Climate change negotiators look for a ‘politically binding’ deal

BARCELONA, SPAIN – So it’s official. There will be no legally binding treaty in Copenhagen.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer says so; a senior EU negotiator says so; even the genially optimistic Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband says so – telling the Commons: “The UN negotiations are moving too slowly and not going well.”

As one European delegate at this last round of talks before Copenhagen told me: “We’re out of time to agree a fully worked-up treaty.”

But they keep on going, these now very familiar faces at UN climate talks. They’re all here – climate campaigners, government officials, business and industry lobbyists.

Milling around, pressing flesh, bending ears, spreading rumours, buttonholing passing negotiators. A word changed here, a clause deleted there, each generates a frisson of excitement or depression; these are the bread and butter of climate change negotiations.

Now, there’s a lot of salvage work going on. The aim is a political agreement, one that is “politically binding” – though that’s something of a slippery concept.

Rich country negotiators and the hosts, the Danish government, say they want something with enough meat in it so Gordon Brown, President Lula of Brazil, who knows, even President Obama, et al can all turn up at the end of the Copenhagen talks and bask in the glory of being seen to save the planet, while leaving the details to be worked out by officials in yet more negotiations.

Negotiations that may take a further six months, though I’ve heard one insider say it could take up to a year.

The more optimistic government delegates – Britain among them – say they’re still pushing for a political agreement with real numbers in it – numbers for emissions cuts by developed countries, numbers for emissions restraint by developing countries, and numbers for the money the rich will pay to the poor to help them deal with the impacts of climate change.

But the frustration of the poor is growing – African nations walked out at the beginning of the week demanding the rich countries start talking turkey. That livened things up. And it has put the rich countries under the spotlight and forced them to start explaining exactly how their much-vaunted offers of targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions will actually work.

The problem is, a politically binding agreement can be watered down; it can be evaded and sidestepped. The less meat there is in, the greater wriggle room there is to water it down. And astute negotiators know that, which may explain the British ambition for real numbers in the agreement.

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