“After intense wrangling, delegates passed a motion simply taking note of the deal without formally adopting it” 

(This was how the daily Graphic in Ghana captured it in its Monday, December, 21^st, 2009 publication. Pg. 2.) 

So says the old adage ‘Events to come cast early shadows’. Sometimes, things are more transparent without the need for evidential proof. Climate change represents perhaps the greatest political challenge the world has faced in recent times: It is a universal problem that requires an intercontinental solution, which in turn needs to be supported and executed by not less than 193 countries to avoid its devastating effects on both human and animal spices. The costs and benefits of extenuating greenhouse gas emissions are unevenly distributed around the globe with some regions projected to benefit from rise in temperatures while many others will lose. Crafting a global consensus and a true political will to act is extremely complex and will require unflinching leadership from governments around the world. 

The key decisions on the successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol and associated commitments, which expire in 2012, have been greeted with somewhat cemetery stability at the meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen in December 2009. This make-or-break event though focused on financing, technology development and transfer, as well as technical support required for climate change mitigation and adaptation. And in particular, devising effective mechanisms to support poor and most vulnerable countries in adapting to climate change never realized a realistic outcome at the end of the day. Why? The various positions adopted could only be understood and identified through the lenses of the said parties to the deal.  

To explore the internal universe of these underlying cementing  political factors to the various positions and decisions reached which resulted in an accord that lack specific targets for reducing carbon emission, we unearth the various positions reached by parties to the deal.  

To begin with, the United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon welcomed the United States of America backed climate change deal in Copenhagen as an ‘essential beginning’  but noted the accord reached with China and Brazil must be made legally binding next year (2010). 

Notwithstanding, the tenets of this accord encapsulates a recognition to limit temperature rise to less than 2C, $30 billion aid for developing nations over the next 3years and an outlined goal to providing $100 billion a year to help poor countries cope with the vast devastating effects of climate change. 

Ghana is a beneficiary to this mouth watering ‘donations’.

A second thought has to do with what will happen to developing countries (including Ghana) if one day developed countries pick-up a phone and call all of them with the message ‘we cannot fulfill our promises anymore, find your own funding mechanisms’? 

US president Barack Obama described the negotiations as ‘extremely difficult and complex’ but was quick to add they had laid down ‘the foundation for international actions in the years to come’. My theoretical understanding of the politics displayed here may explain a microcosm of the reasons why US never signs treaties that legally bind them to fulfill a part of an agreement if not originating from them. COP15 accord was based on a proposal tabled by a US led group of five nations-including China, India, Brazil and South Africa. The case of the Kyoto Protocol is another living testimony. The US has always justified its non signatory approach to treaties on the grounds of its ability to reducing their hard-won civil sovereignty and a shift of power from the ‘well-to-do’ to the ‘down trodden(s)’. 

Several South American countries present such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Bolivia etc believed the agreement arrived at was not accomplished through any proper process. 

Before the proposals were tabled at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, most African countries and other developing countries, walked out of the negotiating table due to stalled agreements over the tenets of the proposal. But African Union backed the deal though some members denounced it. 

According to the Monday, December 21^st, 2009 page 2. Of the Daily Graphic publication, several descriptions have been given to the said agreement; Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese negotiator said the deal spelled “incineration” for Africa and compared it to the Nazis sending 6 million people to furnaces in the Holocaust; Venezuelan delegate Claudia Salerno Caldera described it as “coup d’état against the authority of the United Nations; and environmental campaigners and aid organizations branded it as toothless and a failure. Surely, COP15 situation presented almost a textbook case of deteriorating insensitivity by some of our leaders to the plights of ordinary citizens who put them in office, a talk shop, waste of scarce money in the midst of a global recession, a crime against humanity, a laughing stock and the outcome (proposal) ‘an article of no use’.    

                                         PROGS. COORDINATOR-YAFID

                                                  +233 249 114 324, vsabutey@yahoo.com

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