The United Nations Climate Change Conference will take place from December 7 – 18, 2009 at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference seeks to chart a new commitment to reduce carbon emissions worldwide.

Contrary to popular misconception, the agreement that is expected to be formulated in Copenhagen won’t replace the Kyoto Protocol. It would be an extension of the existing climate change agreement. It’s only the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period that ends in 2012. Its structural elements, like carbon markets and compliance mechanisms, have no expiry date.

The climate conference is the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 5th Meeting of the Parties (MOP 5) to the Kyoto Protocol. It is preceded by the ‘Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions’ scientific conference, which took place in March 2009 at the Bella Center.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen invited world leaders from United Nations member states to participate in the climate change conference. At least 65 world leaders – including Brazil, Germany, France, Britain and Australia –have confirmed their attendance, and governmental representatives from 170 countries are expected to be in Copenhagen. Over 15 000 people are expected to converge at the Bella Centre during the conference.

Background to the UN climate change conference

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international environmental treaty adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), commonly known as the Earth Summit. It was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992.

The objective of the treaty is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to a level that will prevent dangerous interference with the climate system.

The treaty itself sets no obligatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries, and contains no enforcement mechanisms. In other words, the treaty is considered legally non-binding.

Instead, the treaty provides for updates (called "protocols") that would set mandatory emission limits. The main update is the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted on December 11, 1997, in Kyoto, Japan.

As of October 2009, the UNFCCC had 192 parties.

Copenhagen 2009

The negotiations in Copenhagen are in fact two parallel sets of talks. Firstly, there are those covering the UNFCCC, and they occur under the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA).

Secondly, there are negotiations under the Kyoto Protocol, which take place in the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP).

Under the AWG-LCA negotiating track, the United States is calling for a replacement of economy-wide targets that are internationally binding (like those of the Kyoto Protocol), with a ‘pledge and review’ approach.

Under this proposal, each nation would pledge national actions that are open to some degree of measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) by other countries.  These would then combine to create a global total. Such a total may or may not add up to what science demands, and pledging countries would not be internationally bound to adhere to any targets. The US proposal may appeal to some developing nations that are voluntarily reducing their emissions.

Some countries, such as India, say they would consider international MRV, but only for actions that are supported by finance and technology from developed nations. So far, however, developed countries are delaying making any commitments to provide such support until after developing nations have pledged their mitigation actions.

Almost all developed countries want the two negotiating tracks to merge, leading to a single new agreement. Most developing countries favour a dual-track strategy that would both amend the Kyoto Protocol and create a new agreement resulting from the AWG-LCA track, as this would ensure the Kyoto Protocol’s more environmentally rigorous targets and multilateral compliance would remain in place. They fear that a single agreement may result in some or all of the Kyoto Protocol features being dropped in an attempt to craft a weak deal appealing to the United States.

Challenges leading up to Copenhagen

The main obstacle for a Copenhagen deal is money. Poor countries that have barely come out of industrialisation insist that wealthier countries are the ones -- in their view --responsible for climate change, and must help them obtain the required technology to reduce CO2 emissions.

The legal form of the COP15 outcome is also major sticking point, as developing nations largely want the Kyoto Protocol to go on, with a new commitment period, and they oppose any new agreement that spells out new commitments for them.

For any agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, it must appeal to developing countries as being better overall in terms of its environmental outcomes and additional financial resources it needs to commit.

Developed countries which are party to the Kyoto Protocol are legally bound to agree to new targets for a second commitment period, which begins in 2013.

In accordance with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s findings, least developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing states (SIDS) demand an overall target of cutting emissions to 45% below their 1990 levels by 2020. But so far, developed nations have proposed targets only up to 16 - 23%, according to the UNFCCC Secretariat.

But the European Union (EU) and other industrialised nations want to see all countries pay a share, or at least develop strategies for emissions reduction. The EU has also offered to increase its already agreed-upon reduction of 20 - 30%, but only if others, especially the United States, follow suit.

Possible outcomes at the Copenhagen conference

Negotiators in both the AWG-LCA and AWG-KP tracks must agree text for parties to the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol to adopt at COP15. Whatever happens, COP15 will have a fundamental impact for years as some of its possible outcomes are legally binding and others are not.

Scenario 1

No agreement. COP15 could end without agreement, with the expectation that talks resume in 2010 (termed ‘COP15-bis’).

Scenario 2

A decision or set of decisions. This is the weakest agreed outcome, but could be combined with one of the following stronger outcomes.

Scenario 3

A political ‘implementing agreement’ that is not legally binding and through which each state decides its own goals and how to reach them according to domestic laws. This is favoured by the United States, but opponents say that unless the targets are internationally binding, and there is a compliance mechanism to enforce them, such an agreement will be flouted.

Developing nations also fear that national approaches could allow developed nations to use domestic laws to discriminate against their exports if their production entails emissions.

Scenario 4

A single new legally binding agreement (Copenhagen Protocol) that replaces the Kyoto Protocol and includes additional issues such as adaptation to climate change impacts. Such an agreement could include mitigation commitments for the United States and actions for major developing nations.

Scenario 5

Two protocols. An amended Kyoto Protocol that improves on what has already been negotiated, plus a new legally binding agreement as described above. Most developing nations want this. – compiled and edited by Matona Fatman