by Malini Mehra, founder and chief executive of the Centre for Social Markets



Climate negotiations will never be the same after Copenhagen and the Accord reached there may prove to be the 1938 Munich Agreement of modern times: an appeasement to major polluters that condemns the world to runaway climate change and declares war on our children.



One of the Copenhagen climate conference’s key outcomes in December was an 'Accord’ of no legal status and dubious value. A political agreement, the Accord was simply 'noted' by governments, not adopted by them. Its very existence, however, could now risk the architecture established by the UNFCCC to combat global climate change.



A Powerful Non-Agreement

There is much that is wrong with the agreement. It is not legally binding, contains no mid-term or long-term targets for emissions reductions, and critically does not refer to a 'peaking' year for global emissions in order to keep within the 'safe' limit of 2 °C warming (since pre-industrial times).



Neither has it followed the guidance of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that indicates three benchmarks for avoiding dangerous climate change: (1) developed countries must reduce emissions by 25–40% by 2020 from 1990 levels, (2) global emissions must peak and then begin to decline by 2020, and (3) global emissions must decline by 50% by 2050.



The Copenhagen Accord contains a reference to 2 °C but does not endorse it. Given that there are no targets, no peaking years, no trajectories for emissions reductions, only vague rhetoric, this is effectively an agreement for business-as-usual. The Potsdam Institute on Climate Research estimates that the Accord will actually set the world on course for a 3–4 °C world.



As this is a global average, the actual temperature rise in many parts of the world—especially in the Poles and higher latitudes—will be much higher. The small island states have feared this for some time, hence their plea that warming not exceed 1.5 °C to ensure "island survival".



An Accord Too Far...

The 'Copenhagen Accord' is a cruel blow, a setback for millions around the world who had put their faith in their leaders to deliver on climate protection. Never before had such a constellation of groups and institutions come together. Civil society, faith groups, business and industry, the investment community, scientists, engineers and professional organisations—even the UN itself, which ran an unprecedented 'Seal the Deal' campaign—all came forward for urgent action on climate change. Leaders responded to the call and came to Copenhagen—but they did not deliver. This is a failure of historic proportions because an 'encore' will be very difficult.



Instead, we have the modern equivalent of the Munich Agreement. In 1938 European powers sacrificed Czechoslovakia to Hitler's aggression, thinking this would appease his territorial hunger. The consequences of this gigantic miscalculation became evident with the unfolding horrors of World War II.



In 2009, we are making a similar miscalculation by allowing the major greenhouse gas emitters to knowingly sacrifice the poor and vulnerable parts of the world for their 'right to pollute'. The consequences of their actions at a time when the implications of rising carbon emissions are well-known are unconscionable.



The Copenhagen Accord is little more than 'greenwash' by a group of countries who have put the world on a highway to 4 °C and 550ppm. They will spin that information saying this is only the first step, but the reality is that countries as disparate as the USA, Canada, Saudi Arabia, China, and India have no intention of committing to a legally-binding global climate regime now or in the future.  Instead we now have an anaemic 'Pledge and Review' system, which provides little guarantee that emissions will decline as rapidly as they must.



A New World Order Emerges

What Copenhagen made blindingly clear is that the world has changed. We are in a new geopolitical era. Gone are the days of outdated divisions of the world as 'developed' and 'developing'. Nations such as China and India showed they are new power players that will act as nakedly in their self-interest as western powers. It was their double-act with the U.S. that gave us this agreement—backed by a pliant if somewhat discomfited Brazil and South Africa, and bounced on to the rest of the world.



A key lesson from Copenhagen is that the new world order simply does not map onto the archaic systems and processes of the United Nations. The issue is not the UN as such but its antiquated processes and 'political capture'. Bloc politics at the UN are now at least a decade out of date and have not permitted the creative emergence of hybrid coalitions from North and South.



Copenhagen made depressingly clear that 'political realism' has trumped 'climate realism' and that the G2 powers are incapable of providing global leadership. We will have to look elsewhere for solutions. The U.S. and China, aided by others, have acted in their short-term political interest, thinking they will be able to 'manage’ their way out of climate change.



But the climate system is oblivious to the vaunted ambitions of temporal nations and a kicking is around the corner. Those who have acted in their 'national self-interest' will now find that their actions do not serve their long-term interests in a climate- and resource-constrained world. The collateral damage of their decisions, however, will be tragic for those less able to cope.



The good news is that nothing is stopping the emergence of new players. What we need is leadership. Instead of dysfunctional and anachronistic groupings such as the G77/China, we need new groupings of nations that recognise the perils of climate change and increasingly see their interests as interdependent and intertwined.



Many of the nations who are putting their faith in strong de-carbonisation and green growth national plans—such as the Maldives, Costa Rica, Mexico, South Korea, Brazil, and the European Union—now need to unite under a common cause. They need to cross failed 'North/ South' lines and devise a new politics of common climate security and collective economic prosperity.  



In Europe eighty years ago, the key lesson of Munich was that appeasement is not an option. Today our hope rests in multilateralism to prevent a cabal of powerful nations making climate triage decisions over the rest of the world. With the next climate conference slated to take place in Cancun in November 2010, there is everything to play for. It may well be that Cancun can, what Copenhagen could not.



Malini Mehra is the founder and chief executive of the Centre for Social Markets (CSM). The mission of CSM is to change the culture of markets and other social institutions to advance social justice, human rights and sustainable development. For more information, please see http://www.csmworld.org/



This article was first published in the BBC and is available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8490935.stm.

Published in: ECC-Newsletter, February 2010