For more than a week a rumour has circulated that Denmark, host of the ongoing UN conference on climate change, has drawn up a compromise text. On the afternoon of the conference’s second day, The Guardian published what it claimed to be this text. The British newspaper also claims to have read “a confidential analysis of the text by developing countries” which “shows deep unease”.

“You need to listen to all countries. That’s what democracy is about, and that’s what you have been cheering in Denmark. What your Prime Minister (Lars Løkke Rasmussen) does is contrary to the spirit of the developing aid, which Denmark has provided for Africa through many years,” Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping (photo above), chair of the Group of 77, mostly consisting of developing countries, tells Danish daily Politiken.

The draft on The Guardian’s website is headlined “The Copenhagen Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change”. It gives 2020 as the year in which global emissions should peak, while “acknowledging that developed countries collectively have peaked and that the timeframe will be longer for developing countries.” The text specifies that emissions from developed nations should be reduced by 80 percent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels. It also proposes for an interim reduction target for developed countries by 2020 to be set – meeting a key demand from developing countries. However, so far the figure is just given as “X” – meaning it will not be stated before the high level negotiations next week.

A critical issue in the UN negotiations has been whether or not certain developing countries should undertake commitments. Under the present agreement, The Kyoto Protocol, all developing countries are exempted from obligations, but industrialized countries have stressed that this is not feasible in the future. On this issue, the “Danish text” says that “developing countries, except the least developed which may contribute at their own discretion, commit to nationally appropriate mitigation actions.” These commitments are suggested to be given as a percentage – to be negotiated next week – which should be achieved by 2020. However, the percentage should not be compared to present levels, rather to a business-as-usual scenario.

According to The Guardian’s sources, developing countries are infelicitous about the new proposed division between the “least developed” and other developing nations. Another point of concern is the draft’s suggestion to transfer more control over the enforcement of the Copenhagen agreement from the UN administration – playing an absolute key role in the Kyoto Protocol – to the World Bank. This move would indirectly shift more control over to the industrialized world.

According to Danish daily Berlingske, the leak of the draft at this early stage of the conference is seen as unfortunate by European negotiators:

“It is incredibly inappropriate to have this document circulating on paper at this point. It should not have come out until next week,” an unnamed source in the delegation of a European country tells Berlingske.

According to Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, a press release from the Danish Climate Ministry denies that the text published by The Guardian is an official Danish proposal for a compromise text.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer comments in a press release: “This was an informal paper ahead of the conference given to a number of people for the purposes of consultations. The only formal texts in the UN process are the ones tabled by the Chairs of this Copenhagen conference at the behest of the Parties.”

(Photo of G-77 chair Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping: Scanpix/AFP)

Michael von Bülow 12/11/2009 06:45

Poor nations will not accept failure at the UN climate change conference next month in Copenhagen.

The message was clear from Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina (photo above) who spoke late Tuesday in Dhaka at a video conference with leaders of six other countries, including Gordon Brown of Britain and Kevin Rudd of Australia, as well as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“We cannot accept the failure of the Copenhagen summit,” Hasina told the conference, according to AFP, and continued:

“The most vulnerable countries and the least developed countries are worried that their legitimate demands are being sidelined by the disagreements in climate change negotiations between the developed and developing countries.”

Hasina urged rich nations to help climate vulnerable, poor nations such as Bangladesh in the same way they bailed out economies damaged by the global recession.

“If the developed countries could pump trillions of dollars for reviving the world economic situation, they could surely be equally generous to save us, themselves and the world,” she said.

The video conference, chaired by Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, was arranged by the Copenhagen Commitment Circle, a platform of world leaders formed ahead of the UN conference.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi also participated.

Rie Jerichow 08/12/2009 12:15

If sea levels rise by one meter, at least 20 million Bangladeshis, of a total population about 150 million, would be displaced. If the glaciers on the Himalayas melt due to global warming, the situation is even worse.

“The population of our one coastal district is bigger than the entire population of all island countries and in that consideration at least 15 percent of any climate fund should come to us,” State Minister of Environment and Forest Hasan Mahmud told a news conference, according to Reuters.

Hasan Mahmud emphasized that Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in the world to climate change, Reuters reports.

“We are not begging any mercy from anyone. Rather we want justice as the worst victim of climate change,” said Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, a leading economist, who is also part of the Bangladesh climate negotiation team.

The ARTICLE 19 report – Changing the Climate for Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Information – shows that climate change debates and interventions have failed so far to fully integrate a freedom of expression perspective, and that this is evident in many national and regional responses to climate change.

