’Monsieur le President!,’ the French journalists initiate their questions. The time is well after half past ten PM on Friday, and they have been waiting patiently in the conference hall at Hotel Crown Plaza for more than half an hour for Nicolas Sarkozy to arrive and present the results of the negotiations for COP15 at Bella Center in Copenhagen.
’I think, that the deal we have now agreed upon is a positive deal, because it comprises the entire international community. The text we have made is not perfect. And eventhough it isn't legally binding before 2010, this deal has been made with the United States. And Kansler Merkel will arrange a conference in Bonn six months from now, in order to prepare for Mexico next year,’ Nicolas Sarkozy explains the outcome of the COP15 negotiations leading up to the next COP in Mexico in December 2010.
In Bella Center the collect international press has been referred to the screens to follow the speeches in the plenary hall, while all negotiations have taken place at closed meetings as bilateral and multilateral negotiations far from the scrutiny of the press. But here Nicolas Sarkozy unveils what took place behind closed doors as an explanation to the many cancelled press conferences during Friday at Bella Center.
’Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown and I have met about twenty times to clarify our positions. With 192 nations present it has been difficult,’ Nicolas Sarkozy elaborates about the negotiations in Bella Center during the past few days, where he also spoke with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama several times.
’Yesterday [i.e. on Thursday] we had two texts on the table, one overall text and one convention text for the negotiators. We wanted the overall text with a political declaration with twelve paragraphs to stipulate that the governments of the 192 countries should respect the deal,’ the French president further explains about the developments.
Nicolas Sarkozy admits that there were severe tensions during the negotiations:
’There have been many tensions during the conference, I can't hide that. And some countries have chosen to leave the conference. But if we hadn't made this deal, two important countries like China and India, representing over two billion people out of six billion, would have stood outside of the elements of the deal. And the United States would have been exempt from responsibility of all elements of the deal,' Nicolas Sarkozy elaborates.
According to Sarkozy the great complications during the COP15 negotiations are due to the different fora, like G8, G20, and G77 countris. G8 consists of the seven largest economic powers plus the EU. G20 consists of finance ministers and central bank managers of the 19 largest eonomic powers plus the EU. And G77 is a coalition of the 77 poorest countries. And all of these fora were at play during the UN negotians on climate change during COP15:
’G20 can make decisions. But today we have had a crisis and a complete block. When you can't vote on anything, how are you to make decisions? There have been several countries with enormous power, because they know that when you can't reach a consensus, you can't make a decision. We have had a situation, where for instance the ambassador of Sudan has spoken on par with the American president and kansler Merkel. They haven't been on the same political level and with the same capacity for making decisions. This system has caused the collapse. So the system needs to be changed,’ the French president states his opinion.
Despite the above difficulties a political COP15 accord was made, that obliges the countries to four important elements. Firstly, all countries accept that global warming can only rise with a maximum of two degrees celsius. Furthermore, all countries have agreed to hand in their written statements with figures on their own CO2 emissions from 2015 to 2020. That means that the deal will have an attachment with objectives for reductions of each country, including China, India, South Africa, and Brazil. These objectives are to be presented in the month of January. Next, the countries accept to make obligatory evaluations of their respective efforts. And the fourth element is that the countries agree on introducing an innovative financing, including the United States. The countries agree to give ten billion dollars per year to the poorest nations in 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Furthermore, all countries have accepted to raise the development aid to 100 billion dollars from 2020. Of which the twenty percent is dedicated to combat deforrestation, and forty percent dedicated to development aid in Africa. That means two billion for reforrestation in 2010 - and 20 billion in 2020.
At the press conference mainly comprising the French press, Nicolas Sarkozy was confronted with critical questions from the journalists. Among them one question was, if this wasn't simply a voluntary, political accord with no real legally binding engagements. Sarkozy replies:
’No the accord isn't voluntary, since the figures of each country will be published and attached as an annex to the accord. So the figures oblige politically. Second, there is an obligation to implement the accord about the precise figures into the national legislation. Each country is obliged to deliver the figures of their individual reduction objectives immediately. Not in 2020, but immediately. And each country is obliged to publish their reductions annually, so that inspections can verify them.’
Next stops: New York, Bonn, and Mexico:
PN confronted Nicolas Sarkozy with the question of an international legally binding deal for all countries.
’We didn't manage to agree upon a legally binding deal in Copenhagen. And I don't know how we should have prepared an actual treaty. Ban Ki-moon will preside the efforts to prepare a treaty from the month of September in New York. A deal of more than a hundred pages. So there's first this political accord in Copenhagen. Then both Europe and the United States want to turn the political accord into a treaty. Therefore France insists on a mid-way summit in Bonn. The political accord should lead to a treaty to be realized in Mexico next year. This treaty should include both China and India,’ the French president explains about the outlook for climate negotiations in 2010.
Paradoxically, it will take the Conference of The Parties (COP) a whole series of world wide travels and a huge amount of CO2 emissions in order to stop the CO2 emissions.
