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Climate change is one of the major challenges that the world is facing today. Although the issue of climate change and its impacts on humanity has not been given serious attention in much of the twentieth century and before, it has gained consideration since the later part of the 20th century. Today environmental issues are at the heart of international relations. Indeed, one can arguably say that, if international politics of the twentieth century was dominated by power and ideological struggle that resulted in two major world wars, and the Cold War, politics of the 21st century would certainly be dominated by environmental and developmental issues.
Despite the growing concern over environmental change, however, there is no consensus over what measures to take, who takes responsibility, and how to implement it. The complexity of emission reduction impacts on the economy and divergent interests are among the many reasons that made climate change negotiations difficult and delayed urgent mitigation and adaptation actions.
There is no doubt that nations have common understanding on changing patterns of the climate but industrialized countries are not ready to make big commitment towards tackling climate change. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol was the single “successful” protocol that produced binding agreement towards curbing carbon dioxide emission from 37 industrialized countries. Nevertheless, President Bush’s later rejection of the agreement, and of course, his questioning of scientific provability of human activity as the main cause of global warming has discouraged other industrialized countries in keeping their reduction targets.
As the Kyoto Protocol is expiring in 2012, the United Nations has been working to produce another binding document that will be serving after 2012. To this end meetings have been held in Indonesia, Germany, Thailand, Spain and other countries that finally led to Copenhagen.
The Copenhagen climate change conference was expected to produce a binding document though later it proved to be unreachable as negotiators were polarized over whether developing countries should be included in the negotiations on whether greenhouse gas emission reduction commitment or not. Technically speaking, the conference was about killing the Kyoto protocol and producing another agreement on one hand, and maintaining the protocol on the other hand. Although Obama Administration’s strong position in the negotiation not to commit more than 17 percent reduction target from 2005 level limited the success of the negotiation, the Administration’s recognition of human activity as the main cause of climate change makes the Copenhagen climate change conference partially successful. Besides, China and India’s, the biggest greenhouse gas emitting developing countries non-binding pledge to reduce energy intensity by 40-45 percent in 2020, and 20 percent respectively shows the achieved progress.
In Copenhagen, industrialized countries, especially United Stated was keen to convince major developing countries to emission reduction commitment. Contrarily, developing countries were firm on their position, which claimed industrialized countries to be historically responsible for climate changes, and reduction measures to be taken by developed countries to follow the rules as was agreed in Kyoto Protocol. However, China and India’s announcement of non-binding reduction scheme shows that Copenhagen negotiation has progressively brought developing countries to carbon dioxide emission reduction voluntary commitment, and that emission reduction is no more reserved for historically responsible countries only, though they should take the lead.
Taking into account the already felt environmental damage to human security, bringing major developing countries to voluntary emission reduction commitment scheme is a great success. The world is not in a position to apply discriminatory practices as China has already surpassed USA in greenhouse gas emission, and India and Brazil are following suit. Yet, as the people of these countries cannot fully shoulder emission reduction-related costs, rich countries ought to financially and technologically support these countries.
The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference was different from the Kyoto Protocol in many ways. United State’s reconsideration of its position; China and India’s commitment to emission reduction; and Africa’s unprecedented representation in the conference are among the many ones. Despite Africa’s US$50 billion claim as environmental compensation from industrialized countries, however, it did not achieve the intended sum. Instead, the continent gained only a$10 billion promise annually for the coming three years.
The expectation of rich countries to bring developing countries into binding emission reduction proved to be futile in Copenhagen. Nonetheless, developing countries could reduce their energy intensity and thereby carbon dioxide emission if industrialized countries financially and technologically support these countries to make use of their sources of renewable energy. The committed amount however, is much below the claimed assistance. To make matters worse, experience shows that rich countries do not keep their promises. In the last seven years developed countries together pledged nearly US$18 billion to developing countries but only US$900 million has been disbursed and Africa, the poorest continent received only 12 percent of it. If developed countries continue to break promises in the coming few years, the world would not reap the needed result. Conversely, if they keep their promises, countries like Eritrea will be able to implement renewable energy projects, strengthen energy efficiency, and continue reforestation programs.
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