21 December 2009

[December 21, 2009 - Copenhagen] - This weekend the climate summit in Copenhagen ended in failure, closing without adopting the fair, ambitious and binding agreement that is required to avoid dangerous climate change. The EU failed to move to a higher emissions reduction target at a critical moment when doing so could have unlocked the talks.

“We cannot ignore the role the EU has played in this failure,” said Matthias Duwe, Director of Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe. [1] “The EU was leading the charge to negotiate a future climate regime two years ago, and came to the negotiations with a clear, developed mandate and position. However, they missed every opportunity in the run up to Copenhagen to show leadership and push these talks out of their suffocating deadlock. The inconclusive and weak outcome of the EU summit held during the Copenhagen meeting was the latest example of the EU’s passivity.”

Specifically, the EU signaled too late it could support an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, a crucial issue for developing countries.  In addition, the EU has also failed to come forward with a specific, meaningful and credible offer on long term finances - despite having enough revenue available from the EU’s emissions trading system - which would have given developing countries grounds for confidence in the agreement. The money offered at the EU summit was far less than what is required to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change and consisted largely of relabelling existing aid budgets.

Furthermore, the EU undermined its leadership credibility by being divided internally over solutions to emission loopholes.

Importantly, the EU publicly acknowledged that this deal is far from adequate. Although there is a lot of finger pointing happening now, in the end the EU has to accept its share of the blame and do some soul searching about why it failed to have a more positive impact in these talks. Now the EU must confirm its continued commitment to the UN climate process, which is the only credible instrument to address climate change that includes the most vulnerable countries and communities.

The Copenhagen failure needs to be undone as soon as possible. The science is clear and the time for action is past urgent. The massive outpouring of public support for a fair, ambitious and binding climate agreement is a call that will keep reverberating across the planet. All we are missing is the political will. Moving forward, EU leaders need to return to the negotiating table immediately and come with more than they offered in Copenhagen. We cannot wait another year to resolve these crucial issues.

Notes: [1] CAN Europe is a coalition of 130 NGOs throughout Europe working to halt dangerous climate change. CAN Europe is the European node of CAN International, an umbrella organisationrepresenting environment, development and faith-based NGOs working within the UNFCCC process.