Where’s the beef?

Article from Malta Independent.

The deal clinched in the final hours of negotiations in Copenhagen was striking only in the sense of what it left out from what was expected of it.

Although the EU ended up endorsing it reluctantly, it was really a deal between the major emitters – the USA, China, Brazil, India and South Africa with most other delegations having not even seen it, when the White House announced the accord.

There were:

• No firm targets for limiting the global temperature rise;

• No targets for carbon cuts;

• No commitments to a legally binding treaty;

• No target year for peaking emissions;

• No guarantee that countries vulnerable to climate impact will be guaranteed the temperature targets they need;

• Commitments made based on commitments already made back in July;

• No details as to how the developed countries should be paying $100bn per year to developing countries – particularly as to how much of it will be private sector or government sector funded;

• No guarantee that either the meeting held in Germany in the next

few months, or the next scheduled ministerial meeting in the UN process in Mexico next year, will necessarily deliver a treaty;

• No reference to the individual targets for emissions cuts which countries will have to take on, both in the medium and in the long term. Even if inserted later on, since accord is not legally binding, they are bound to remain generalised aspirations;

• Rich and poor countries blaming each other for failure, after two years of talking, two weeks of haggling and a two and a half page document no one seems to really like!

This weak, watered down, minimum consensual deal will become a deal only if and when endorsed by all the 193 nations at the talks.

It was evident from the beginning that there would be no legally binding document at the end of Cop 15 – the Copenhagen Summit, but no one expected a document that fell so far short of one’s expectations.

Although the agreement has as a positive a method for verifying industrialised nations’ reduction of emissions, it is not that clear how the sketchy method of consultation and analysis will be carried out.

The only real encouraging sign that I detected was that without a deal, not only two countries as India and China would have been freed from any type of contract but that even the USA itself, which is not in Kyoto, would be free of any type of contract.

The litmus test will be what will really happen on the ground beyond Copenhagen.

Primarily as to whether countries will manage to honour their commitments to set out in a few weeks their emissions reduction plans to give some scope to the promised but unquantified deeper cuts.

As I see it there is no real commitment for the EU to bind itself to move from a 20 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 to a 30 per cent reduction at this stage. Particularly that rather than talking of a first step taken, we now to need to look at the many more steps needed in the future.

Although I can understand that US President might not want to derail the health reform process by adding new pressures on climate issues on his own domestic front, it still has to be seen whether he will press the Senate to move ahead on climate change legislation in his own country. Some claim that now that he stood up to China he might be in a better position to do so.

The core issue is whether a weak agreement is better than no agreement at all, or vice versa.

On the domestic front now that Malta has applied for and been accepted as an Annex 1 industrialised country the questions we need to ask are the following:

• The PM stated in his three-minute speech in Copenhagen that Malta is prepared for and committed to combating climate change. How is it really prepared?

• Where is the right administrative infrastructure to enable Malta and its citizens to participate in the so-called carbon market?

• Where is the socio economic and regulatory impact assessment of how Malta will be affected if the EU eventually shifts from 20-30 per cent reduction targets?

• Has Malta carried out studies on how possible future increased commitments, especially through maritime bunkers, can affect us, particularly in the ship registry business?

• Who is working on these issues locally?

• Why is Malta going for a heavy fuel oil power plant extension at this delicate point in time?

• How will all this affect our own sustainable development in view of the socio-economic impacts involved?

• Merely referring to the 1988 UN initiative as the PM did in Cop15 is like the Egyptians stating that once we had the Pharaohs.

It is time for Malta to show what is being done concretely now and today.

We must square up to the fact that we have no strategic plan on preparing the island for these impacts.

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