For example, the report details examples where journalists and others have been threatened, harassed or prosecuted by authorities or large corporations, or risked their lives to cover environmental degradation in some parts of the world. In July 2009, the French journalist Cyril Payen was arrested by security guards and handed over to the police while investigating illegal logging by a leading Indonesian industrial group in Sumatra. In November 2009, Kumkum Dasgupta, senior assistant editor with the Delhi-based Hindustan Times and Raimondo Bultrini, reporter for the Italian newspaper L’Espresso were arrested while covering a Greenpeace protest against uncontrolled deforestation in Pelalawan district in the province of Riau, on Sumatra. In Brazil, Vilmar Berna, the editor of the Niterói-based environmentalist daily Jornal do Meio Ambiente, which exposes clandestine overfishing and threats to protected marine life in Rio de Janeiro Bay, has been a constant target of threats and intimidation attempts since May 2006.

With scientists being accused of trying to manipulate the debate on one hand, and on the other, evidence that scientists in the USA were pressured to delete references to climate change in scientific papers, or were prevented by authorities from talking to the media, the importance of transparency cannot be overstated.

“To date, public participation globally in planning for effective mitigation and adaptation in the face of climate change has been marked by high degrees of inequality of access to critical information in what is an increasingly technical but opaque international debate,” adds Callamard.

“This is a profoundly wrong departure point for our joint efforts to secure the future of the planet. No matter what positive outcome emerges from the Copenhagen Conference, little will be delivered unless and until implementation is accompanied by full respect for the free flow of information, the free exercise of public debate, a free and independent media, transparency and accountability.”

The Copenhagen Conference offers the international community an unprecedented opportunity to forge a legally enforceable framework to combat climate change.

ARTICLE 19’s report includes 34 recommendations addressed to states, the media and civil society aimed at addressing some flagrant but often unrecognised flaws in current climate change agreements and practices. The recommendations call for a strengthening of the environment for effective climate change responses by ensuring that human rights, and particularly freedom of expression and freedom of information, are fully integrated into climate change strategies and respected in their implementation.

In particular, ARTICLE 19 calls for:

* Strengthening the legal framework for protection of information and expression rights;

* Promoting the Aarhus Principles (contained in the 1998 Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters) in international agreements;

* The pro-active disclosure and updates of high quality information on climate change;

* Protecting and promoting the free flow of information and public debate;

* Promoting the participation of vulnerable groups;

* Open, effective and transparent systems of accountability at national and international level; and

* Addressing the disparities and inequality between states negotiating climate change agreements.

Kevin Trenberth, of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Colorado, said he believes the hackers who stole a decade’s worth of correspondence from a British university’s computer server deliberately distributed only those documents that could help attempts by skeptics to undermine the scientific consensus on man-made climate change.

Trenberth, a well respected atmospheric scientist, said it did not appear that all the documents stolen from the university had been distributed on the Internet by the hackers.

The University of East Anglia, in eastern England, said hackers last week stole from its computer server about a decade’s worth of data from its Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research center on climate change. About 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents have been posted on Web sites and seized on by climate change skeptics, who claim correspondence shows collusion between scientists to overstate the case for global warming, and evidence that some have manipulated evidence.

“It is right before the Copenhagen debate, I’m sure that is not a coincidence,” Trenberth said in a telephone interview from Colorado.

At least 65 world leaders will attend the Copenhagen climate summit in December as representatives of 191 nations seek agreement on a new global treaty on limiting emissions of greenhouse gases.

Trenberth, a lead author on the 2001 and 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments, said he had found 102 of his own e-mails posted online. “I personally feel violated,” he said. “I’m appalled at the very selective use of the e-mails, and the fact they’ve been taken out of context.”

In one of the stolen e-mails, Trenberth is quoted as saying “we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

He said the comment is presented by skeptics as evidence scientists can’t explain some trends that appear to contradict their stance on climate change. Trenberth explained his phrase was actually contained in a paper he wrote about the need for better monitoring of global warming to explain the anomalies — in particular improved recording of rising sea surface temperatures.

In another e-mail posted online, and unrelated to Trenberth, the British research center’s director, Phil Jones, wrote that he had used a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a chart detailing recent global temperatures. Jones has denied manipulating evidence and insisted his comment had been misunderstood. He said in a statement Saturday that he’d used the word trick “as in a clever thing to do.”

Trenberth acknowledged that language used by some colleagues in the hacked e-mails “looks awkward at best,” particularly messages which criticize climate change skeptics.

Nicholas Stern (photo above), who wrote a British government report on global warming, said hackers who posted documents snatched from the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia had muddled the debate at a critical moment.

Critics of the science behind global warming argue the hacked documents show academics manipulated data to strengthen their argument backing the phenomenon.

“It (the incident) has created confusion and confusion never helps scientific discussions,” Stern told reporters in London.

