Copenhagen and Beyond

There is a growing consensus that a legally binding treaty on climate change will not be finalized at COP15, instead, negotiators and heads of state are targeting a political agreement to lay the foundation for a full treaty in 2010.

World leaders at the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting, together with the Prime Minister of Denmark, confirmed that the Copenhagen climate change summit would in all probability not result in a binding treaty agreement.

Denmark’s Prime Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, had reportedly told the assembled world leaders, including Barack Obama and Hu Jintao, "Given the time factor and the situation of individual countries we must, in the coming weeks, focus on what is possible and not let ourselves be distracted by what is not. The Copenhagen agreement should finally mandate continued legal negotiations and set a deadline for their conclusion."

Recent negotiations in the run-up to Copenhagen have shown the scale of the challenge in meeting a final agreement on climate change. Leaders of 50 African nations walked out of negotiations, protesting the fact that rich nations refused to cut their emissions by at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 — the most aggressive figure suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The E.U. has pledged a 20% cut by 2020 (30% of other nations made similar promises), but the pending U.S. legislation would reduce emissions only 4% below 1990 levels by 2020 (source: Time, 20-11-2009).

By postponing a treaty agreement, the new timeframes would allow time for the US Senate to pass carbon-capping legislation, which in turn would allow the Obama administration to identify carbon-reduction targets and financial pledges for future UN climate change negotiations. The progress of the US cap-and-trade legislation, while not the only barrier to an agreement, will certainly be a critical element in shaping the timeframes for an eventual treaty.

The key issues that are expected to be contained in the political agreement aimed for at Copenhagen were recently outlined by a British government official: "It would be substantive. It would set timelines, and provide the figures by which rich countries would reduce emissions, as well as the money that would be made available to developing countries to adapt to climate change."

As to the time required to translate such a political agreement into a legally binding treaty, most commentators consider three to six months an optimistic target, and the focus has increasingly shifted to COP16 to be held in Mexico in December 2010.