears to have embraced corporate leadership. UN climate sessions now resemble business gatherings and trade fairs, with well-connected industry lobbyists and representatives vastly outnumbering civil society groups and government delegates themselves.9 Meanwhile, workers, indigenous peoples, and the poor who bear the worst impacts of climate change are not allowed meaningful representation on the table.

Outside negotiating halls where vested interests are deadlocked and the people’s voices are excluded, climate activists and people’s organizations representing disadvantaged sectors across the globe are coming together to build a platform for their solutions. Only a people’s movement on climate change will bring the message of social change to Copenhagen.

Endnotes

1    Martin Khor, “Conflict deepens before Copenhagen”, Third World Network Barcelona News Update, no. 13, 9 November 2009, accessed through http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/climate/barcelona.news.021109.htm

2    ‘The attempt included getting developing countries to adhere to new and broad reporting and verification procedures similar to developed countries, to get some “advanced developing countries” to adhere to emission reduction targets, and to get developing countries in general to have emissions subject to “deviation from business as usual by 15 to 30 percent”. These were not agreed to in Bali nor are they in the UNFCCC provisions. What is “business as usual” is also not determined.’ Ibid.

3    United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Economic and Social Survey 2009: Promoting Development, Saving the Planet (New York: United Nations, 2009), 157; South Centre, “Developed country financing initiatives weaken the UNFCCC,” January 2009; available from http://www.southcentre.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=909&Itemid=1; Internet; accessed 13 September 2009.

4    South Centre, p.3, “Developed country financing initiatives weaken the UNFCCC”, January 2009 (calculated from the UNFCCC technical paper “Investment and financial flows to address climate change: an update” 26 November 2008)

5    “Climate Change: EU Commission sets out global finance blueprint for ambitious action by developing nations”, 10 September 2009; available from http://www.europa-eu-un.org/articles/en/article_8974_en.htm; Internet; accessed 18 November 2009.

6    Marwaan Macan-Markar, “New Financial Scheme Turns Heat on Rich Nations,” 11 October 2009; available from http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48802; Internet; accessed 19 November 2009.

7    Marianne Lavelle, “Toward a Stalemate in Copenhagen: How Industry Pressures and National Agendas Dim Prospects for a Climate Treaty,” 4 November 2009; available from http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/global_climate_change_lobby/overview/; Internet; accessed 19 November 2009. In the North, carbon-intensive industries are lobbying their governments to hold out on committing emissions cuts, sowing fears of economic decline as consequences of losing out to Southern competitors, which bear no burden to cap emissions. In the South, the same polluting industries are backing governments in resisting Northern demands that they take on binding emissions cuts under the cover of the right of poor countries to develop. Meanwhile, emerging high-tech and renewable energy industries align with financial institutions in supporting tighter emissions caps as they anticipate to profit off of the market for carbon offsets.

8    Kenny Bruno and Joshua Karliner, earthsummit.biz: The Corporate Takeover of Sustainable Development (Canada: Food First Books, 2002), 22.

9    Larry Lohman, “Carbon Trading: a critical conversation in privatization and power,” Development Dialogue, no. 48, (2006): 59; Rising Tide North America, “Call to Action: Protest Chevron”; available from http://www. risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/2009/07/25/call-to-actionprotest-chevron; Internet; accessed 21 November 2009.

John Paul Corpus is a Research Assistant with IBON International