Copenhagen a Danish Overture to Mexican Coda?

By: Beverly Natividad on January 14th, 2010

Despite the weight of the world’s pressure and the historic presence of more than a hundred heads of state, a ‘safe’ deal is still a likely outcome of the United Nations Climate Change Conference here in Copenhagen.

According to the American think-tank Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a binding deal will definitely be coming out of the two-week climate talks. However, it cautioned, that it may not fully reach fruition until the next gathering of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties in Mexico in 2010.

“We won’t be leaving here without any binding deal,” said Elliot Diringer, Pew’s vice-president for international strategies in a briefing Wednesday morning.

But, he said, it will leave a lot of unresolved details for the Mexico meeting to firm up in order not to hamper the expectations from Copenhagen.

“Hopefully, a clear pathway is set here,” said Diringer.

For one, he said, the question whether it would be a legally-binding outcome or merely a political agreement may not be clear at this stage.

“There has been talk of a legally-binding outcome but it is not clear in what form. They may have to come back to that next year,” Diringer said.

The COP15 agreement, he said, will also likely preserve the two negotiation tracks, coming up with a legally-binding agreement for both the Ad Hoc Working Group for Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) and the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) but not a merging of the two.

“There is no chance that the Kyoto Protocol will be merged,” added Diringer.

Also, one of the important aspects of the deal that will have to wait out a year is the MRV framework (measurement, reporting and verification) by which to check global emissions and individual country accountability.

“It is important to get as far as we can on that issue. This will be put off until next year,” said Diringer.

The Pew Center also said that the COP15 is not ikely ot produce an agreement that would peg the temperature ceiling to one number by which to base the reduction of global emissions. According to the IPCC assessment report, the Earth’s temperature has to be kept within a 2 degree Celsius ceiling and to do this, global emissions of greenhouse gases need to peak by 2020 at the latest and then halve by 2050.

Diringer said COP15 will probably release a formulation instead of a single-digit temperature ceiling.