At the Conference...
We had travelled on a coach through the night across five countries to bring the message from The Wave ‘Climate Justice Now! Protect the Poorest!'.
Very many meetings took place in the conference, mainly held in the Bella Centre, with a warren of different-sized rooms - the two big rooms for plenaries were named after (great Danes) Tycho Brahe and Karen Blixen - the latter with desks named for each of the 193 countries. Much of the place was open-plan, with displays for many organisations and country groupings; and hundreds of small tables, a couple used by Tearfund staff.
Tearfund's team in the Bella Centre included overseas partners, from Honduras, India, Malawi, Nepal and Niger; it was a privilege to be there to pray for the whole team, praying over the weekend was even more important than being on the march on Saturday afternoon. Speaking of which, I was escorting Superbadger - difficult to see where you're going with a costume like that! If you're on facebook, try http://apps.facebook.com/superbadger to discover more. Earlier we'd joined up with two people from Tear Netherlands, and spent time with them over the weekend.
There is a real suspicion that climate change finance from industrialised for developing countries is just recycled aid money, not real money at all. Climate change is often a result of two centuries of industrialisation in developed countries; but the people already affected are the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.
Reflections on Copenhagen...
Five days after coming back home the news from the conference, after the Heads of State had appeared, was so very disappointing. The Copenhagen Accord was not agreed by all, so became an attachment 'noted' by the final decisions of the Conference.
The accord isn't fair, nor ambitious, it isn't binding, nor in any way adequate for keeping temperature rises below 2 degrees, but leaves us on the path towards a 3 - 4 degree rise in global temperature and catastrophic climate changes. A collapse of the talks was narrowly avoided, but this was just cobbled together by the US, China, India, South Africa and Brazil, with the EU effectively sidelined. The UK at least had been more active in discussions with countries outside the EU, pushing for more ambitious targets
No real work was done during the conference to close the huge loopholes in accounting for emissions such as forest rules. Developing countries put some decent offers of mitigation action (reducing the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases) showing the inadequacy of developed pledges.
Some fairly strong texts were developed during the first ten days for adaptation (adjustments to moderate harm or make use of beneficial opportunities with climate change) but these were lost in the final Accord.
Finance pledges are woefully inadequate and are not binding. Climate negotiations aren't trade negotiations in Doha, we need ambition to rise so that sea levels don't! Not 'I will if you will' but 'We will, together'.
The Copenhagen Accord isn't a good deal for the world's poorest and most vulnerable people who will be hit hardest and worst by climate change and are least responsible for causing it. The job is not finished - there is much more campaigning to come.
On Tearfund's Campaigning section on their website can be found this encouraging message:
Over the next few months we need to keep campaigning and praying to keep the pressure on world leaders to raise their ambition levels to cement a fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement. We hope to see more UN climate negotiations scheduled for early in 2010.
Read more at www.tearfund.org/Campaigning/Climate+change+and+disasters (...)
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