COP15: UNFCCC process and “Copenhagen Accord – agreement of few power nations”

“The conference of the parties takes note of the Copenhagen Accord,” says a final decision.
“The text is still strongly debated, and it remains to be seen how many countries will sign on to the Copenhagen Accord”, COP15 President, Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen

The conference began on December 7 and ran through to December 18, 2009 plus one more half day in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was said that total 192 nations with 115 heads of government attended the conference. However, till dec 16 total 41170 participants including parties, observer and media were registered to enter the Bella Center.

No one can imagine how much progress has been made on text of AWG-LCA and AWG-KP, but every one wonder when the “’C’ Accord” suddenly came. Negotiators discussed on the same text from Bonn – Bangkok – Barcelona, starting the concept on Bali earlier. But the third alphabet ‘C’ – Copenhagen underestimate all the other initiatives of ‘B’ and suddenly produced “CA’ – Copenhagen Accord”, another new acronym on climate negotiation.

COP 15 was no different than the general five/six days summit. Kicking off the UNFCCC process and undermining the negotiators and their sleepless night and hard work from B to B ‘CA’ was fetched, as deceleration of summit.

Head of the state come to the COP meetings at the near final day to make a statement at high level session. Ministers or the associates come for the high level political discussion, decision to be made on the issue left over by the negotiators.

But COP15 was very different of all these facts. As Hugo Chavez said, Obama “Nobel prize of War” came at the final day, collected some earlier made regressive agreements/declarations, set meeting with some power leaders of power nations(moreover BASIC), convinced and made agreement with some advance developing state, imperil some poor nations of them and greased some one’s palms, finally produced so called agreement ‘CA’. However, the accord was not formally adopted by COP15 but simply “noted”

How did ‘Copenhagen Accord’ emerged ?

• Early in the first week of the conference, a draft of the Copenhagen Agreement was leaked,  which has also been referred to as the “Danish text“, had been developed by the “Circle of Commitment” comprising representatives from the governments of the UK, US, Denmark and Australia.
• In a closed meeting of G77 on very first day a text was distributed on back door, soon the text get floated at Bella Center. It was the Basic Text (alternative proposal of Brazil, South Africa, India and China), which has been drafted by our high emitting friends in G77+China Group
• Then, Obama came and held meetings of power nations and formalize the text, made agreement with some parties, imperial and also bribed some to make agree.
• Later, heads of 25 nations were invited as part of a “friends of the chair” group to help broker a deal: United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Maldives, Grenada, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Algeria, Denmark, Germany, Korea, Bangladesh, France, Gabon, and three others. The leaders of this group tried to hammer out a rough document to provide the basis for further negotiations.
• It also seems that language in the “Copenhagen Accord” could have been taken from – indeed, some passages were reportedly taken from, via the mechanism of copying and pasting – G8 and MEF declarations and Mexican proposal submitted to UNFCCC.

This is the “Copenhagen Accord“ final outcome.

Following the UNFCCC procedure, Secretariate, in the mean time preliminary released draft texts were on two main sub-groups of the COP15 Conference. These were:

• Chair’s Proposed Draft Text on the Outcome of the Work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA)
• Draft text of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol

So, there is no reason that supports that the ‘CA’ is an outcome of COP15 but  it is just an agreement of few power nations.

Also go through:
COP15 COPENHAGEN ACCORD
Analysis of both text: Behind-the-scenes at COP 15: BASIC responds to the Danish Draft
The Copenhagen Accord – Final Thoughts on COP15