Copenhagen climate deal 'off track'
Updated on 13 December 2009
In Copenhagen, there are more arrests at environmental protests as ministers arrive for the crucial last week of negotiations at the UN climate change summit.
Science correspondent Tom Clarke said: "I spoke to the British negotiating team today, they're telling me we're way off track for a political deal at Copenhagen. Lots and lots of work for negotiators here to do and for ministers to do, before world leaders arrive on Wednesday.
"They need to give them something that might be able to be signed into a formal agreement to reduce emissions - the whole goal of this summit."
Police detained 257 activists as around 300 demonstrators headed to the city harbour. Protesters have accused the Danish police of using heavy-handed tactics after almost a thousand people were arrested yesterday.
Science correspondent Tom Clarke said police are using a new piece of legislation brought in specifically for this summit which allows them to detain people for up to 12 hours without questioning.
"The tactic they seem to be using is mass arrests, snipping out sections of any protest that seem to contain elements that might cause trouble," he said.
"It's a tactic, though, that they're going to need to practice, as one protester we spoke to earlier today there is more direct action planned for later this week and intense it probably will become."
Today was the official rest day of the summit, but it was a very important day for forests.
There was a breakout meeting on deforestation with the idea to get some kind of agreement to pay developing countries with tropical forests not to cut those forests down.
"It's one of the most complex and jargon-filled areas of the negotiation, but talking to negotiators today, it emerges that it is possibly going to be one of the things that they do actually reach agreement on here," Tom Clarke said.
Environment minister Hillary Benn told Channel 4 News: "Getting a deal on deforestation is absolutely fundamental to getting an agreement here in Copenhagen, it's responsible for about 20 per cent of global emissions.
"That's why we've got to find the finance to give trees a value standing up as opposed to having a value being cut down, and that's why we need to plant more trees in the world.
"But I think there's a real commitment here to get that agreement and with it, then we have a chance of getting a deal at the end of the week."
