Posted on 16 December
2009 - Copenhagen, Denmark – Little of substance
has been decided in the texts now being
passed to ministers and soon to go before
Heads of State in Copenhagen, WWF warned
today.
“In many ways the final
sessions have produced more disagreement
rather than less on key issues as national
negotiators dig in,” said Kim Carstensen,
leader of WWF’s global deal. “As the really
hard decisions go forward to higher levels,
it becomes more likely we will end up with
high words on principal and less likely
we will get detailed words that will work
in tackling climate change.
Carstensen said the
competitiveness and intransigence of large
powers was largely responsible for the mess
the talks had become.
“At the higher levels,
it is lawyers building loopholes for the
sake of large interests rather than nations
negotiating the moral and effective ways
to enact the measures that science says
are necessary,” Carstensen said.
WWF said that the world
is currently on track for runaway climate
change, with commitments put forward by
parties adding up to levels of global warming
that may well reach 4 degrees C above pre-industrial
levels – a recipe for disaster.
“Large nations can bully
and spin their way out of effective climate
action, but there will be no way to spin
or bully our way out of climate change.
“The world will look
back on this conference from a state of
climate chaos or from a state of narrowly
averted climate crisis. When we look back,
will we be talking of the cure of Copenhagen
or the curse of Copenhagen.”
In the latest developments,
all night sessions failed to produce a financial
framework for assisting developing nations
to adapt to climate change and reduce emissions.
The debate on strengthened
emission reduction targets for the historically
biggest emitters from industrialized countries
has not progressed beyond the utterly insufficient
offerings made by the developed world before
Copenhagen.
“Texts in almost all
crucial areas of the negotiations - such
as technology cooperation, adaptation and
forest protection – has been seriously stripped
of anything firm over the last 24 hours”,
said Carstensen.
“Negotiators from the
US have been trying to hold the line on
too many things big and small and in the
process the big picture has been lost –
it is time for the moral leadership of US
president Barack Obama to assert itself
in line with the hopes and expectations
of the world,” Carstensen said.
“China also has to take
a higher moral ground and face the contradiction
between it requiring international scrutiny
of the greenhouse gas inventories of other
nations while declining it for itself.”
“Europe could act boldly
in line with the scientific imperatives
rather than act incrementally on the basis
of what others are doing.”
“We have three days
left. Our planet can’t afford delay, so
leaders have to take over and rescue the
process.”