Governments have begun final preparations for the 192-nation conference in Copenhagen next week, where parameters will be set for a new climate change agreement. The US and China, two of the world’s biggest polluters, have set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and Stern said it was vital that countries managed to agree on measures to tackle global warming.

“We have a moment now when we could get a strategy agreed,” he said. “If it were to dissolve in disarray it would not be easy to put this momentum back together again.”

He said that if countries did not manage to reach agreement, world temperatures could rise by five degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, making much of the world uninhabitable.

Some of the scientists whose private e-mails were stolen by hackers have said they believe those who leaked the documents had deliberately tried to undermine the Copenhagen conference. (Photo: Scanpix/EPA/DPA)

The funds are part of a broad global initiative. Industrialized donor countries in 2008 pledged over 6.1 billion dollars for the Clean Technology Fund and Strategic Climate Fund. The climate investment funds (CIF) are being made available to multilateral development banks, including the ADB.

“The CIF provides concessionary funds for ADB to work together with developing member countries to transform to a low-carbon growth trajectory and strengthen their resilience to threats posed by climate change,” says Xianbin Yao, Director General of ADB’s Regional and Sustainable Development Department, according to a press release from the bank.

The funds will support the deployment of low carbon energy technologies, such as wind, solar, hydro and geothermal power, as well as energy efficiency measures for industry, commercial buildings and municipalities. They will also support pilot programs on climate resilience and forest investment.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is meant to drive private investments into low carbon projects in developing countries and at the same time reduce carbon emissions.

So far the CDM has been successful, but the scheme is facing serious challenges and needs structural reforms, as investors and service providers are “leaving the room”, says Henry Derwent, President and CEO of the International Emissions Trading Association, IETA.

“Investors and service providers are leaving the room just as demand promises to ramp up. The CDM Executive Board has done a lot to improve, but needs strong guidance and instruction. A comprehensive reform agenda must be agreed in Copenhagen,” says Henry Derwent.

IETA is a 170-member group of companies from all over the world who promote the use of flexible mechanisms as part of the response to climate change. On Friday, just three days before the opening of the climate conference in Copenhagen, IETA released a report, concluding that poor management, delays and conflicting rulings are counteracting CDM investments.

The CDM allows emission reduction or emission removal projects in developing countries to earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits. The CERs can be traded and sold, and used by industrialized countries to meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.

On Friday, to highlight the danger that global warming poses to glaciers, Nepal’s government held a Cabinet meeting at Mt. Everest – a stunt the government billed as the world’s highest Cabinet meeting. The ministers posed for pictures, signed a commitment to tighten environmental regulations and expand the nation’s protected areas, and then quickly flew away.

“The Everest declaration was a message to the world to minimize the negative impact of climate change on Mount Everest and other Himalayan mountains,” Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal later said.

The Prime Minister, his two deputy prime ministers and the 20 Cabinet ministers were examined by doctors before boarding helicopters to Kalapathar, a flat area at an altitude of 17,192 feet (5,250 meters) next to Everest base camp, the jumping point for climbers seeking to scale the peak.

The Cabinet spent only 20 minutes next to the mountain to prevent any of the ministers, unused to the heights of the Himalayas, from getting altitude sickness.

Several of the ministers were overweight, some were in their 70s and many came from the low-lying plains in the south. Four ministers declined to attend either because of health concerns or because they were traveling abroad.

Nepal’s negotiation team at the climate conference in Copenhagen next week will push for wealthy countries to commit 1.5 percent of their earnings to help poorer nations protect the environment.

Obama is hoping to capitalize on steps by India and China and build a more meaningful political accord, the White House said.

The move means Obama will be at the summit on Dec. 18, considered a crucial period when more leaders will be in attendance, as opposed to his scheduled stop in Denmark on Wednesday on his way to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen promptly welcomed the US President’s decision. In a statement issued Saturday, Løkke said Obama’s attendance was “an expression of the growing political momentum toward sealing an ambitious climate deal in Copenhagen”.

“President Obama’s strong commitment on the issue of climate change and his global leadership is pivotal to the negotiations in Copenhagen. I look very much forward to welcoming president Obama in Copenhagen alongside other world leaders,” he said.

Obama will now leave for Oslo late Wednesday, attend Nobel events Thursday and return to Washington on Friday.

The president had said that he would travel to the Copenhagen conference if his appearance would help clinch a deal. His decision to go early to the two-week meeting had been seen by many as a sign that an agreement was still a long shot.

The possibility of an agreement may be improving, however.

“There are still outstanding issues that must be negotiated for an agreement to be reached, but this decision reflects the president’s commitment to doing all that he can to pursue a positive outcome,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement. Gibbs said the US will have negotiators involved throughout the Dec. 7-18 conference.

Danish officials say more than 100 world leaders have confirmed they will attend the final stages of the Copenhagen conference.