Copenhagen: weak welcome for weak deal?
Updated on 19 December 2009
The UN says the Copenhagen accord is only the beginning. But does no binding deal spell disaster for the planet? Julian Rush reports from Copenhagen.
It was, in the words of one senior UN official, a "roller coaster" of all-night deal making. But many smaller nations threatened by rising sea levels are furious.
They say the deal cut by the US with India, Brazil, China and South Africa and effectively imposed on everyone else failed to give the tough commitments that were needed to tackle disastrous climate change.
But the UN chief Ban Ki-moon insists it is a start. So an agreement of sorts has been reached in Copenhagen, but the conference will be remembered more for what was not agreed than what was.
With all the leaders long gone, their representatives signed off on a watered down deal. Nothing makes this legally binding, and the hope of a political agreement and even pledges for emissions cuts and money to poor nations was left hazy and watered down.
But one crumb of comfort came from the pledge to keep temperature rises below two degrees.
Jon Snow has just returned from the summit which some had described as the most important event in the history of the world - with some vivid impressions of what it really came down to.
Samira Ahmed spoke to the former UK deputy prime minister, John Prescott, the Council of Europe's climate change rapporteur and the minister who led Britain's negotiating team at Kyoto. She put it to him that many people thought the Copenhagen process would lead to a legally binding agreement on carbon emissions.
Mr Prescott said: "What we've got is an agreement of 192 countries to go to the next stage.
That's exactly how it happened at Kyoto when I was the negotiator.
"You agree a set of principles and then you implement them in the Cop discussions which will take place in Bonn and Mexico by November. That's what happened there.
"A set of principles and a negotiation about the details, about money, about emissions. That's certainly a step forward to global change."
