Posted on December 20, 2009 - by Venik

Copenhagen summit: ‘First step’ to a new order – or a ‘betrayal of our grandchildren’

India

With India involved in the last minute negotiations that produced the compromise accord, its environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, called it “a good deal and satisfactory solution”. But another parliamentary delegate, Sitaram Yechury, complained that the final draft was “well short of expectations”.

The Hindu newspaper called it an “important beginning” but noted that it contained few specific figures, commitments or timelines. The Hindustan Times felt that “without a legally binding document, the summit turned into a damp squib”. The Mail Today concluded that “something is better than nothing”, even if trying to get so many countries to agree on anything would strike many as “an exercise in futility”. But environmental groups were critical of the Indian government’s performance. “This has been a shirking of global responsibility by India and a weak outcome has so far emerged from the UN climate talks,” Greenpeace India complained. One unexpected positive was that relations with China – strained by border and visa disputes – appear to have warmed slightly.

Russia

Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, said the summit had achieved “quite modest” results. His aides, however, blasted the two-week UN conference as “one of the most poorly organised top-level events ever”. Greenpeace Russia dismissed it as “ignominious” and “futile”.

Medvedev said: “Ultimately we managed to compile a statement that reflects various countries’ perceptions of how to continue improving the work on making the environmental situation on the planet better and preventing unfavourable influences on climate.”

Despite Russian scepticism about climate change, he had arrived promising $200m to a multibillion fund to help poor countries reduce their carbon output. He also said Russia, the world’s third largest emitter, was ready to cut emissions by 25% from 1990 levels by 2020 – if the US, China and others followed suit. The collapse of the Soviet Union saw emissions fall by about 30%.

Germany

Angela Merkel’s commitment to the environment once earned her the media moniker of “climate chancellor”. But her return from Copenhagen has met with accusations that she betrayed her principles. “She made minimal offers which turned out to be a flop. She did not put Germany on the frontline,” said Claudia Roth, head of the Green party, labelling the talks a “tragedy”. Merkel, while owning up to “mixed feelings”, told Bild am Sonntag that Copenhagen had been “a first step towards a new world climate order. No more, but also no less,” she said. However, her measured optimism was drowned out. “The world was watching Copenhagen. The world has been sorely disappointed,” said Hubert Weiger, head of Germany’s association for environment and nature protection, Bund.

Sigmar Gabriel, former environment minister and chairman of the opposition SPD party, described the summit as a “catastrophe. The way state and government heads have put at risk the future of their own children and grandchildren is a disgrace.”

One other leader singled out for particular criticism was Barack Obama. “It may have been Hollywood, but what we saw was a bad film,” remarked Roth. “It was not enough just to come, put nothing on the table and then go away again and criticise the conference.”

France

Before he jetted into Copenhagen last week, Nicolas Sarkozy publicly warned that “failure would be catastrophic”. But the French president emerged from the talks chastened. “It is not perfect,” he told journalists, “[but] it is the best possible agreement”. His ecology minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, insisted “absolute disaster” had been averted. That, though, was not the consensus among France’s green activists or opposition leaders. Nicolas Hulot, the popular ecologist, told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper: “We have sold off our children’s future and compromised that of millions of citizens.” Blame for the “fiasco” focused chiefly on Beijing and the US. “But Europe also sinned in its disunity and absence of leadership,” said Djamila Sonzogni, for the French Green party. The result, she added, was “as desperate as the stakes were high”.

The media verdict media was unanimous. An editorial in Le Monde was entitled simply: “A disappointment.”

“China is at the heart of Copenhagen’s failure,” it said.

South Africa

South Africa may have been one of the five countries to broker the Copenhagen accord, but there was little enthusiasm for the deal back home. “The Hopelesshagen Flop” was the front-page headline in the Sunday Independent, and opposition politicians and environmental activists were critical. President Jacob Zuma had talked on Friday about how climate change was already “wreaking havoc on the lives of our people [in coastal provinces of South Africa]“. He called for ambitious cuts in rich country emissions, and said poorer countries emissions should be permitted to increase – a position shared by the G77 developing countries. But the Sunday Independent said Zuma subsequently aligned himself with “Obama’s deal”, which it described as “no deal at all for those who are going to be worst affected by the devastating effects of climate change”.

Reporting: Gethin Chamberlain, Luke Harding, Lizzie Davies, Xan Rice

Original article

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