Copenhagen: A lesson in geopolitics
By Joanna Kakissis
Aljazeera
The Copenhagen Accord was agreed by the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa
After two weeks of international deadlock and an all-night marathon negotiating session that produced a thin and toothless accord, the biggest climate talks in history devolved from "Hopenhagen" to "Nopenhagen". The Copenhagen Accord - brokered at the last minute by Barack Obama, the US president, with China, India, Brazil and South Africa - did not receive universal support from the 193 countries participating in the climate summit.
The accord, which gutted a comprehensive agreement to pay poor countries to protect their forests, since the mass cutting of trees accounts for 20 per cent of global emissions, is not binding and does not have a set date for capping carbon emissions.
It provoked reactions from fury to despair.
Lumumba Stanislaus Dia-ping, Sudan's chief negotiator, compared it to the Holocaust, while Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, referenced the sulfur of hell and suggested that Obama was Satan. Ian Fry of Tuvalu, the drowning island-nation that has become the poster country for the perils of rising sea levels, likened the accord to "being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our people and our future". But the climate fund did not win the trust of all developing countries, some of whom say the money is not nearly enough. ... Evo Morales, Bolivia's president, declared that rich countries owe poor countries billions of dollars in "climate reparations" and demanded the creation of a "climate change tribunal" for countries who do not stop polluting. Read article:
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/climatesos/2009/12/2009122064859919604.html
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