Cop This Lot: Parties & Protocols

It’s got parties and protocols, targets and treaties, conventions and conferences and it starts on Monday – but what exactly is all this talk of Copenhagen? Australia’s Green Blogger and columnist Graeme Readfearn presented this overview of the “greatest climate show on earth” in the Courier Mail.

Graham Readfearn in the Courier Mail (4 December 2009):

Tens of thousands of delegates are arriving in the Danish capital for two weeks of intense negotiations.

Some say the talks could decide the future of the planet as we know it.

15 Copenhagen facts

1. COP15 is the official title of the world climate talks in Copenhagen. But COP isn’t short for Copenhagen – it stands for the Conference of the Parties, the highest decision-making authority of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Some 192 countries, including Australia, the US, New Zealand, the UK and China, have ratified this convention, which came into force in 1994. Copenhagen is the 15th time the COP has met since, hence COP15.

2. More than 70 delegates from Australian non-governmental organisations – such as WWF Australia, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Greenpeace – are attending Copenhagen. So far, about 100 world leaders have said they’re going, including US President Barack Obama, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

3. Australian delegates will have to adjust to average daily temperatures of about 4C in Copenhagen but the city has the world’s largest district heating system – a by-product of the city’s electricity generators, which have also switched from burning coal to natural gas and biofuels.

4. The ultimate aim of the Copenhagen meeting is to get as close as possible to a legally binding deal among all parties to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. The current agreement – known as the Kyoto Protocol – runs out in 2012.

5. There are four main groups involved in the talks. The first are “parties” – the delegations of ministers and negotiators from governments. “Observer organisations” are there to try to influence the parties. The third group includes the UN bodies such as the World Bank, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UN Environment Programme. The fourth group is the world’s media.

6. Protesters and campaigners will arrive in their thousands, providing a constant reminder to the 30,000 or so official delegates.

7. Commentators predict the main sticking point for the talks will come between developed nations – the US, Japan and Australia – and developing nations such as China and India. How can developing nations prosper under an agreement that looks to cut greenhouse gas emissions, when the growth of developed countries relied on burning fossil fuels?

8. Negotiators mainly use the “latest” report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was released in 2007, to assess the science of climate. The IPCC does not carry out research, but instead reviews thousands of peer-reviewed research papers.

9. Since the cut-off date for research in to the last IPCC report, known as AR4, scientists have said new findings showed the assessments and conclusions of the IPCC were too conservative. Sea-ice melt in the Arctic has been 40 per cent greater than the middle-of-the-road AR4 predictions. Sea-levels have risen 80 per cent above predictions. The 10 hottest years on record for the globe have all occurred in the past 12 years.

10. In the run-up to Copenhagen, opinion writers and some politicians have questioned climate change. One recent review from 26 of the world’s leading climate science researchers, which referenced more than 260 research papers, concluded that “no credible scientific literature has been published since the AR4 assessment that supports alternative hypotheses to explain the warming trend.”

11. The poorest nations in the world – such as Pacific Island states, low-lying Asian countries and African nations – say they are the least responsible for the legacy of greenhouse gas emissions but will be the hardest hit. Rising sea-levels rise, temperature increases and more droughts and floods are among their concerns.

12. According to the UN, about 13 million ha of forest were cut down or burnt every year between 1990 and 2005, causing about 17 per cent of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases, second only to the energy sector. Much of this occurred in developing countries, in particular Indonesia and Brazil.

13. A solution being proposed by the UN to stop deforestation is known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (or REDD). If accepted, this would enable countries and landholders to be paid for preserving forests and also replanting trees in previously cleared areas.

14. Not everyone agrees that Copenhagen is make or break for the planet. James Hansen – head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies – has said this week that the UNFCCC process was so flawed it would be better to start again from scratch.

15. COP15 starts on Monday and ends on Friday December 18.

Follow the events of Copenhagen on Graham Readfearn’s Green Blog.

Source: www.couriermail.com.au