Burson-Marsteller

Copenhagen Calling – Part 2

by Bill Royce on 11th December 2009 • The Cast Blog

I was planning a second colour piece but events here and abroad got in the way. Of all the issues that could foil an agreement here, maybe none is the bigger than the relationship between the rich world and the G-77 group of developing nations.

As an Australian who has now lived and worked in London for six years, it gets progressively harder to remember that my emotional and geographic backyard is the South Pacific. There you have flat island nations like Tuvalu that are already losing the battle against rising sea levels due to melting glaciers and ice sheets – from Antarctica if not from Chile and elsewhere. And it’s not just the islands: if projections are correct, within a century you will need a wetsuit and snorkel to open the batting at the Boxing Day Test at the MCG in Melbourne.

So it’s not really a surprise that the G-77 has had a meltdown of its own this week, because the climate debate has moved from soft promises to hard numbers, and this has exposed some of the inherent tensions in this long-standing political bloc.

When the G-77 grouping was formed in 1964, it made sense to lump all of the poorest nations together into a collective “developing” nation basket. Today, when some G-77 countries are also G-20 major economic powers – among them Brazil, South Africa, India, and China, the so-called BASIC group – it’s very hard to reconcile common economic or geopolitical interests. And nobody really knows where Russia sits.

Given their risks, it is entirely understandable that the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) is backing the emissions stabilisation target of 350 parts per million (ppm) and a temperature limit of 1.5 degrees centigrade from pre-Industrial levels – backed by NASA’s James Hansen and his worldwide grassroots movement http://www.350.org/.

It was also entirely predictable that China would refuse, as this would severely curtail its economic and social growth.

This split is probably the end of the G-77 group as we know it. Which is all rather unfortunate at the same time that the rich world is trying to find the right incentive for the G-77 to sign a deal in Copenhagen.

One of yesterday’s most significant developments was actually in Brussels, where the EU leaders – meeting as the European Council – were trying to agree on an extra package of €6 billion for 2010-2012 as a “fast start” incentive for the G-77. It’s reported that Gordon Brown has committed an additional € 1 billion towards this effort. This is on top of previous EU offerings which are already generous and substantial.

This EU initiative has had little media coverage against a celebrity story.

Instead George Soros – depending on who you talk to, a climate angel or a man who just sees his next billion in trading carbon rights – used his two minutes on stage to announce a plan to invest $150 billion in low-carbon technologies and infrastructure in G-77 countries.

What was interesting in the fine detail was that it was not one cent of his own money. Rich world countries would draw on their IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) – an emergency fund – and hand this over to the G-77 for climate change initiatives.

Soros won the business story of the day by a significant margin, and attracted some interesting support from pragmatic mainstream NGOs like Oxfam – which said he was showing the type of leadership that has been absent from governments.

BTW, Friends of the Earth opposed the Soros initiative. Without going too far into the details, part of the Soros plan would allow recipient countries to earn extra revenue from trading carbon credits. Friends of the Earth flatly opposes carbon credits trading. Another “niet” from an NGO that flays companies and governments for not doing more. Thin ice.

Last reflection tomorrow morning – and I’m planning a wrap up when it’s all done and dusted.

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