copenhagen: where to now?

The city of Copenhagen is a climate crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport ... In the end they produced a poor deal full of loopholes big enough to fly Air Force One through

Kumi NaidooExecutive Director, Greenpeace

[W]e need to be clear that it is a letter of intent and is not precise about what needs to be done in legal terms. So the challenge is now to turn what we have agreed politically in Copenhagen into something real, measurable and verifiable

Yvo de BoerSecretary General, UNFCCC

Secretariat

observations

• Copenhagen confirmed economic and political

power has shifted East and South

• Back to the future

A more chaotic multipolar world

• Medium and smaller players empowered

Every little counts

observations• Kyoto (1997) could be the high water mark for

multilateralism

• The Copenhagen Accord was a WTO ‘Green

Room’ moment

• Conditions now more fertile for bilateral and

regional deal-making

observations

• Clues to the future of the climate change negotiations Look at what happened in the WTO

The rise of the ‘Development Agenda’ (a la WTO Doha Round)

‘QWERTY’ path dependency (‘developed vs. developing)

Climate change adaptation may trump mitigation

In the absence of political leadership; a much greater role for business

advantage nz

• Geopolitically we’re in Asia The tyranny of distance is no longer a valid excuse

• Australia casts a long shadow

• Moral and ‘neutrality’ power Tuvalu at Copenhagen (NZ in the WTO)

Being small, ‘green’, friendly and far-away is on our side

NZ a safe pair of hands, an honest broker

But erosion of authority if no substance at home

discussion• NZ (conditionally) signed up to the

Copenhagen Accord on 1 February 2010.• NZ targets = 10-20% below 1990 emissions

levels by 2020 only if comprehensive global agreement reached (the same pre-Copenhagen pledge)

• Tuvalu: see http://www.thesinkingoftuvalu.com/the_documentary_king_tide_trailer.php

beginners’ guides

• Climate Change Sciencewww.realclimate.org

• Climate Change Skeptics Skeptics

www.skepticalscience.com

• Climate Change Negotiations www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change

• Climate Mitigation/Adaptation Funding

www.climatefundsupdate.org