Copenhagen Day Three: leaks, divisions and police raids
Sue Wheat
10th December 2009
Day Three of Copenhagen was a day of extreme contrasts. Activists, who the previous day were good-humouredly putting an alternative view of how they would like the world’s leaders to address the negotiations, were in the night rudely awaken at 2.30am by the Danish police, locked in their accommodation and their belongings searched. It was to set the tone for the rest of the day…
The scandal of yesterday’s ‘Danish text’ (now re-labelled ‘leakgate’) – a secret draft agreement written by Denmark which is widely felt would favour rich countries over poor – reverberated around the Copenhagen negotiations all day. Climate experts responses varied from the laid back: “The Danes did what they had to do – drafted something they hoped ticked most of the boxes and then set about consulting on it,” (Bryony Worthington, Sandbag) to the more outraged: “Like ants in a room full of elephants, poor countries are at risk of being squeezed out of the climate talks in Copenhagen.” (Antonio Hill, Oxfam).
The day’s good news was supposed to be Britain, Mexico, Norway and Australia tabling a paper in the afternoon that strongly backs a major new $10 billion (£6.2 billion) climate fund for developing countries to be set up immediately to pay poorer nations between 2012 and 2015 and set down in international law within six months.
But the reaction of developing countries was not positive yesterday, and views hadn’t changed today: “$10 billion is not enough to buy us coffins”, said the G77’s chief negotiator, Sudanese Lumumba Di-Aping, who today spoke out angrily: “We have been asked to sign a suicide pact.”
The small island states and poor African states consequently demanded a legally binding treaty to aim at a maximum global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius. They also wanted greenhouse gas concentrations stabilized at 350 parts per million (ppm) rather than the 450ppm favored by developed countries and some major developing nations.
The existing agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, was not tough enough they said, for the countries most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. They wanted a new legally-binding protocol to run alongside the existing Kyoto Protocol. This was opposed by richer developing states such as China, which fears tougher action would curb its growth – revealing a split among the G77 between the more rapidly developing nations and the rest.
The plenary session was suspended as a result and a support demo occurred in the Bella Centre of activists from 350.org and the 'TckTckTck' campaign, chanting: "Tuvalu is the new deal!" The spontaneous demonstration got twittered around the world in seconds. (Twitter is proving to be the communication tool of the climate talks, with every story being broken on it first and activists, journalists and civil servants and ministers updating on it constantly).
In contrast to, and presumably to cool the high emotions running within the negotiating halls and corridors, the official line coming from the COP15 included a statement from UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon Ban, saying he believed the negotiations remained on course for a strong deal.
However, on the other side of the world, in preparation for President Obama’s arrival in Copenhagen next week, Sarah Palin had written in the Washington Post that Obama should boycott Copenhagen because of the ‘Climategate’ controversy (the hacked University of East Anglia emails) and because Obama’s green measures would be an “economic catastrophe”.